Page 45 of The Executioners Three

There were some truths that were just too big to contain in a single person’s mind. Like, for all that Mulder made it seem so easy to believe in conspiracies and aliens, that was only TV. Fox Mulder was fun to watch, but everyone knew that wasn’t real life. Freddie knew it wasn’t real life.

People didn’t really hypnotize others or try to re-create old, forgotten ghost tales to clear their family name. Except… it sure looked like someone had right about now.

And Freddie’s dad must have come to the same conclusion, as proven by the box in the basement. Maybe if Frank hadn’t died right in the middle of his investigation, then the murderer would have been caught twelve years ago…

Oh Jesus. Freddie wasn’t sure she wanted to finish this thought. But it was too late, of course. Her eyes had already latched onto her ghost-filled murder board. Her brain had already finished doing the math.

It wasn’t a heart attack that killed him.

They’d said the body was too awful for a child to see. They’d said a five-year-old shouldn’t witness it. And there had been all those doctors and nurses covered in blood, rushing in and out of his room.

But that was not how people died when they had heart attacks. That was how they died when a serial killer decided they’d had enough of someone on their trail.

Maybe this is why the unspoken rule exists, she thought numbly. Maybe Mom and Steve and Bowman all knew Dad died in a horrible way. They might not have known it was murder, but they had to have known it wasn’t cholesterol.

Freddie stumbled out of the room. She needed to keep her thoughts and feelings tamped down so she could call Divya.

Maybe the Prank Squad had found Laina—maybe Freddie had gotten all of this wrong, and it would turn out to be a really epic prank.

No serial killer or hypnotic sleepwalking, no attempt to re-create a story about spirits and blood oaths and murder…

She reached the coat rack. Her hands lifted to the flat shelf. Her palms patted. And patted.

And patted.

But there was nothing there. No phone, no device to power on and use. Which meant someone had moved Sabrina. And that meant someone had been here.

Reality hurtled into Freddie. Maybe it’s Greg, she thought wildly, spinning toward the hallway—only to find no light shining through the cracks of his office. And no light from the main store either, at the end of the hall.

Freddie’s heart kicked to max tempo. Her adrenal glands spurted to on, and once again, her gut was screaming at her to move. Immediately, while she still had a chance.

She obeyed, twisting for the back door. But she only made it two steps before a figure stepped into view outside. Hulking and vague through the glass, their arm was reaching for the handle.

Not Greg, her mind processed. Too short to be Greg. Run, Freddie. Go.

Freddie did exactly that. She hurtled away from the door. Straight for the main shop. She heard the door open behind her. She heard footsteps squeak inside. Definitely not Greg, or he would have called her name.

She reached the archway and veered left to circle around the main counter. Everything was dark. Just shapes and shadows in her way. But Freddie knew this store well. She had spent countless hours at the Frame all her attention was on maneuvering the safety pin into a zip tie’s fastener.

On that day at the station with Ibrahim, Freddie had been embarrassed that his handsomeness had made her a silly, trembly fool who kept missing the mechanism. Now she was grateful that nearness of a dreamboat had had the same effect on her muscles as brutally frozen cold .

With handcuffs clinking, Freddie started with the zip tie around her ankles, losing track of time as she tried to shove the pin into the tiny plastic lock.

As she prodded and wriggled and tried to hit the right spot that would release the mechanism.

Then she felt it connect, and with a yank of her ankles, she tore the zip tie wide.

She was full-on shivering now, and her fingers had gone from bright red to pale, bloodless blue. The scrapes on her palms were dark lines she couldn’t feel.

The swollen wrist, though—she felt that.

A killer is coming for you, her gut reminded. You need to move .

Without bothering to unbind her wrists or remove the dangling handcuffs, Freddie pushed to her feet. Everything looked different at this hour—and with a fresh dusting of snow. Although that groove on that hill over there…

She’d just been here, hadn’t she?

Are you sure this path is a shortcut? Divya had asked.

Of course it’s a shortcut, Freddie had replied. Now here was the same “path,” the same ephemeral stream filled not with mosquitos, but with snow. This was the end of the stream, where it would gather in a completely mosquito-infested pond. If Freddie followed this uphill, she’d reach the archives.

And in the archives, there was a telephone.

Freddie set off.