“I’m sorry?” He leaned closer, one hand on the soft place behind her knee.
She licked cracked lips. “Why?”
He smoothed hair from her face and stared into her eyes. “Ours is not to wonder why.”
“Please…”
“It’s time to go.”
He pulled her up and guided her to the car with torn seats and cigarette burns in the vinyl. The cuffs clinked on her wrists, and he kept a grip on the chain as he belted her inside the car.
“Safe and sound,” he said, then walked through bright lights, his shadow rising and falling, then gone. She tugged at the seat belt, but was weak with hunger and heat. He slipped into the car and closed his door.
“I want to go home.”
The clock on the dash said 5:47. Beyond the glass, a pale light gathered in the trees.
“The more you cooperate, the easier this will be. Do you understand?”
She nodded, crying. “Where are you taking me?”
He said nothing as he turned on rough dirt and drove out of the woods. At the paved road, he cut the wheel right, color bleeding into the fields as they drove, the sun a dim eye rising.
“Please don’t hurt me.”
He said nothing, drove faster.
Four minutes later she saw the church.
8
Elizabeth dreamed, and the dream was memory. It was night and hot as she moved through the yard of the abandoned house on Penelope Street. A few lights simmered down the road, but they were far and dim. She crossed from the last tree to the side of the house, her feet slipping in wet grass as she pushed through overgrown bushes and pressed her back against ancient clapboards that were cracked and split and wet from the storm. Holding her breath, she listened for noises inside. The caller said he’d heard a scream. What Elizabeth heard was her breath, her heart, and water dripping from choked-out gutters. She pushed along the wall as wet leaves trailed across her face and hands, and streaks of lightning dropped far off in the fading storm. At the first window, she paused. It was below grade, painted black. Two steps past it a sound came and went so fast Elizabeth thought she could be imagining it.
A voice?
A cry?
On the porch, she thought for the last time about calling Beckett or Dyer or someone else. But Beckett was with his family and the city was burning. Besides, if people were inside the house, it would be kids smoking pot or screwing. How many calls like that had she taken in her uniform days? A dozen? A hundred?
She drew her weapon and felt the knob turn. Inside, it was pitch-black, the air heavy with the stink of mold and cat and rotten carpet. She closed the door and turned on her flashlight, sweeping the room.
Rainwater pooled on the floor.
The ceiling was a soggy mess.
She cleared the living room and kitchen, the back rooms and the hall. The stairwell going up was rotted through, so she ignored the second floor and located the stairs to the basement. She kept the flashlight low, her back against the wall. Eight steps down she found a narrow landing, a turn, and then a door that scraped when it opened.
Elizabeth led with the gun. The first room was empty: more water on the floor, mounds of rotted cardboard. She followed a hallway into a square space that felt dead center of the house. Channing was to the right, facedown on a mattress. Beyond her was another hallway, doors to other rooms. A candle burned on a crate.
She should back away; call it in. But Channing was looking at her, eyes desperate and black.
“It’s okay.”
Elizabeth crossed the room, weapon up as she checked doors, the hallway beyond. The place was a warren of passages, closets, blind corners.
“I’m going to get you out of here.”
Elizabeth knelt by the girl. She untwisted the wire where it cut her skin, first one wrist then the other. The girl cried out as circulation returned to her hands.
“Be still.” She tugged the gag from Channing’s mouth, watched the doors, the corners. “How many? Channing? How many?”
“Two.” She sobbed as Elizabeth removed wire from her ankles. “There are two of them.”
“Good girl.” Elizabeth hauled her to her feet. “Where?” Channing pointed deeper into the maze. “Both of them?”
Channing nodded, but was wrong.
Terribly, awfully wrong.
* * *
Elizabeth woke with the girl’s name on her lips, and her fingernails dug into the arms of a chair. The same dream came every time she fell asleep. Sometimes, she woke