‘Not our guy,’ Ella said.
‘Agreed.That guy couldn’t do a push-up, let alone manhandle two people.’
‘Let’s get his phone back from evidence.We need to scour that thing.’
Todd Williams might not have been their unsub, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t be useful.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
The night enveloped Rebecca's car as she drove along the serpentine road that snaked through the country lanes on the edge of Cedarburg.Trees crowded both sides of the narrow lane.She’d rolled the window down to help her breathe, because night was the night it would all change.
She checked the clock on the dashboard.Almost eleven.
For months, she'd been wrestling with her fears under the guidance of a new, innovative psychotherapist.Each session had pushed her boundaries and left her drained yet strangely hopeful.
But tonight was different.There would be no cozy therapist’s office or sweet coffee.
Tonight was a special session, out in the field – quite literally.
Her therapist had termed itthe ultimate cure.
Rebecca had thrown question after question at him in a futile attempt to quench her nerves, but he’d assured her it was all above board, if a little experimental.Exposure therapy, he’d called it, and it was the one phobia treatment she was yet to try.Her hands gripped the steering wheel as she thought about what might lie ahead, and she had to admit that a part of her was excited to try something new.God knows she’d tried everything else, from medication to hypnosis and back again.
Nothing worked.
Maybe this would.
The GPS told her to turn onto an unmarked dirt path.She hesitated.Every instinct she had screamed at her to turn around, to go home, to forget the whole thing.But she was tired.Tired of being afraid.Tired of letting fear run her life.
She turned.
And continued on.
The deeper she drove into the woods, the more she felt like she was entering another world, a place where the rules of reality no longer applied.The woods closed in around her, and finally, the pathway opened into a clearing.
Rebecca saw it then.
An old, dilapidated shack.
No windows.Just wooden panels, a beaten-up door, and a wilting roof, all ineptly cobbled together.There was one other car parked outside – the only sign of another living soul in this forsaken place.
Rebecca pulled up twenty feet away and killed the engine.Her hands stayed locked on the steering wheel.She could still leave.She could drive back to town, tell him she'd changed her mind, go back on the medication.Maybe she could try mindfulness training, cognitive behavioral therapy, beta-blockers, anything.
But she'd come this far.
The therapist’s methods might have been unconventional, but they had a spark of madness to them, one that hinted at results where traditional treatments had failed.When the clock ticked over to eleven, she opened the door and stepped out into the night.
The ground beneath her feet was hard as iron, covered in a brittle crust of frozen leaves.Each step to the cabin felt like a mile, and breathing became a struggle against the knot of fear in her stomach.She reached the rough and weathered cabin door.
Hesitantly, she raised her hand to knock, but before her knuckles could make contact, the door creaked open.
‘Rebecca.Come in.’
The therapist’s soothing voice, only it was distorted by the acoustics of the cabin.
‘Good to see you.’Rebecca stepped inside, over the threshold, into a world that seemed a million miles removed from the one she knew.The therapist moved to a chair in the corner.At the center of the room was a steel table that gleamed like a diamond against the decrepit interior.
Then the smell hit her.It took her brain a second to place it.
