“I’m not going to hurt you,” Maggie told the boy.
His eyes darted back and forth like a wild animal captured.
“Try not to move,” she said when she saw the barbed wire wrapped around his body. But he hadn’t even attempted to move and she wondered if he couldn’t, either from fear or pain. Like the girls, he was definitely in shock.
She swept her light as discreetly as possible, scanning the length of his body. She had to force herself not to wince when she saw the sharp barbs stuck tight into his arms, his chest … dear God, even his neck. It looked as if someone had rolled the wire around his body, cinching it tight, piercing him deep with every barb. Was it possible he had run into a fence and accidentally wrapped it around himself?
“Ibba … I … so hot,” he stuttered.
Maggie crawled over and sat back on her haunches. For the first time she saw blood.
In her ten years as an FBI agent, Maggie had seen cruel and brutal wounds, bloody dismembered bodies, organs left in containers, and only once had she gotten physically ill. But she felt nauseated now. It wasn’t the sight of blood still pouring from a live body but rather her inability to stop it.
She thought she had compartmentalized the memories, but suddenly the images flooded her brain of a long- ago killer making her watch. It wasn’t the splatters of blood or the victims’ screams that haunted her nightmares as much as the sense of complete and utter helplessness. And that’s exactly what she was feeling now.
She considered calling Donny but she was afraid to even raise her voice. She was hesitant to move, because she didn’t want to startle the boy any more than he already was.
Dark pools of blood covered the leaves and pine needles beneath him. His shirt was wet and rusty with it, and yet the overwhelming smell Maggie noticed was not of blood but of singed hair and burned flesh.
She examined the wire again. She couldn’t see a single strand that didn’t have barbs. It wasn’t the plain electric wires that Donny had pointed out to her earlier.
She leaned in close enough to see that the neck wound had congealed blood around the razor-sharp barbs buried in the flesh. That was good. It wasn’t gushing blood, which most likely meant it had not hit the jugular. But his neck muscles bulged against the restraint and a blue vein pulsed against bright red skin.
“Holy crap!” Donny whispered from behind her and Maggie felt a sigh of relief.
The boy’s eyes didn’t look up at the new voice. They stayed on Maggie’s. Hard and tight on her. That was good, too. She had become a focal point for him. Maybe not so good. She had no clue what to do as his focal point.
“I’m not sure if he’s still bleeding,” she said without breaking eye contact and surprised to hear her voice remarkably calm and steady. “He’s definitely in shock.”
“Can we move him like this or can we snip him loose?”
Maggie wanted to say,
Instead she took a deep breath and tried to access her internal databank. She had been stabbed several years ago, in a dark, wet tunnel, miles away from help. Another memory, carefully tucked away in yet another compartment of her mind. What she did remember was that she had lost a lot of blood, and she wouldn’t have, had the killer left the knife inside her, instead of yanking it back out.
“I think we might start the bleeding again if we pull the barbs out. And I’m not sure he’ll be able to stand the pain.”
“Holy crap,” Donny muttered again.
Maggie continued to watch the boy’s eyes, trying to determine if he understood what they were saying. If he did, he gave no indication. His eyes never left Maggie’s. She didn’t think she had seen him blink since that first time when she stumbled over him.
“Can you understand me?” she asked the boy, slowing down the question and emphasizing each word. “Blink twice for yes.”
Nothing. Just the same glassy, wide-eyed stare.
Then his eyelids closed and popped back open. Closed again and the effort alone looked so painful they stayed closed longer before popping open again.
Maggie’s heart thumped hard, relief mixed with a new anxiety. He was conscious and he was in pain.
“I’m Maggie,” she said finally. “I’m going to help you.”
“Dawdawdaw … ” He babbled, only this time the frustration seemed to drain him. The muscles in his face and neck were tight, his jaw clenched.
Maggie noticed that nothing else moved. His fingers didn’t flex. His legs—though twisted into a knot beneath him—did not budge. No part of him attempted to fight or stretch or even press against the barbed-wire restraints.
She scanned one more time, looking for anything that resembled electric wire and checking for burn marks. None, that she could see. Yet the smell of singed hair and burned flesh and the apparent paralysis all seemed to support her suspicions. The boy wasn’t only in shock. He had also suffered an electrical shock.
EIGHT
PHIL’S DINER
WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
Colonel Benjamin Platt ordered a cheeseburger, ignoring the raised eyebrow and disapproving look from the diner’s most senior waitress. To test just how far he could push her, he asked for mustard and extra onions. The waitress, named Rita, had known Platt since he was a med student at William and Mary and pulled all-nighters slinging back lukewarm coffee, hunched over his textbooks.
Back then his attempt at flirting would sometimes win him a piece of stale pie. On a good night the pie came with a scoop of ice cream. Platt couldn’t remember when they both had given up all pretense of Rita being his Mrs. Robinson. Instead, she became a sort of mother hen who watched over his heartburn and kept his arteries from clogging.
“Visiting in the middle of the week?” Rita asked as she poured coffee into the mug without looking, keeping her eyes on his, trying to detect his emotional state. Weird thing was, she could. And what still fascinated him most was that she knew exactly when to stop pouring, right when the scalding-hot coffee reached within an inch of the mug’s lip.
“I’m meeting someone,” he said. These days he didn’t get back to the diner very often except when visiting his parents, who were retired.
She raised an eyebrow.
“No, not that kind of someone.” He grinned.
“I would hope not with those extra onions.”
Then she turned around and left him, and he swore she added a bit more swing to her hips leaving than she had when she approached.
He smiled again. She could still make him feel like that awkward college boy. Didn’t help matters that tonight he wore blue jeans, a faded gray William and Mary sweatshirt, and leather moccasins with no socks. He ran his fingers over his short hair realizing the wind had left it spiked. Just as he glanced at his reflection in the window he saw Roger Bix getting out of a rented Ford Escort. Platt didn’t know the man well, but he knew enough to guess Bix wasn’t happy about driving a compact anything.
In the glare of the diner’s neon sign Bix’s shock of unruly red hair looked bright orange, suddenly reminding Platt of the comic-book character Archie. Only Bix was the cocky version, unaware that his paunch hung over his belt. Evidently he thought himself inconspicuous despite the pointed-toe cowboy boots and Atlanta Braves jacket. He looked nothing like a cowboy or an athlete.
