A/N: Thank you all for your continued support! I'm glad that I could write something so worth reading! The ending would have been happier, except for my friend who said to me last week. "Goodness, you take death very lightly. You ought to make Tristan pay his dues." And so I am.

Thanks all for reading it!

The French Police Agency does not, in fact, make mistakes. And neither does the FBI.

Marcello and Anita… Tristan and I had been tricked! A nasty, nasty trick. Marcello had been following us from New York, Anita had always been here. They knew how to speak French, they knew how to give the real registry people enough money to be out of site, they knew how to bug a room.

Anita only laughs. “What did you think I was doing when you three were out that one night for dinner? Watching TV? Good lord.”

Tristan springs at her as she gloats. He pushes her to the ground, and I can see the insanity in his eyes. He wants to kill her. He has every intention to kill her.

Marcello kicks Tristan in the head, leaving him stunned. “Calm down.” Tristan just lays there as Marcello looks at him as though he’s the lowest person in the world.

I begin to cry, and Anita seems to revert to how I knew her. “Oh, Maggie. Don’t cry. The worst you’ll get is twenty years in prison.”

Marcello grins, “Maybe life.”

Tristan stands back up groggily and then makes a move at Marcello. Marcello doesn’t seem totally ready for this and falls over backwards as Tristan puts his hands around his would-be victim’s neck and tightens his grip.

I pull him off Marcello, and we’re both put in handcuffs.

They deport us back to the USA. Anita waves goodbye as though we’ll be coming back to Paris next year. I doubt I’ll ever see the sky again. Do prisons have windows?

Marcello sits next to me on the fancy government jet. For three hours the whole plane is silent, and then we can hear Tristan snoring. “You know,” Marcello whispers in my ear and twirls my hair around his middle finger, “I really do think that you’re a very pretty girl.”

I don’t want him to say that. I don’t want to have some kind of breakdown and submit to him. “Thank you, you rapist.”

“I’m not a rapist,” he says, kissing my neck, “It’s too bad that you’re in love with a psychopath. I mean, you are in love, aren’t you?”

“Why would you put on such a creepy façade?”

“To strengthen the bond between you and Mr. Douglas. It’s easier for two people who trust only each other to say stupid things when they think they’re alone.”

“Did he really kill five people?” I don’t even believe the sound of my own voice. I sound so dumb and removed.

“Our files say yes. We found a similar pattern in all of the murders, and then when the police found fingerprints on Lindsay Anderson, we had our man. Unfortunately, you two had already left for Paris. So we notified the French Police, and they sent in Anita.”

“How? How on Earth could he have killed five women? He was always so nice to me!”

“It’s not my job to understand madmen. Maggie… You’re so beautiful.”

Marcello and I make out in the airplane bathroom. I don’t even know his real name. He won’t undo my handcuffs for security reasons. It’s uncomfortable, and only he is really enjoying it. His tongue is long and slides against the roof of my mouth; I want to puke.

When we’re done, I feel like the worst person on Earth. But he guarantees me that he could talk a judge into giving me a light sentence, if I’m found guilty at all. It feels like college again. If you suck up to important people, they’ll give you nice things.

We land in America, and find out that our trial date is already set. A week from today.

They let me go free. Apparently Marcello (known in the real world as Mark Kuhn) does have some power. Yes, it’ll all go on my permanent record, but maybe I’ll still be able to get a job somewhere out of state.

Tristan is on death row. He seems okay with it, and talks to me as though nothing happened. He draws his inmates with the skill that amazes me. I don’t think that after this week I’ll ever see him again.

A part of my life has been erased. Vanished in the Court System amidst all of the official papers.

I’m packing my things up a month after the trial, when Marcello (Mark Kuhn. I refuse to be part of the real world) comes to see me. He looks the same as ever. Tall and thin with lifeless eyes.

“Do you need something?” I ask.

“No,” he replies lazily, watching me put things into boxes, “Where are you going?”

“Back to Texas,” I sigh. “Maybe I can get a job there. Why are you here?”

“I love you, Maggie. And I wouldn’t have taken so much interest in your case if you hadn’t been as captivating as you are.”

The pervert! I’m standing amidst my boxes and ruined life (a life that I ruined pretty splendidly almost singlehandedly, might I add), and he’s telling me that I turn him on. I thought we were done. I thought one time in an airplane bathroom followed by more shame than I had ever known would have finished it.

And as I look at him, I know how Tristan must have felt. It doesn’t take a crazy person to feel these emotions.

I hate Mark Kuhn. Marcello. I hate him. With every cell in my being I hate him.

And I want to kill him.