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I can see the blue lines easily, protruding from his arm. Nice big male veins, ready and waiting. And he must be stressed, his heart beating hard, making them prominent.
I press the blade to his skin. For a moment it resists, then the pressure breaks, the sharp scalpel puncturing the surface.
He makes a noise, a strangulated cry of pain. I push harder, and I see the muscles in his forearm tense. A small cut widens, deep, but about an inch long. I take the scalpel away so he can see.
He’s looking at it now. His eyes are frightened, blinking quickly as the blood starts to flow. It covers the arm of the chair, then drips to the floor.
“Resist, and I’ll do it like this. Cut by cut, slitting you open through your veins. Peeling back your skin, not caring how much you scream.”
His eyes flick to the cannula in his arm, then back up to my face.
“You’ll bleed out quicker this way. Your team won’t have a hope at finding you.”
He’s groaning again, quick intermittent noises. I look at him, at the tears welling in his eyes, at his frantic breathing, and I know I’ve won. He makes another noise, trying to say something, so I reach forward, the scalpel cutting into the tape, slowly, carefully, pulling it away from his mouth.
He takes a few gasping breaths, then looks up into my eyes.
“Do you understand me?” I ask quietly.
“Fuck you,” he replies.
CHAPTER
61
JAMIE HAS JITTERS in his stomach that don’t abate; he clasps his hands together to assuage the shaking, but it doesn’t help. Every moment they’re here, he’s aware that Adam’s out there. With him. As time ticks by. Being tortured, dying slowly. In pain.
Marsh hasn’t challenged his return to work, even though it’s against protocol, breaking every rule. Besides, it’s personal to everyone here. They need every hand on deck—including Romilly. With her connection to the case, normally they’d keep her as far away as possible, but there’s a chance she might spot something—however small—as she did before with the Roman numerals on the wall.
They need everyone and everything right now.
Even though Ellie Quinn hadn’t been there long, Jamie only working with her for two days, the gap left by her death—her murder—is palpable. Everywhere he looks, he sees her. Her wide-eyed fascination as she learned about the workings of a murder case. Her handwriting on the board. Her initials against a line of inquiry she’d been pursuing.
And it’s a hundred times worse when it comes to Adam.
Jamie’s gaze keeps on shifting to his empty office, expecting him to walk out any moment, shouting words of encouragement to the team. Jamie is a poor substitute in comparison.
He feels useless. He tries to focus, but each time he looks at his computer, the words dance on the screen. He can’t concentrate.
DC Lee comes up to his side.
“We have them,” he says. “The witnesses from the park. We have them.”
* * *
A man and a woman. The couple that saw the killer as he left the park after murdering that girl, the ones that must have seen his face. They sit in separate interview rooms; the woman looks up nervously as Jamie enters. They’re both mid-sixties. The woman has short ash-blonde hair, small wire-framed glasses; silver rings on her left hand, which she fiddles with constantly.
He smiles and sits down in front of her.
“I’m sorry to be brief, but as DC Lee has already told you, time is of the essence. And apologies for separating you, but we’ve found that in circumstances like this, one person’s witness testimony can distort the other’s. By comparing your statements, we can find commonalities, things that are true.”
She nods, her face stern.
“Anything I can do,” the woman says.
“Tell me what you saw?”
The woman pauses, thinking.
