Page 65

Fourteen Months Since Megan’s Escape

“I have to see for myself,” Megan said, standing at the back of the house. The plywood covering the windows still bright under the glow of her flashlight. “Come with me, Livia. Come with me so I can be sure.”

Megan was off again, headed toward the front of the house.

Livia followed, stumbling in the dark over the uneven ground and chunks of concrete.

At the front door, she hesitated before she followed Megan into the dark house.

She caught a glimpse of the number sixty-one above the door.

The interior was a hollow cove of high ceilings and vacant rooms barely visible in the rushed glow of Megan’s flashlight.

When Livia caught up to her, Megan stood at the door to the basement. She noticed the beam of the flashlight quivering. Livia reached out and put her hand on Megan’s arm to calm her tremor.

“Megan, stop and talk to me.” Livia took Megan by the shoulders, the beam of the flashlight falling to their feet. “You said you know who took you. Tell me.”

With the cellar door open, the staircase was a shadowless portal to a different world.

“During my last therapy session, I got further than ever before. He came down the steps and I heard it. I listened during that session, more closely than I ever did before. I heard it, Livia.”

“You heard what, Megan?”

“And then, during my dream the other night when you were in the passing train, when you waved to me . . . I heard it again, just before I woke.”

“Tell me, Megan. What was it?”

“That sound I know so well. That sound I’ve known from childhood.”

Livia waited.

“Leather,” Megan said. “I heard the leather holster of a belt.”