Jason removed the pressure from her head, and she could move it again but she could not see.
A ripping sound. The weight of his fingers at her temple as he stuck the end down.
It was complete. Her death mask.
Faceless.
Dark.
Quiet.
Disappeared.
Faceless. Dark. Quiet. Too quiet. Pip could no longer hear the hiss of Jason’s breath, nor smell the metallic tang of his sweat as she breathed rattling breaths in and out of her nose. He must have moved away from her.
Pip stopped breathing, sounding out the room with her covered ears, feeling out the concrete around her with her doubled-up legs. She heard a scuffled footstep, far away from her, back towards the door he’d dragged her through.
She listened.
Metal clanging as a door opened. A shriek of old hinges. More footsteps, crunching on the gravel outside. Another shriek of the hinges and the door clicking shut. Silence, for a few in-and-out breaths, and then a much smaller sound: a key scraping against the lock. Another clunk.
Had he just left? He’d just left, hadn’t he?
Pip strained, listening for the faint sounds of shoes and cascading gravel. A familiar sound: a car door slamming. The growl of an awakening engine and the wheels reversing away from her.
He was leaving. He was gone.
He’d left her here, locked her in, but Jason was leaving. DT was gone.
She sniffed. Wait. Maybe he wasn’t gone. Maybe this was some kind of test, and he was sitting in the room with her still, watching her. Holding his breath so she couldn’t hear him. Waiting for her to make any kind of wrong move. Hiding there in the dark underside of her eyelids, taped down.
Pip made a sound in her throat, testing it out. Her voice vibrated against the duct tape, tickling her lips. She groaned again, louder, trying to make sense of the impenetrable darkness around her. But she couldn’t. She was helpless here, restrained to this tall metal shelving unit, her face disappeared, wrapped up in tape. Maybe he was still in the room with her, she couldn’t rule it out. But she had heard the car, hadn’t she? It couldn’t have been anyone but Jason. And another memory, shaking loose from her broken-down brain. The typed words of a transcript. DCI Nolan asking Billy Karras why he left his victims alone for a period of time, proved by wear and tear in the duct-tape restraints. The DT Killer did leave. This was part of it, his routine, his MO. Jason was gone. But he would be back and that’s when Pip would die.
OK, she was alone, Pip settled on that, but she couldn’t linger in that momentary relief. Now on to the next problem. The terror wasn’t locked up, like she was, in the back of her head. It was everywhere. It was in her taped-down eyes and her taped-up ears. In every beat of her overused heart. In the raw skin of her wrists and the uncomfortable bend of her shoulders. In the pit of her stomach and the deep of her soul. Pure and visceral; fear as she’d never known it before. Inevitable. The segue between being alive and not.
Her breaths were coming shorter, too short, panicked spurts in and out. Oh fuck. Her nose was blocking up, she could feel it, every breath rattling more than the last. She shouldn’t have cried, she shouldn’t have cried. The air was struggling, scraping its way through two tightening holes. Soon they would block up entirely and she would suffocate. That’s how it would all end. Dead girl walking. Dead girl not breathing. At least that way DT wouldn’t get to kill her, not his way at least, with a blue rope around her neck. Maybe it was better this way, something out of his control and closer to hers. But, oh god, she didn’t want to die. Pip forced the air in and out, feeling light-headed, though she no longer had a head, just two shrinking nostrils.
A new chorus in her mind. I’m going to die. I’m going to die. I’m going to die.
‘Hey, Sarge.’ Ravi was back, inside her head. Whispering into her taped-up ear.
‘I’m going to die,’ she told him.
‘I don’t think so,’ he replied, and Pip knew he was saying it with the trace of a smile, a dimple carved into one cheek. ‘Just breathe. Slower than that, please.’
‘But look.’ She showed him the restraints: her ankles, her hands tied to a cold metal pole, the mask around her face.
Ravi already knew all that, he’d been there for it too. ‘I’m staying with you, until the very end,’ he promised, and Pip wanted to cry again but she couldn’t, her eyes were forced shut. ‘You won’t be alone, Pip.’
‘That helps,’ she told him.
‘That’s what I’m here for. Always. Team Ravi and Pip.’ He smiled behind her eyes. ‘And we made a good team, didn’t we?’