She glanced at the huddled girl in the corner. Lucy might be able to fight or run, but she couldn’t leave the girl behind. That meant being quiet, stealth, finding a way to get out of these cuffs and cage and to the window. Without making noise.
She searched her pockets, hoping for a bobby pin or key or something to pick the lock. They were empty.
The floors above creaked as their captor walked down the stairs from the second to the first floor. He was right above them, moving here and there. A faint scent of bacon frying drifted down through the vents, and Lucy’s stomach growled.
Would he feed them? Unlock the cage? She could fight, but not cuffed to the bars. If she could get them off she could use them as a weapon. She didn’t need much-just something hard and thin enough to wiggle into the lock. It was just a matter of feeling her way around the lock mechanism, a trick her brother Patrick had taught her.
Lucy wanted to see her family. She didn’t want them to lose her like this. She didn’t want to die. She would be twenty-five next month. She had so much to do! So many plans. A future.
But her career plans didn’t seem important right now. What mattered was her family. And Sean. And escaping.
The door at the top of the stairs opened. Light flooded the basement, nearly blinding Lucy. She averted her eyes. The girl in the corner didn’t move.
“W-who are you?” she stuttered, her fear evident in her tone as she demanded to know her kidnapper’s name. She swallowed and cleared her throat.
Plain and ordinary. Except for the fact that he was holding a whip.
“Dammit, tell me who you are!”
The whip came down and hit her on her wrist below the cuff. She screamed, then bit her lip, holding back the cry. She would not give him the satisfaction.
“You will not speak unless I tell you to speak.”
“Fuck you!”
The whip came down a second time, and again she cried out.
“Now that you’re awake, it is time for your first lesson. Watch and learn.”
Lucy began to shake.
He placed a bowl of scrambled eggs and bacon between the bars of the cage. Lucy looked over at the girl as she dropped the blankets. She was about Lucy’s age, maybe a year or two younger, blond with large blue eyes. She’d been pretty, and would be again, when the bruises that covered her face healed. He’d beaten her.
She wore a filthy, loose-fitting floral housedress, the old-fashioned kind that Lucy’s mother sometimes wore when she was flitting around the house. Her face was clean, though streaked with tear stains, and there was blood on the dress.
“You may eat,” the man said.
The woman crawled to the bowl without looking at Lucy and ate, her face close to the bowl, her hands slowly but purposefully scooping up the breakfast and eating.
In all her criminal psychology classes, Lucy had never encountered a situation like this. She didn’t know what to make of it. It was like a slave-master relationship. How long had the woman been held captive?
When the woman was done, she went back to her corner and averted her eyes.
The man smiled at Lucy. “See how well she obeys?”
“Is that what we are to you? Animals?”
“No. You’re females.”
The tone told her he believed women were beneath animals. He was some sort of misogynist? How many women had he hurt? What did he do to them?
He said, “You will obey just like that one.”
“My brothers will hunt you down like an animal, you bastard!”
He lashed out again with the whip, his face red, his eyes narrow. She bit back a cry when the tip came down on her upper shoulder.
He leaned over and said through clenched teeth, “They will never find me. They will never find you.
“Woman!” he shouted at the girl in the corner. “Show the bitch what happens when you disobey.”
The girl pulled up the back of her dress. Her buttocks were red and swollen, more than a dozen welts blistering her skin.
He turned to Lucy with a half-smile. “If you speak again to me in that tone, if you swear at me, if you talk without my permission, you will suffer the same fate. And you will learn, girl. You will obey me.”
He walked up the stairs and turned off the light.
FORTY
Sean had not felt so helpless since he was fourteen and his parents were killed in a plane crash.
He’d fallen asleep at his desk late-four? Five? — and woke at dawn. Dillon was asleep on the small couch in his office, his long legs hanging over the armrest.
Sean went downstairs and made coffee. He was surprised to find Hans Vigo asleep on his couch. The table was littered with files and papers.
They’d been running property searches, talking to the prison warden where Miller had been incarcerated, analyzing the WCF files on Miller-not just here, but everyone at RCK West was working on it, too. They’d had more than a dozen people-smart people-working almost nonstop since seven last night and now, twelve hours later, they still didn’t know where Lucy was.
Sean sat at the table and looked over Hans’s notes. His prison files-Miller was too perfect, a model prisoner. Polite, even-tempered. During his trial, he had been well-mannered and courteous.
Hans had written across a legal tablet in block letters:
Victims were seduced. All virgins between 14 and 16.
Fear of sex-stemming from an obsession with cleanliness, i.e. only has sex with virgins/“clean” girls.
Required victims to address him as “Teacher.”
Taught girls to be submissive. Used reward and punishment system. Competitive-girls wanted to earn rewards for being the most “obedient.”
Became physically violent with one victim. Bruised her-she hid the bruise. Why her and not the others? What made her different?
At trial-refused female lawyer. Called her “unfair.”
From staff interviews at school-Miller was “chauvinist,” “sexist,” “egotistical.” One female teacher said, “Peter once called me ‘female’-like it was my name. I steered clear of him. Some of the staff thought he was just a nerd, but I didn’t like how he looked at me.”
Sean wished he hadn’t read any of it because now he couldn’t rid his mind of Lucy’s face, beaten and bruised. He bit back a cry of frustration.
What was he missing? He should have been able to find this one guy-what good was he if he couldn’t find one man? They knew his name. His parents. His schooling. Noah said they’d have something by morning. Well, it was morning now-7:11 according to the digital clock on the microwave.
Sean picked up a flagged page of the trial transcripts. Hans had underlined key words and phrases.
PROSECUTOR: How long were you sexually involved with the defendant?
JANE DOE TWO: Four months.
PROSECUTOR: Did he force you to have sex?
