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Cam: [smiles] I don’t know, Juanita. But if you find out, I’d sure like to know.
J A D E
6:12 p.m.
The man shoves me into the kitchen, where he points me to the bar stools.
“Sit.” He punctuates the order by thrusting the gun at my face.
I hoist myself onto a stool.
“Stay.”
I don’t move.
Good dog.
He moves around the counter into the kitchen, settling the gun onto the island. “Now, let’s try this again. Where is Beatrix?”
With any luck, she’s in one of those boxes downstairs, or in a dark corner of the attic, or shimmying down a drainpipe and bolting for the neighbors.
“I don’t know.”
The man rolls his eyes, grabbing a kitchen towel and yanking open the freezer. While he fills the towel with ice cubes, I take in the damage I did with Cam’s screwdriver through the twelve-inch tear in his shirt. Underneath, almost as long, a seeping cut is slashed through the pasty skin between his collarbones, like a bloody ditch sliced through raw chicken. It leaks a red curtain down his back. Beneath it, all the way down to his waistline, the fabric is stuck to his skin.
My skin tingles with a triumphant shiver. I didn’t kill him, but I made him bleed. I maimed him. That’s going to leave a nasty scar.
“If you know where she’s hiding, you might as well just tell me now. Because I’m going to find her.”
“I already told you. Idon’t know.”
He ties the four ends of the towel around the ice, picks up his gun and carries both across the kitchen. He stares at me, and my heart gives an ominous thud. “Here.” He stretches out an arm, the ice rattling in his hand. “This will slow down the swelling.”
I take the makeshift compress and hold it to my cheek, hissing when it hits the skin.
“Is it broken, you think?”
I don’t respond. I’ve never broken a cheekbone before so I have no idea, and even if I did, I don’t know what the appropriate answer is here. Does hewantit to be broken? Better to say nothing at all.
“Wherehaven’twe looked?”
“Upstairs. It’s the only place left.”
And it’s possible. Maybe she snuck back up while we were searching the basement. Maybe she was going for the upstairs windows because she knows they’re the only ones in the house without sensors, so opening one wouldn’t have tripped the alarm. If she climbed out the playroom window, she could have crawled out onto a patch of roof that’s only gently pitched, the overhang right above the patio. From there, a drop to the terrace tiles below wouldn’t have broken any bones. Probably.
Or no—Beatrix is smarter than that. Maybe she escaped when Tanya dropped by, and the alarm was unarmed. She could have slipped out the door in the master, or the back door by the garage. Either one would have dumped her in the backyard, with only a six-foot fence between her and freedom.
Without thinking, I lean over the back of my chair for a better look out the back window. The ice shifts against my cheek.
“What are you looking at?” He raises the gun, following my gaze out the window, pointing it at empty air. “I don’t see anything. Is somebody out there?”
I turn back, press my lips together and stare at the counter. No telling what he’d do if he thinks Beatrix might have escaped this place. I just pray she made it outside without breaking a bone. I pray she got out and ran like hell.
A chirp, one I don’t recognize, sounds from deep inside the man’s pocket. He digs out a battered Android and swipes at the screen with a thumb.
Frowns.
I study his face for clues, but that damn mask is like a shroud. He stares at the floor, his mouth a straight line, and I have no idea what he’s thinking. Worry? Anger? His expression gives nothing away.