She screamed, clawed at the lining of her coffin. Her fingertips hit a hard square object mounted on the lid, and she knew it had to be the video camera.
She could feel the tiny lens and she put her thumb on it.
Held it there for a while.
Now he couldn’t see her.
She had the power to blind the Owl.
She held her thumb over the lens until her hand began to tremble.
Then the Owl’s voice bleated through the speakers and she jumped. “If you are playing a joke, Alexa, this is not a very good idea.”
She didn’t reply. Why should she? She didn’t have to answer him.
Then she thought of something so monumental that her heart began racing from excitement instead of terror.
She could rip the damned camera off its mounting.
She could blind the Owl forever.
Without his camera, he had no power over her!
Grabbing the camera’s casing, she tugged, wiggling it back and forth like a loose tooth to dislodge it from its mounting.
This was genius. The videocam was the key to his whole plot. This was how he made his demands, using her, coaching her, having her recite his bizarre demands over video so Dad would totally freak out.
So she’d get rid of it.
Cut off his access to her, his surveillance. Cripple his scheme, where he couldn’t do anything about it.
Without the video, the Owl’s plan couldn’t work. No camera, no ransom.
Tear down the camera, he’d get desperate. He’d have to improvise.
He’d have to dig her up.
He’d have to fix his damned camera, because that was the key to the whole thing.
Why the hell had it taken her so long to figure this out?
She felt a little warm pulse of pleasure. Her father, who probably did love her after all but totally didn’t respect her, would be proud of her now, wouldn’t he? He’d be amazed at her cleverness, her resourcefulness. He’d say, “My Lexie, you got the saichel, you got the head of a Marcus.”
She gripped the little metal box so hard her whole arm shook. She tugged at it, twisted it, and finally she felt something start to give way.
A tiny piece of something dropped onto her face. She felt it with her left hand. A little metal screw. Must be part of the mounting.
She was doing it. She was ripping out the Owl’s eyes.
She smiled to herself, crazy with triumph, felt the camera thing began to wobble ever so slightly.
A sudden blare: “Another bad idea.”
She didn’t reply.
Of course he didn’t want her to rip the damned thing down. Of course he didn’t want that.
“You know, Alexa, I am your only means of communication with the world,” the voice said. Not angry, but patient.
She gritted her teeth and kept twisting, hand shaking with exertion, the sharp metal corners cutting into her palm.
“If you disable the camera,” the Owl said, “you will be cut off from the rest of the world, you know.”
She stopped twisting for a moment.
“They will think you have died,” the voice said. “Why else would the video stream stop, yes?”
Her hand was frozen in a grip just above her face. A few more minutes of this and she’d be able to snap off the other screws or posts or whatever it was that kept the camera stuck to the lid of the …
“Maybe your father will cry. Maybe he feels relief. But at least he knows this is over. There’s nothing he can do. He never wanted to give us what we ask anyway, and now he thinks, I don’t need to do this. What is the point, yes? His daughter is dead.”
She said, in a guttural animal growl, “He’ll know you failed.”
“He will give up. Believe me. Or don’t believe me. I don’t care.”
The muscles in her forearm and wrist were aching. She had to lower her hand.
“Yes,” said the Owl. “You prefer to get out of this box, isn’t that right?”
She began to sob.
“Yes,” he said again. “This camera is your only hope of getting out of there alive.”
82.
As badly as I needed sleep, I needed to talk to Diana Madigan even more, to tell her what I’d found out.
Six in the morning. She was an early riser. Odds were she was awake and having coffee and reading e-mail or whatever FBI agents do before they go to work in the morning, those who aren’t married and don’t have kids.
So instead of going straight home, I drove a few minutes out of my way, looped around to the South