The Silent Girl

I CAN HEAR HIM BREATHING IN THE DARKNESS, BEYOND THE BLINDING glare that shines in my eyes. He has not allowed me to see his face; all I know about him is that his voice is as smooth as cream. But I have not cooperated, and he is starting to grow angry because he realizes I am not easily broken.

Now he is worried as well, because of the personal tracking device he found strapped to my ankle. A device that he has disabled by removing the battery.

“Who are you working with?” he asks. He shoves the device in my face. “Who was tracking you?”

Despite my bruised jaw, my swollen lips, I manage to answer in a hoarse whisper: “Someone you never want to meet. But you soon will.”

“Not if they can’t find you.” He tosses down the tracking device, and when it hits the floor it is like the sound of shattering hope. I was still unconscious when he took it from me, so I don’t know when the device ceased its transmissions. It might have been long before I arrived in this place, which means that no one will be able to find me. And this is where I will die.

I don’t even know where I am.

My wrists are trapped by manacles bolted to the wall. The floor beneath my bare feet is concrete. There is no light except what he shines in my eyes, no hint of sunlight through window cracks. Perhaps it is night. Or perhaps this is a place where light never penetrates, where screams never escape. I squint against the glare, trying to make out my surroundings, but there is only that bright light and beyond it, darkness. My hands twitch, aching to close around a weapon, to complete what I have waited so many years to finish.

“You’re looking for your sword, aren’t you?” he says, and waves the blade in the light, so that I can see it. “A beautiful weapon. Sharp enough to slice off a finger without an ounce of effort. Is this what you used to kill them?” He swings it, and the blade hisses past my face. “I hear her hand was sliced off clean. And his head came off with a single stroke. Two professional killers, yet they were both taken by surprise.” He brings the blade to my neck, pressing it so tightly that my bounding pulse makes the metal throb. “Shall we see what this can do to your throat?”

I hold still, my gaze fixed on the black oval that is his face. I have already resigned myself to death, so I am prepared for it. In truth, I’ve been ready to die these past nineteen years, and with a slash of the blade, he’ll free me at last to join my husband, a reunion that I have put off only because of this unfinished business. What I feel now isn’t fear but regret that I have failed. That this man will never feel my sword’s bite against his own throat.

“That night, in the Red Phoenix, there was a witness,” he says. “Who was it?”

“Do you really think I would tell you?”

“So someone was there.”

“And will never forget.”

The sword digs deeper into my neck. “Tell me the name.”

“You’re going to kill me anyway. Why should I?”

A long pause, then he lifts the blade from my skin. “Let’s make a deal,” he says calmly. “You tell me who this witness is. And I’ll tell you what happened to your daughter.”

I try to process what he’s just said, but the darkness suddenly spins around me and the floor seems to be dissolving beneath my feet. He sees my confusion and he laughs.

“You had no idea, did you, that this was always about her. Laura, wasn’t that her name? She was about fourteen years old. I remember her, because she was the first one I got to choose. Pretty little thing. Long black hair, skinny hips. And so trusting. It wasn’t hard to talk her into the car. She was carrying all those heavy books and her violin, and was grateful for the ride home. It was all so easy, because I was a friend.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Why would I lie?”

“Then tell me where she is.”

“First tell me who the witness is. Tell me who was in the Red Phoenix. Then I’ll tell you what happened to Laura.”

I am still struggling with this revelation, trying to understand why this man knows my daughter’s fate. She disappeared two years before my husband died in the shooting. I never imagined any connection between the events. I had believed that fate simply delivered a double blow, a karmic punishment for some cruelty I’d committed in a past lifetime.

“She was such a talented girl,” the smooth voice says. “That first day we rehearsed, I knew she was the one I wanted. Vivaldi’s Concerto for Two Violins. Do you remember her practicing that piece?”

His words are like a blast that hurls shrapnel through my heart because I know now that he’s telling the truth. He heard my daughter play. He knows what happened to her.

“Tell me the name of the witness,” he says.

“This is all I’ll tell you,” I say quietly. “You are a dead man.”

The blow comes without warning, so violent that it whips my head backward and my skull slams against the wall. Through the roaring in my ears I hear him speaking to me, words that I don’t want to hear.

“She lasted seven, maybe eight weeks. Longer than the others. She looked delicate, but oh, she was strong. Think of it, Mrs. Fang. For two whole months, while the police were searching for her, she was still alive. Begging to go home to her mommy.”

My control shatters. I cannot stop the tears, cannot suppress the sobs that rack my body. They sound like an animal’s howls of pain, wild and alien.

“I can give you closure, Mrs. Fang,” he says. “I can answer the question that’s been tormenting you all these years. Where is Laura?” He leans in closer. Though I can’t see his face, I smell his scent, ripe with aggression. “Tell me what I want to know, and I’ll put your mind at rest.”

It happens before I even think about it, a feral reaction that surprises us both. He flinches away, gasping in disgust as he wipes my spit from his face. I fully expect that another blow will follow and I brace myself for the pain.

It does not come. Instead he bends down and picks up my tracking device, which he had earlier tossed to the floor. He waves it in my face. “Really, I don’t need you at all,” he says. “All I need to do is replace this battery and turn it on again. And I’ll just wait to see who shows up.”

He leaves the room. I hear the door swing shut, and footsteps thud up the stairs.

Grief is my only companion, gnawing with teeth so sharp that I cry and flail against the manacles, scraping skin from my wrists. He had my daughter. He kept her. I remember the nights after Laura vanished, when my husband and I clung to each other, neither daring to say what we were both thinking. What if she is dead? Now I realize there was a far worse possibility, something that we had not imagined: that she was still alive. That during those two months, as James and I felt hope die and acceptance take its place, our Laura was still breathing. Still suffering.

I slump back exhausted, and my screams fade to whimpers. The frenzy has left me numb. Leaning against the concrete wall, I try to reconcile what he has just told me with what I already know, which is this: Two years after my daughter’s abduction, my husband and four other people were massacred in the Red Phoenix restaurant. How could these events be related and what ties them together? This he never explained.

I struggle to remember everything he said, searching through the fog of grief for clues. One sentence suddenly comes back to me, words that instantly freeze the blood in my veins.

She lasted seven, maybe eight weeks. Longer than the others.

My head lifts at the revelation. The others.

My daughter was not the only one.

THIRTY-FIVE

WHAT DID DETECTIVE INGERSOLL KNOW, AND WHY WAS HE killed for it?

That was the question that consumed Jane as she sat late into the afternoon, sifting through her notes about