The Never List

herself back to her mattress. By then she seemed to be feeling a little better. Well enough to glower at me, at least, and tell me to leave her the fuck alone. I said nothing, knowing it was safer to wait and see what she did next.
    She sat staring at the box, wrapped up in her own misery, and I wondered if she was telling herself that things could be worse.
    I managed to keep from looking at her for a good ten minutes, but then I couldn’t help it. I had to catch another glimpse of her arm. That second time she saw me looking, and our eyes met. She immediately turned her arm away, covering the marks with her hands.
    To my surprise, I felt my eyes fill with tears then, for the first time in months. Even though at that moment, as much as any other since I’d been down there, I felt overwhelmed by the unbearable state of our existence, as I wiped my tears away I felt relief.
    Because I was crying for Tracy.
    These tears were proof that my emotions could still penetrate the hard shell I’d grown in here. I had thought they were gone forever. But maybe I was not yet an animal. I was still a human being somewhere in there after all.

CHAPTER 27
    The morning after I spoke to Scott Weber, Tracy and I met at the hotel restaurant. It was a beautiful June day, and it almost seemed possible to forget why we were here as we ate scrambled eggs and compared notes.
    “So. In re the matter of Adele Hinton,” Tracy began, “I am ready with my analysis. Wanna hear it?”
    I nodded.
    “Classic frustrated academic. Always the best in her class in high school, thought she was going to take the intellectual world by storm. She thinks she is a genius with a capital G. And yet here she is, stuck at a crappy state school in the middle of nowhere.”
    “It’s not a bad school, is it?”
    Tracy shook her head. “Her words. Anyway, she let it slip that she’s working on some big project for a conference a year fromnow. She was pretty cagey about it, but that’s normal in academia. Whatever it is, she clearly thinks it’s her ticket to a better appointment. You know, she seems so confident, but I think underneath it all, she feels like as long as she’s here, she’s a loser.”
    “Mmmm … that makes sense,” I muttered as I swallowed a mouthful of eggs. “And what do you make of the S&M bit?”
    “Who knows? Maybe, as she told you, she really wants to understand Jack. But somehow I suspect it’s just her way to be subversive, to get attention in scholarly circles by going to extremes.” Tracy was about to continue when my phone rang. I held up a finger and answered.
    “Hello?” I recognized Jim’s number, but he didn’t speak right away when I picked up.
    “Jim, are you there?” Tracy looked over at me, curious, but went back to spreading butter on her toast.
    “I’m here. Listen, I have something for you.”
    “Did you finish your research assignment?” I smiled a little, despite myself.
    “Sarah. It’s hard to say really, but there … there does seem to be a pattern. We looked at the university’s files and Jack’s personal finances, expense reports, that sort of thing. And we think we have a pretty reliable record of where he was over a large time period, both before you were in captivity and during. And there does seem to be a correspondence. It looks like there were young women who disappeared in each city he went to for each academic conference. I have a list.”
    “How many names?”
    A pause. I tried again, my voice softer this time.
    “I want to know how many names.”
    Tracy held her knife poised in midair, looking at me. Tension filled her eyes.
    “Jim, we deserve to know. We need to know.”
    He sighed. “Fifty-eight. Including the four of you.”
    Tracy saw the expression on my face and started furiously buttering her toast. When it was dripping, she put it down, swallowed hard, then stared off into the distance.
    I took a deep breath. “I want that list, Jim.”
    As I said it, I could almost picture Jim putting his hand over his face.
    “Sarah, you know I can’t do that.”
    “Why not?”
    “Technically, it’s confidential information. But more important, it’s probably not a good idea for you to see it yet. Let me look into it some more. I want to see what kind of connections we can establish.”
    “Has anyone else on that list been found? Any bodies been identified?”
    He paused again.
    “Only the three of you.”
    “Are all those cases open? Are there active searches going