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"Use your fucking head, Poppy," he said, getting riled.
"My head is jackhammering, Blake," I shot back.
"Fine. We can talk about it later," he said, pushing off the door, then disappearing.
I should have been trying to schmooze him.
But I couldn't think past the pain.
I just needed a couple minutes, a couple hours.
Once my head stopped screaming, I would be able to focus, to figure out what he was talking about.
You'd think in situations like this, you wouldn't be able to relax enough to sleep. And, honestly, there was no relaxation. There was just unrelenting pain that eventually wore my body out enough to let me slip into unconsciousness.
I woke up feeling disoriented, but pain free.
It took a solid moment to remember where I was, why I was there, who was keeping me against my will.
Blake.
My gaze snapped open to find him standing in the doorway. Which was likely what had woken me up in the first place—the door opening.
"I guess it is time to finish our discussion," I observed.
Blake looked rougher than the night before. His clothing and hair were disheveled, like he'd been restless all night.
Poor guy. It must have been so hard on him to deal with the stress of kidnapping a woman.
"Where did we leave off?" I asked, shifting to sit up, wincing at the ache in my neck and shoulder from sleeping on the hard floor. "Oh, right. You're disappointed in me for some reason."
"Because fucking that asshole has made you dumber."
He was less controlled this morning than he had been the night before. I had no idea if that was better or worse for me yet.
"Just in general, or about something specific?" I asked, not rising to the bait.
"You're supposed to be so good at what you do. So smart. So good at piecing things together. But all three of them went right over your head. No connection. Then you started to get it. Only to push it off on the cops again. You're so fucking disappointing."
All three of them.
That I'd missed connections about until recently.
Oh, God.
"You," I gasped, looking up at him. "It was you? You took those girls?"
"Took?" he asked, waving toward the other side of the room. The vomit and sawdust was cleaned up, a fact that made a chill course through me at the idea of him moving around in the same room with me without me having any idea.
It took me a long second to realize what he was motioning to.
But when I did, it wasn't just a chill, but bone-deep dread, that worked its way through my system.
What I'd first thought was just a grease or paint stain on the floor was actually something much, much more sinister.
That was a dried bloodstain.
No.
No, those were several dried bloodstains.
Big ones.
Ones that someone couldn't have lived after spilling.
Shit.
Shitshitshit.
"You killed them," I accused, head snapping over to him. "Why? Why would you do that?"
"Profile the girls for me, will you?" Blake asked, angling his head to the side.
"I'm not going to play your stupid-ass games."
Okay.
It was never a good idea to get mouthy with your kidnapper.
I knew that.
I knew it, but my mouth got the better of me.
Blake's rage was fast and ruthless—a backhand across the mouth that needed to stop running away with me.
I'd never been hit before. Not full-force with a man's anger. I think the shock of it was more paralyzing to my system than the pain itself.
"You're not in charge here, Poppy. The sooner you learn that, the better," he told me, back to freakishly cool and detached like he'd been from the night before. It was almost like the violence calmed him. Which was good to know, even if it meant that to calm him down in the future, I would have to suffer pain in some way or another.
It took every bit of self-control I had not to reach up, to press at the pain across my mouth and cheek, to wipe away a trickle of blood from my split lip.
I wouldn't give him the satisfaction of knowing how much it hurt.
"There's nothing to profile, Blake. They were all very different girls." It hurt to realize I had to use the past tense about them now. Now that I knew there was no chance of them going home, being embraced by their families, giving relief to their loved ones. All that they would know was uncertainty and grief if I didn't get out of the basement, and back to tell them what had happened. They deserved to know. All families did.
"Sometimes, I've noticed this a lot with your podcasts, sometimes you delve too deep, you give things too much meaning. Stop looking past the surface. Sometimes the surface is all there is."
The surface.
On the surface they were all... oh.
They were all redheads with light-colored eyes.
One had natural bright copper hair with green eyes.
