She held on to the wall and slowly propped herself up on her feet. With the hesitant steps of a battle-weary soldier, she gradually made her way to the door and placed her ear against it.
‘Hello. .’ she called in a voice so weak that it seemed to belong to a scared child.
No reply.
‘Hello. . are you out there?. . Please?’
. .
‘Please can I have some water?’ Her voice was now strangled with tears. She was shivering so badly her teeth were shattering against each other.
‘Please. .?’ She began crying. ‘Please help me. .? Just a few drops of water, please?’
She heard nothing but absolute silence.
She stayed on the floor by the door with her ear pressed hard against it for a long time — a couple of hours, probably. There was no noise. There never was. Her tired brain was so desperate it was starting to trick her. Her fever was so high, she was starting to hallucinate.
It took some time for her sobs to subside. She wiped the tears from her eyes and her dirty cheeks, and with no strength left in her to get back up on her feet again, she crawled back to her corner and her blanket on the other side of the room.
She was losing her mind. She could feel she was losing her mind.
As she curled herself back into a ball again, she started whispering to herself. ‘Don’t give up. Stay strong. You’ll get through this. Stay strong. .’ She paused, frowning as her confused eyes circled the room. ‘Stay strong. .’ she repeated and paused again, forcing her brain to remember, but it was gone. She couldn’t believe it was gone.
‘I’m. .’
Nothing.
‘My name is. .’
Blank.
She desperately wanted to tell herself to stay strong, but she couldn’t remember her own name.
She began crying again.
Seventy-One
‘Madeleine,’ Lucien said. He was still sitting on his bed with his legs stretched comfortably in front of him. ‘Her name is Madeleine Reed. But she likes to be called Maddy.’
A prickling began to run deep inside Hunter’s body, as if soda bubbles were racing through his bloodstream in an expanding sense of urgency.
Taylor felt as if someone had just slapped her across the face.
‘What?’ she asked, leaning forward on her chair.
‘Madeleine Reed, or if you wish, Maddy Reed,’ Lucien repeated with a shrug. ‘She’s twenty-three years old. I picked her up on April 9, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but she was born in Blue Springs City, Missouri.’ He jerked his head toward the end of the corridor outside his cell. ‘You can go check it out if you like. Her family must be going crazy by now.’
Hunter and Taylor both knew that Adrian Kennedy was listening in on the interview. He would have the name and everything else checked in a matter of minutes.
‘April 9?’ Taylor said, her eyes wide with surprise. ‘That’s four months ago.’
‘It is indeed,’ Lucien agreed. ‘But don’t worry, Agent Taylor, I’ve got a little system that works. It’s been proven over the years.’ He smiled. ‘I leave her rations of food and water before I leave, and Maddy is very clever. She figured out very quickly that she had to go easy on it, or else it would all run out before I got back with more. And I’ll tell you, she became quite an expert at it.’ He opened his hands and studied the veins crisscrossing the backs of them. ‘But I was supposed to be back four, maybe five days ago.’
He allowed the seriousness of his words to punch everyone square in the face before he continued.
‘If Maddy ran out of food and water a few days ago, she’d be very weak by now, no doubt about that, but she’s probably still alive. Now, how long she’ll stay that way? I can’t tell you.’
‘Where is she?’ Hunter asked.
‘Tell me about Jessica Petersen,’ Lucien came back. ‘Tell me about the woman you loved.’
Hunter sucked in a deep breath.
‘Tell us where she is, Lucien, so we can save her, and I promise you that I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.’
Lucien rubbed the patch of skin between his eyebrows. ‘Umm.’ He pretended he was thinking about it. ‘No. No deal. Like I’ve said, now it’s your turn to answer my questions. I’ve given you enough.’
‘I will answer them, Lucien,’ Hunter said. ‘I give you my word I will. But if she has run out of food and water four days ago, we need to get to her now.’ The urgency in Hunter’s voice filled the air with electricity.
Lucien just looked at him, unperturbed.
‘What’s the point in letting her die this way, Lucien?’ Hunter pleaded. ‘Whatever satisfaction you got from killing your victims, Madeleine’s death will not give it to you.’
‘Probably not,’ Lucien agreed.
‘So please let her live.’
Lucien looked unfazed.
‘It’s over, Lucien. Look around you. You’ve been caught. By chance, but you’ve been caught. There’s no point in taking anyone else’s life.’ Hunter paused. ‘Please, there must still be something human inside you. Have mercy this once. Let us bring Madeleine in.’
Lucien got back on his feet. ‘Nice speech, Robert,’ he said, pursing his lips. ‘Short, to the point, and with just the right amount of emotion. For a second there, I thought your eyes would tear up.’ Sarcasm was like a second skin for Lucien. ‘But I am having mercy. My kind of mercy. And this is how it works. First I want to hear about Jessica; then, and only then, I’ll tell you the location of Karen Simpson and the other four victims’ remains in New Haven, and I’ll tell you where Madeleine Reed is. After that you and Agent Taylor can go be heroes.’
Lucien saw Taylor check her watch.
‘Yes, you are losing time,’ he said, nodding. ‘Every second suddenly became really precious, hasn’t it? You don’t need me to tell you that dehydration can have irreversible neurological consequences. If you don’t get a move on, even if you find her alive, by the time you get to her she might be nothing more than a vegetable.’
Lucien pointed to Hunter’s chair.
‘So sit your ass back down, Robert, and start talking.’
Seventy-Two
Hunter checked his watch, exchanged a quick, worried look with Taylor, and returned to his seat.
‘What do you want to know?’ he said, looking Lucien in the eye.
Lucien’s smirk was triumphant. ‘I want to know what happened. How come you never married the woman you were engaged to? How come you and Jessica aren’t together?’
‘Because she passed away.’
Taylor turned her head and caught Hunter’s gaze. Something glittered in his eyes, and she thought she detected great sadness in them.
Lucien saw it too. ‘How?’ he asked. ‘How did she die?’
Hunter knew he couldn’t lie. ‘She was murdered,’ he replied.
Taylor couldn’t hide the surprise in her eyes.
‘Murdered?’ Lucien frowned. ‘OK, now this is getting interesting already. Please do carry on, Robert.’
‘There’s nothing more to it. We were engaged and she was murdered before I had the chance to marry her. That’s all there is.’
‘That’s never all there is, Robert. That’s only superficial, and that’s not the purpose of this exercise. Tell me how it happened. Were you there? Did you see it happen? Tell me how you felt. That’s what I really want to know. The feelings deep inside you. The thoughts in your head.’
Hunter hesitated for a split second.