The Good Girl: An addictively suspenseful and gripping thriller. Mary Kubica

some place where they can’t extradite me. Soon, I tell myself. I’ll do it soon. I’ll tie her up in the cabin and hightail it to Minneapolis for a flight before she has a chance to spread my face all over Interpol.

      I tell her that I can’t call her Mia. Not in public. Soon enough word will leak out that the girl’s missing. I should leave her in the car, but I can’t. She’ll take off. And so she wears my baseball cap and I tell her to look down, don’t make eye contact. It probably doesn’t need to be said. She knows more about the gravel than me. I ask what she wants me to call her. After enough hesitation to start to piss me off, she comes up with Chloe.

      No one gives a damn that I’m missing. When I don’t show up at work, they’ll assume I’m lazy. It’s not like I have friends.

      I let her pick out chicken noodle soup for lunch. I hate it but I say okay anyway. I’m hungry. We get about twenty cans. Chicken noodle, tomato soup, mandarin oranges, cream corn. The kind of food you find in a survival kit. The girl realizes this and says, “Maybe you don’t plan to kill me right away,” and I say no, not until we’ve eaten the cream corn.

      In the afternoon I try to sleep. These days it doesn’t come easy. I get an hour here, an hour there, but most of all I’m awakened by the idea of Dalmar coming after me or the cops showing up at the door. I’m on the lookout, all the time, peeking out every window as I pass. Always looking behind me. I barricade the front door before I sleep, glad to find the windows sealed shut by some idiot with paint. I didn’t think I had to worry about the girl trying to escape. I didn’t think she had it in her. I let my guard down, left the truck keys out in plain sight, and that was all the encouragement she needed.

      And so I’m sound asleep on the sofa, hugging the gun, when I hear the front door slam shut. I’m on my feet. It takes a minute to get my bearings. When I do I see the girl fall down the second half of the stairs down to the gravel drive. I run out the door, screaming, irate. She’s limping. The truck door is unlocked. She gets in and tries to start the ignition. She can’t find the right key. I can see her through the driver’s window. I see her pound a fist on the steering wheel. I’m closing in on the truck. By now she’s grown desperate. She slides across the front seat and out the passenger door. She takes off into the woods. She’s fast, but I’m faster. The tree branches reach out, scraping her arms and legs. She trips over a rock and falls face-first into a pile of leaves. She gets up and continues to run. She’s getting tired, losing speed. She’s crying, begging me to leave her alone.

      But I’m pissed.

      I grab her by the hair. Her feet continue to run but her head snaps back violently. She lands on the hard earth. She doesn’t have time to cry out before I’m on her, all two hundred and some pounds crushing her slender frame. She gasps, begging me to stop. But I don’t. I’m mad. She’s crying wildly. Tears stream down her face, mixing with blood and mud and my own spit. She squirms. She spits on me. I’m sure she sees her entire life float before her eyes. I tell her how stupid she is. And then I hold the gun to her head and cock the hammer.

      She stops moving, becomes paralyzed.

      I press hard, the barrel leaving a mark on her head. I could do it. I could end her life.

      She’s an idiot, a damn moron. It takes every ounce of goodwill I have not to pull the trigger. I did this for her. I saved her life. Who the hell does she think she is to run away? I press harder with the pistol, dig the barrel into her skull. She cries out.

      “You think that hurts,” I say.

      “Please...” She’s begging, but I don’t listen. I should have handed her over when I had the chance.

      I stand up, grab her by the hair. She bawls. “Shut up,” I say. I drag her by the hair through the trees. I shove her ahead of me and tell her to move. “Hurry up.” It’s like her legs don’t work right. She trips, falls. “Get up,” I snap.

      Does she have a clue what Dalmar would do to me if he found me? A bullet in the head would be the easy way out. A quick and easy death. I’d be crucified. Tortured.

      I push her up the steps, into the cabin. I slam the door shut, but it bounces back open. I kick it shut and throw the table down to keep it closed. I yank her into the bedroom and tell her that if I hear her so much as breathe she will never again see the light of day.

      Gabe

       Before

      I drive downtown again, the fourth time in a week, planning to bitch when I don’t get reimbursed for all the miles I’m racking up on my car. It’s only about ten miles each way, but takes nearly thirty minutes in the damn traffic. There’s a reason I don’t live in the city. I fork over another fifteen dollars to park—robbery if you ask me—because I’ve passed the intersection of Lawrence and Broadway nearly a dozen times and still can’t find an open meter.

      The bar doesn’t open for a few hours. Just my luck, I think, knocking on the window to get the bartender’s attention. He’s stocking the bar and I know he hears me but doesn’t budge. I knock again and this time, when his eyes gaze in my direction, I show him my badge.

      He opens the door.

      It’s quiet in the bar. The lights are dim, few of the sun’s rays making it in through the grimy windows. The place is dusty and smells of stale cigarette smoke, things you wouldn’t necessarily notice when jazz music and candlelight set the mood.

      “We open at seven,” he says.

      “Who’s in charge here?” I ask.

      “You’re looking at him.” He turns and begins a retreat to the bar. I follow and prop myself up on one of the torn vinyl stools. I reach into a pocket for the photo: Mia Dennett. It’s a fascinating picture, one Eve Dennett let me borrow last week. I promised it wouldn’t get lost or hurt, and I feel bad that my shirt pocket has already wrinkled a corner. To Mrs. Dennett, it was the photograph that was all Mia, or so she claimed, this image of a free-spirited woman with dirty blond hair that hangs too long, azure eyes and a straightforward, honest smile. She’s standing before Buckingham Fountain, the water shooting out aimlessly and, in the Chicago wind, spraying the woman who laughs like a child.