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My assailant pauses, audibly dragging in a breath. “Jesus,” he hisses, trying to adjust his grip under my arms.
He’s doing this all wrong. It’s incredibly difficult to drag a limp body around by the armpits. He should have rolled me onto a towel and dragged that over the floor instead. I’d most certainly have ended up with a concussion coming down the stairs like that, but he wouldn’t be winded.
Who knows? He might have been able to defend himself.
But luck is still on my side.
I yank the knife from my belt and swing it around in a vicious arc. The man seems frozen in place with shock as I attack. He doesn’t even put up a hand to stop the blade before it slices over his throat. Only when a brief spurt of blood pumps out of him does he react, clapping both hands over the gaping wound with an almost comical wide-eyed stare fixed on me.
No screaming. No fighting. I stand there, ready to plunge the knife into his heart, or his belly—whatever will end him the fastest—but he’s already sinking limply to his knees. I must have hit his jugular and his carotid for him to be bleeding out this fast. That’s when I hear the sliding door in the kitchen.
Red is back.
I dart forward, grabbing the man’s blood-soaked body as he crumples to the side, and haul him over the floor by the back of his jacket. The soft sloughing of his clothing rubbing over the marble could easily carry into the kitchen, but I can’t let myself be distracted by the thought that I could be alerting Red to the situation out here.
A moment later, the dead man is behind the dining room table where I hid from Red what feels like an eternity ago. Blood drains from his slit throat, pooling blackly, wetly, on the marble. There’s a broad swathe of it leading from where I cut him to where I dragged him, but there’s nothing I can do about that.
A thump from the kitchen nearly sends my heart exploding out of my chest.
A butcher dissecting a lamb.
I stare into the dead man’s already glazing eyes as I crouch beside him and go through his pockets. I was hoping for some keys…I wasn’t expecting the keycard.
Yanking it free, I stare at it for a second as if daring it to transform into his driver’s license or a Walmart loyalty card. But there’s no denying the sleek, matte plastic in my hands. My eyes dart over to the china cabinet, and I stand motionless as there’s anotherthudfrom the kitchen.
I glance to the other side, toward the sliding doors leading out of the living area.
My brain works furiously.
I dismissed the girl’s corpse in the kitchen because her hair was shorter than Charlotte’s. But there wasn’t just a syringe in that waste basket upstairs. Someone had recently had their hair shorn off.
There might not be enough time for me to search the Toy Box and escape. I’ve already been surprised by one of Red’s goons—what are the chances there’s another?
Thud.
My entire body flinches, and then I’m hurtling forward. Not toward freedom…but toward Charlotte.
I know it.
I canfeelit.
I’m coming, my girl. I’m coming.
The cabinet is still where I left it. I swipe the keycard against the panel, staring at the tiny red light as my heart thunders in my chest.
Silently, it switches from red to green.
I don’t even pause to give thanks to God or Lady Luck or whatever deity is watching over me. I push through and quickly close the door behind me. My shoes thump down the stairs, caution thrown to the wind now that I’m behind a sound-proofed door.
The keycard works for the entrance to the Toy Box, too, and I swing open the door as fast as I can, and step into a pedophile’s wet dream. As if the stuffed toys lining one wall weren’t creepy enough, someone decided to add a frilly pink bed. Then there’s the choke chain bolted to the wall, just in case whoever stayed in this room forgot they were a captive.
When Charlotte’s file came across my desk the week before she began my art therapy class, I immediately called my contacts at the FBI. They sent me Peter Monroe’s file, including the crime scene photos they took after his arrest.
Nothing’s changed.
Except for one thing.
Charlotte.
