He Kills Me, He Kills Me Not

stop?”
    She shook her head back and forth. “No, no, I need to do this.”
    He stared at her intently. “Look around you. Try to remember the cabin the way it was that day. Tell me the things I can’t see in the police photographs. What did you smell?”
    “Smell?” She wrinkled her nose. “Blood. I smelled blood.”
    “Before that, when you first went inside the cabin, what did you smell then?”
    “Musty, dirty, like now.”
    “Good. What else?”
    She sighed and nodded toward the window. “The pine trees outside. Nothing else.”
    “What about sounds?”
    She cocked her head, listening. “Birds, the same ones I hear today. The woods are full of them.”
    “Try to block that out. Think about what you heard inside the cabin. Did the man speak to you? Did he have an accent?”
    “He whispered.”
    “The whole time? He never raised his voice? Think back, think about all the times he spoke to you.”
    She pursed her lips together and tried to picture herself back in this cabin. Over there, in the corner, the metal bed bolted to the floor. The hook, also bolted to the floor, here in the center of the room. She glanced down, expecting to see dark stains on the wood, blood. But someone must have replaced the boards. There was no blood, no metal hook where the killer had taken turns chaining her and Dana. She’d lain on that floor with him crouched above her as he whispered his commands. “He hummed,” she said, surprised to suddenly remember that.
    Logan squeezed her hand. “Good. Was it something random or a song?”
    “A song, definitely, but nothing I knew. It was distinctive, slow, creepy. Like a chant or something.”
    Her hair had fallen in front of her face. Logan leaned forward and brushed it back, his fingers skimming through the curls and running down the length of the strands as if he couldn’t resist touching it.
    “He loved my hair, too,” she whispered.
    He snatched back his hand as if he’d been burned.
    “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to—”
    “It’s fine. Go on,” he urged.
    She sighed. “He brushed my hair for hours. Washed it every day. Combed out every single tangle. And all through that he hummed. I can’t believe I forgot that.”
    “Sometimes we block out details like that, to cope. If you think of something else about the song that might help me identify it, let me know.”
    “You think a song can help you catch a killer?”
    He shrugged. “It’s a piece of the puzzle. You never know what tiny clue will break a case wide open. Is there anything else you can think of?”
    She looked around, pictured the cabin again the way it was that day. The man with the hood, sitting above her, holding the rose, twisting off a thorn. The sick game he’d played.
    He kills me.
    She squeezed her eyes shut.
    “Amanda?”
    She opened her eyes and met his concerned ones. It was time to tell him the truth, what had really happened in this cabin. She opened her mouth to tell him, but nothing would come out. All she could think was that once he knew, he’d despise her.
    Suddenly the tight, hot space was too confining. She had to get out of here. “I can’t think of anything else,” she lied. “I’ll go get Karen.” She tugged her hands from his and ran from the cabin.
    L ogan started to run after Amanda, but Pierce caught him just as he reached the doorway.
    “She’s fine. Karen’s with her. We’ve got bigger problems.”
    Logan could see Amanda on the other side of the clearing, getting into Karen’s car. He waited until the car was heading down the dirt and gravel road that led away from Black Lake before he gave Pierce his full attention. What had he said? Something about bigger problems? “What are you talking about? Has there been another killing?”
    “No, a fire.”
    L ogan’s nostrils stung from the smell of charred wood that filled the air. The warehouse that he, Riley, and Pierce had been in yesterday morning was now just smoldering rubble. The roof had burned away, leaving blackened concrete blocks rising into the sky like the legs of a dying spider. The firemen were stowing their hoses, packing to leave. They’d put the fire out quickly, but there was nothing left to save.
    “I don’t suppose you guys have backup copies of all those files,” Pierce said.
    “Those were the backups.” Logan shook his head in disgust.
    “I do have some good news. The report came back from our little side investigation. Riley’s alibi checked out. He’s