Page 86 of Bitter Queen (Advantage Play 4)

“I know,” I answer carefully. “And that’s okay. But sometimes we know something, and we don’t even know that we know it. Crazy, huh?”

His little eyebrows pinch in the center as he stares at his glass of milk. “Then how do we find out if we do?”

“We talk about it. Even when it’s hard,” I tell him before inching closer to him. The chair next to him scrapes against the hardwood floor as I pull it out and sit down.

The defeat in this kid breaks my heart as he drags his finger up and down the outside of the glass like a nervous tic while staring blankly at the white milk it holds.

“I don’t know what to talk about,” he whispers.

“Maybe you can just tell me about how long it felt like you were driving when you were blindfolded.”

“You mean when I was with him?”

“Yeah. When he brought you here from the apartment,” I clarify.

“I dunno. A while?”

Well, that’s useless.

I try again. “Okay…what about your room? What did it look like?”

“My room at home?”

“No. The one at Sei’s place.”

“Oh. It was nothing special. Just a bed and a brown thing to hold clothes.”

“A brown dresser?” I ask.

“Yeah.”

“Okay…were there any paintings? Anything unique about the room?”

“Not really. I found a baseball bat under the bed, but he took it out of the room.”

“Keep going.” Regina encourages him. “You’re doing great.”

With his head in his hands, he closes his eyes. “Umm…the kitchen was small. There wasn’t a lot of food in the cupboards. It looked like no one had lived there for a long time. There was some broken glass next to the fridge, but Sei never cleaned it up or anything.”

“What about outside? Was there a window or anything?” I press, trying to hide my disappointment. I have no freaking clue where she is. All I’ve learned so far is that Sei doesn’t mind living in abandoned apartments and doesn’t like to clean or hang up paintings.

Will shrugs. “Yeah. There was one in my room and another one in the main area where Sei would sleep.”

“So, Sei would sleep in the family room?”

“Yeah,” he answers.

I look at Regina. “So, it’s a one-bedroom apartment.”

“Sounds like it.” Her eyes glimmer with hope as she stands on the opposite side of the island and leans on her elbows.

“Okay.” I take a deep breath and turn back to Will. “Did you usually walk up the stairs? Or take an elevator?”

“Stairs. They smelled funny,” he adds as his nose wrinkles in disgust.

I laugh. “That makes sense. Were you blindfolded in the stairwell, or would he take it off by then?”

“He’d take it off.”