By a Thread

You are wrong...

Those three words seem to hang in the air even after the sounds of Natalie's footsteps are long gone.

With a flash, I see carefully scrawled upon the backs of items copied from the previous miniatures, the careful brush strokes that luminesce the hauntingly familiar phrase You were wrong.

And I know something is wrong. But what, I am not sure.

Until my eyes settle on what she wants me to find, what she's left just as carefully out of place as what she has carefully hidden.

The tile pops up easily, too easily.

I know the wild, wide-eyed shock must be plain on my face. My breath catches in my throat as if I have been struck by a very real blow. I can barely think, let alone breathe, in that moment of newfound heart-stopping horror.

I almost drop it, this new miniature, although I feel more tempted to hurl it away, as if it were something scalding hot to the touch and yet at the same time, I feel that cold and clammy dread, that same sort of numbing paralysis. My hands begin to shake. The walls feel like they are closing in. The clang of doors being shut off in the distance make me feel like I am the one who has been left to be imprisoned here.

Then there is nothing but the quiet. No footsteps, nothing but the mad rush of thoughts.

Uncharacteristically, my first question is Why?

Why leave this? Why do this?

Is it some twisted call for help or something else?

A test? A game?

And how long will it be before the symbolized becomes the symbol?

But before the sheer panic can set in, Natalie's own words crash over me, People who do bad things need to be punished, and in them, I realize her real intent in all of this. She might be announcing herself as her own next victim, but I am once again her real target, just as I had been when she took you.

Your miniature may have been set in a generic stretch of desert, but the car, the make, the model, the color, the damage, everything right down to the VIN number, told a far different story. She may have been saying that you could be anywhere, but she wanted me and me alone to know why.

Remember. That is what she wanted me to do. Remember that moment. And know that I know. I saw you. I know your secret. The one you think is so carefully kept but isn't.

And now she is telling me, too, that like then, she has made just as sure of it that she is not going to be the one ultimately responsible. That her death, like yours would have been, rests upon my head. That it will be my actions or inactions that would decide.

At this, part of me really wants to rage and roar.

I should have learned to stop giving Natalie Davis the benefit of the doubt a long time ago. These past two days, she has been up to the same thing I was with her in that interrogation room all those months ago. She set the stage, told me exactly what she thought best for me to hear, played her part so very carefully. She played me like I tried to play her.

Oh, yes, she wasn't lying when she said she had changed. There is no question that she is no longer the timid, almost child-like woman who once sat there so shyly in front of me. No, that Natalie has been replaced by someone sure, insistent, confident, cool and collected.

Indeed, revenge is most certainly a dish best served cold.

How long had she been planning this? Plotted out exactly what she was going to say and do, the whole role she wanted to convey?

People who do bad things deserve to be punished. You still need to be punished, that is what it seems she is trying to say.

I want to reply Haven't I been punished enough? Paid enough?

I shake my head to clear this thought away.

A game. All of this has been just another game. Yet another one I realized far too late, I have no choice but to play.

You have my life in your hands as judge, jury and executioner, the miniature seems to say. My life or my death, it is up to you.

And I can let her live out her life happily or unhappily in prison or I can let her go through with it, let her die knowing that I had the knowledge and power to stop her.

It's brilliant. For no matter what I choose both the guilty Natalie and the guilty me are punished.

And I have to choose. I have to make a decision. For not making a choice would indeed be the same as if I willingly decided to conceal what I know and just as intentionally let her die.

So if I do nothing and she dies, she wins. If I choose to let her die, she wins. If I choose to save her, she still wins.

Each and every time, I loose.

While I do really believe that an eye for an eye just leaves the whole world even more blind than it already is, I have to confess that the temptation is very real. For at this moment, I am even more alone here than I was in that interrogation room with her. There is no one here to stop me.

My fingers begin to close around the crudely wrought figure. It would be so easy to tug it free. A simple tug would be all that it would take. There wouldn't be enough left behind for anyone to question. I could just simply slip the figure into my pocket and slip out of the room.

No one would know. No one would have to know.

After all, it was easy enough to get my pocketknife passed security.

Easy.

So the question becomes Do you yield to your better angel or to your worser spirit?

Act or do nothing?

Honestly, I don't know.