water, but she couldn’t shake her feeling, so she resigned herself to putting in a few more hours before giving up. It would be worth seeing what the image experts could do, and check if any decapitations came up over the last ten years that could be connected to the fires.
In the end, it was going to be a marathon, not a sprint.
Chapter 21
Kennedy heard the footsteps before she registered the scraping of the door bolt. Her water bottle was three-quarters gone, so it was in the nick of time. She’d managed to sleep, but she was still thirsty almost all the time as she recovered from the effects of the drug.
The door creaked open on its rusty hinges, and the now-familiar man stood waiting in the doorway.
“Rise and shine. It’s bathroom time again.”
She swung her legs off the bed and stood, feeling stronger now. He stepped back, and they repeated the trip to the john. She’d been thinking of ways to reach the window but hadn’t had any breakthroughs. She did know that she didn’t want to make her captor angry. She wasn’t sure what he was capable of and didn’t want to find out the hard way.
When she was done, she emerged to find the man coming down the stairs at the far end of the oblong space, carrying a flat cardboard box, a bottle, and a backpack. Her nose quivered at the aroma.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“What does it smell like? Pizza, I’d say.”
“What kind?”
“Whatever kind you want, assuming you’re thinking pepperoni.”
She made a face. “I normally eat cheese. My mom gets cheese.”
“I’ve heard the secret to modifying pepperoni into cheese is a multi-step process. First, you remove the pepperoni. Next, you eat the remaining cheese pizza, now without pepperoni.”
He held up the plastic bottle. “Orange juice.”
“What’s in the backpack?”
“Let’s go back to your room, and I’ll show you.”
She hesitated. “How long are you going to keep me here?”
“You already asked me that.”
“You didn’t really answer.”
“As long as I have to.”
“Are you going to hurt me?” she asked in a small voice.
“Have I hurt you so far?”
“You’ve locked me in a room with spiders.”
“But I haven’t hurt you, have I?”
She considered him. “No. Not today.”
“Look, I didn’t plan on hurting you at your flat, either, but you were putting up such a fight I had to subdue you somehow. So that was more your fault than my intention. If you don’t cause any problems for me, I don’t have any reason to hurt you.”
“Then why do you have me locked up?”
“Believe me, I wish I didn’t. This has complicated my life a lot.”
That wasn’t the answer she expected. “Then why?”
“You’re an insurance policy.”
She didn’t understand. “What?”
“I needed something to distract the FBI. You’re it. It’s nothing personal. It will be over soon, and then I’ll let you go. Now back in the room.”
“What will be over?” Kennedy asked as they walked back to her little area.
“This. In a few more days. Then you can go home, and you’ll be famous — all over the news. So will I with any luck at all.”
She stepped into the room. “Why will we be famous?” she couldn’t help but ask.
“Never mind. Now, what do you want to do with the pizza? I left you two slices. Big ones. You want to take the pepperoni off or eat it with it on?”
“Pizza and orange juice sounds like it will suck.”
“Don’t complain. The correct response would be: ‘thank you for not making me eat dog food out of a bowl’, not speculations about whether or not you’d prefer a different beverage with your dinner.”
“What’s in the bag?”
He reached in and extracted three books — battered paperbacks from a bygone era.
“Sherlock Holmes. You can improve your mind while you’re here. Presuming you can read. Do they still teach reading in school?”
She looked offended. “I read at an eighth-grade level. Even though I’m in fifth.”
“Congratulations. Then these will be perfect. They’ll help you pass the time. Let me know when you’re done, and I’ll see if I can find you some more.”
“I prefer vampires or zombies.”
“And I prefer kids who are grateful and not complaining.”
They stared at each other.
“Why are you doing this? You don’t seem like a bad man,” she said honestly.
“I’m not. I’m a good man who is having to do bad things. But in the end, I guess it’s the same as being a bad one.”
“No, it isn’t.”
He paused, appraising her again. “When did you become Freud?”
“Who?”
“Never mind. Enjoy your books. I’ll be back one more time for a bathroom break, and then it’s time for you to sleep.”
“What if I’m not tired?”
“Then you’ll have to try to read in the dark.”
For the first time during the discussion, her composure slipped. “I’d rather if you didn’t turn off the light. There are spiders and bugs in here.”
He looked around the room, and then nodded. “There probably are. I’ll think about it. Meanwhile, eat your pie and enjoy your books. I’ll be back later.”
The door closed behind him, and she sat down on the bed, cross-legged, and opened the pizza carton. It actually looked pretty good and was still warm. No restaurant name or address on it, though, so no new information — just an artist’s generic rendition of a steaming pizza.
Kennedy examined the first of the small paperback books, featuring a depiction of some sort of monster in the background and a man wearing a curious hat while smoking a pipe in the foreground. She flipped to the first page of
The onscreen window blinked green — the search for decapitations within fifty miles of any of the most likely fires was finished. Silver scrolled through the list and counted seventeen in the last decade. Most of the results were newspaper articles with associated police reports, which would make for slow reading.
She resigned herself to sorting through them and began with the first — a forklift accident in Pennsylvania eight years ago.
Two hours later, she’d read all the documents and was numb. Nothing had jumped out. Car accidents, industrial accidents, one solved murder attributed to a drug-crazed ex-boyfriend. If she was expecting an obvious connection to any of the fires, she was sorely disappointed. At first glance, there was nothing there.
Silver got up and paced, the new information orbiting her brain as she considered her next step. She
