Daniel turned around. “Nothing,” he said, his voice casual. “I couldn’t sleep. I need my pills. They’re in the bathroom cabinet. Is that okay with you?”
“Yeah. Just making sure.”
Daniel shook his head, going for the cabinet. “Fucking psycho,” he muttered, taking something from the cabinet. Then he stepped over Rhea, ignoring her completely, opening the tap. She could hear the sound of running water and then a different sound as he filled a cup. Then she felt a sudden cold shock as water started dripping on her. The pipe she was tied to leaked.
He swallowed the pills, drank the water, and left the bathroom, not even glancing her way. She heard a door shut.
Then movement. The other man. He was dragging something. A mattress. He placed it in front of the bathroom door. He was going to sleep in the doorway.
To Rhea’s relief, he shut the door. He groaned as he settled down to sleep.
She moved off the scalpel, her shoulder aching. She might have dislocated it. Her brain was flooded with pain and cold. This was what hell was like.
There was no way she could get the scalpel to her hands. And frankly, even if she could, she doubted she could cut the zip ties in this position.
New plan.
She examined the pipe she was shackled to. Back home, her sink had a plastic thing connected to the drain . . . was it called a trap? She’d actually taken it apart once when it was clogged. It had been easy. There was one plastic nut that twisted easily by hand, and once she unscrewed it, she could just twist the thing off. It had been messy, and she’d nearly ruined her shirt, but she’d gotten a sense of satisfaction in managing it by herself.
This drain had no plastic parts. The twisting part of the pipe was connected with two metal nuts—one to the sink and one to the wall. She could slide her tied hands up and down the pipe easily enough, reach both nuts with her fingers. Theoretically, if she unscrewed both, she could dismantle it easily.
But both the pipe and the nuts were corroded, and when she tried twisting them, nothing moved.
Maybe if she just unscrewed the part that connected to the sink, she would be able to twist the pipe off. That would mean she only had to unscrew one of those damn things.
She grasped it and twisted. It was wet, and her palm slipped. But she tried again and again.
Finally, it seemed to budge. Just a little.
She could get it unscrewed. And then she’d be free, with a scalpel for a weapon and the element of surprise. It wasn’t a lot, she knew. But it was something.
CHAPTER 56
After a while, flipping through the images of the congregation felt like a saga. Zoe found small stories woven into the collection. For example, at first when the photographs began documenting the church’s events, most of the events were picnics. But then, when Catherine became more dominant in the images, perhaps taking a more active role in the administration, there seemed to be more volunteer work, more events revolving around the neighborhood.
But there were other, banal stories in that tapestry. A married couple that for a few years were close seemed to drift apart as the years went by, and finally, the husband disappeared altogether, only the wife left. A sweetly smiling child growing up into a sullen teenager. A teenage girl becoming thinner in every picture, then disappearing completely for almost a year. And when she returned to appear in the photos, she seemed healthier, but distant, never smiling.
Some of it she probably imagined. As the hours went by, her tiredness grew, and she seemed to spot tenuous connections. Was Holcomb’s marriage falling apart? Two pictures in which he and his wife were staring in opposite directions made Zoe think so. But maybe not. She couldn’t make assumptions.
Something nagged at her. A connection she hadn’t managed to pinpoint. A piece missing in the puzzle.
She was almost sure she had a list of likely candidates. Not even ten names. Eight. She sent the list to O’Donnell. Then she scrolled through them all again to verify her choices. Her eyes slowly shut, the photos still flickering on the screen.
In her dreams, she kept seeing the pictures, but they were moving, and she could hear the people talking. One of them, she knew, was a killer, Glover’s accomplice. She kept trying to