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He pulled my hand free of the blanket, cradling it between his palms before he brought it to his mouth and softly kissed the underside of my wrist.
“Can we go now? I got big plans for this bandage.” I gestured to my leg, which seemed twice its normal diameter, given the generous swatch of bandages that circled it.
He chuckled and tugged gently on the end of my hair, which could use a thirty minute shower and half a bottle of shampoo. “Soon. Tomorrow.”
I took the news with a nod, sinking back into the pillows. From the end of the room, the muted television screen caught my eye and I pointed, getting his attention. “Look. Turn this up.”
On the screen was an aerial view of the warehouse, a cluster of equipment surrounding the charred infrastructure. And in the midst of the shot, the overhead camera flying low over the destroyed roofline, I saw the open trapdoor, surrounded by rubble, the view mostly obscured by the night. An FBI agent crouched by the entrance to the door, bending down into it. I sat further up in the bed, trying to get a better look. Dario found the remote and turned up the volume.
“The hidden compartment was discovered the next morning, the entrance door swelled shut due to the excessive heat of the fire. Incredibly enough, none of the interior was damaged by the fire. According to reports, this underground vault was actually fireproof, and designed as a safe room, for circumstances such as this one. While we haven’t received confirmation, we believe that Janie Bostic, the twenty-three-year-old woman found inside this safe room, is one of Robert Hawk’s victims. How or why she was protected in this horrific explosion? We hope to find out answers to that question soon. We do have confirmation that the woman was unharmed in the explosions and only being treated for minor injuries.”
The woman took a dramatic pause, staring grimly into the camera while a mugshot appeared over her left shoulder. “An arrest has been made in the kidnapping of Bell Hartley. Claudia Vorherz allegedly posed as a real estate agent before drugging Hartley and taking her to Robert Hawk’s warehouse. Interestingly enough, Claudia was one of the women originally believed to be one of Hawk’s victims. We are waiting for an official statement from the FBI on the connection between her and Robert Hawk.”
Dario glanced at me. “Talk about a clusterfuck. They don’t know their asses from their elbows.”
“They aren’t too far off.” It was a complicated mess of affairs we ourselves barely understood. Laurent had followed Claudia from the blaze and, after dragging her back to the FBI, had shown them the small pipe he’d watched Claudia visit during her escape. Forensic mapping of that air vent had led to the discovery of the safe room, and the woman inside.
I watched as the camera zoomed in on the front of the box. “This is exclusive footage, shot earlier, of rescue workers pulling Janie Bostic out of the eight-foot by eight-foot vault that almost became her tomb.”
Music played and I watched as a thin woman was helped out of the hole, her long blond hair catching me off guard. I stole a glance at Dario, whose hand tightened around mine.
“She almost got away with it,” I said quietly. “Killing and framing that girl.” I would have believed it. A skinny woman with long blonde hair, tucked away in a fire-safe box, under an exploding building? She’d stayed in the shadows of the cell, and I hadn’t paid enough attention to her at the house. If Claudia had been successful in blocking the airhole and suffocating Janie, I would have bought the ‘accidental death’ narrative. I would have gone to sleep thinking that our tormentor was dead. And she… she would have been out there, unchecked and still hell-bent on revenge. I thought of the steel tone of her voice, the threats she had spit out at me. You don’t get to love Dario Capece. And he doesn’t get to fuck around without having serious consequences brought down on his shoulders.
I would never have put the pieces together myself. With the drugs, the pain, my surgery … it had taken me every minute of the last two days just to become coherent. Laurent had been the one to follow Claudia to the station, and keep us abreast of the updates. While she had refused to say anything in the questioning, they’d managed to piece together enough details to create a narrative.
I didn’t need her confession. I could still hear her voice in my mind, threatening me with quiet confidence. A shiver went through me, and I pulled my blanket higher on my chest.
Dario’s pocket hummed and he reached in and brought out his cell. “It’s the detective. I need to take this.”
