the room, as did his shame. Maggie did not judge or pity or comfort him. She waited him out.
“You must think I’m insane,” he mumbled as he struggled to regain his composure. “I do nothing but cry in front of you.”
Maggie took both of his hands in hers. “Bobby, most people would not have survived what you went through. Most people would have come out of that prison with a heart so black and so shrunken with hate that there would be no room in it for anything but revenge. But you survived intact. And it’s over. You survived. If you want to break down and cry in relief for a solid year at that miracle, believe me, I understand. It’s something to cry about. No one would think otherwise.”
Daniels looked away, his eyes seeking the sunshine that waited outside the window. When he spoke, his voice was flat. “He thought of her as nothing more than one of his possessions. She was his territory, like his hill.”
“His hill?” Maggie asked. “What do you mean, ‘his hill’?”
“She was like the hill he used to walk up and down each night for exercise. He acted like he owned it. No one else was allowed to walk with him. Or behind him. Or near him. And he hated it when strangers intruded. It wasn’t just that he wanted to be alone. He acted like he owned that stupid path. He forbid Alissa and me to walk along it, even when he wasn’t there. As if that could . . . stop us from being alone.” He became lost in a memory that I could feel was a good one, time spent with Alissa, and I willed other good memories to follow this one, so that they might obliterate the bad memories he held inside.
“Where was this hill?” Maggie asked him carefully.
Bobby Daniels described it—a hill near the old rock quarry, along the far side of the college.
It was the same hill where Vicky Meeks had been found.
“Bobby,” Maggie told him in an urgent voice. “I want you to leave here as soon as you can. Go back to Kansas City with your parents, see your relatives, and celebrate your freedom—then take some time off and go away with your parents somewhere. Don’t tell anyone but me where you’re going.”
Bobby looked at her, puzzled. “Why?”
Maggie’s fear filled the room. She knew what she was up against—and I knew she was right to fear it, because I had felt it, and I knew it had the power to snatch your soul right out of your body and smite it into cinders.
“Alan Hayes is missing,” she explained. “He hasn’t come home since we searched his house. No one knows where he’s gone. And I think your life is in danger because of him. I think he was at the Double Deuce last night.”
Bobby stared at her. “What if I remember something else that might help?”
“Then you call me,” Maggie said, handing him her card. “But don’t tell anyone else but me where you are. Do you understand?”
He nodded solemnly.
“You must protect your parents,” she explained. “They’re in danger, too. He knows your father can see through him. He’d have picked up on that. And if he hears you’re part of my investigation in any way, all of you are in danger.”
“So you do think it’s him?” Bobby said. “My father was right?”
“Yes,” Maggie said. “Your father was right. The world is full of more terrible things than anyone of us will ever know. There are people that walk this earth, who walk among us, who feed on pain and who exist solely to destroy the happiness of others.”
“I knew men like that in prison,” Bobby said softly.
But Maggie shook her head. “Not exactly. Those men are in prison because some part of them, somewhere, wanted to be caught. So they made a mistake. But Alissa’s father? He won’t make a mistake. Because your father’s right: there is something missing in him. And you don’t want to know what it is.”
“I do want to know,” Bobby said. “I need to know. I need to know what happened to Alissa.”
Maggie looked sadder than I had ever seen her look. I thought my heart might break for what she was feeling. She didn’t just empathize with people, she fed on their pain before they could, offering herself as a receptacle for the terrible unknowns of what their loved ones had gone through so that they would never have