The Never List

mine.” Tracy drove like a maniac.
    “Where are we going?” I asked.
    “To see Adele.”
    I felt a lump in my throat. “You don’t think—?” I could barely finish the thought, as it dawned on me that she was the only person who knew where we were staying, other than the police and the FBI.
    “That she delivered these letters for Jack?” Tracy finished for me. “I don’t know. But either way I have a feeling that, like Helen, she knows more than she ought to, and it’s time to make her tell us before we go any further.”
    I nodded and slowly opened Tracy’s letter, forcing myself to keep from throwing it out the window.
    “‘You have studied so hard over the years, Tracy. So many books. I have written one just for you. In our special room.’”
    I handed the final letter to Christine, amazed that she didn’t seem to mind touching them, as I watched her neatly pile them together.
    “How did he get these letters out of the jail without them going through Jim?” she said. “I thought the prison was all over this and they monitored everything going in and out of that place. All the other letters came through Jim. We have to call him.”
    I agreed, got out my phone, and dialed.
    Jim answered, sounding like I’d woken him up.
    “Did you get him? Did you arrest Noah?” I asked first.
    “No. The place was empty—not a soul there. They obviously had a doomsday scenario mapped out, so they had an escape planready. They left behind some computers, though. Our tech guys are working on breaking the codes now. They must have some real pros in their organization, because their security is extremely sophisticated.”
    “Did you find any other girls?”
    “No. But we could tell someone had been living there in some pretty rough circumstances. Listen, Sarah, this situation is very dangerous. We found—we found some shocking things in that compound. I can’t emphasize this enough: the three of you need to remain at the hotel until this situation stabilizes.”
    “What? What did you find?”
    Jim paused. But this time he probably wanted to scare us enough to make us stay put.
    “The upstairs was set up like a church retreat: institutional furniture, bulletin boards, sign-up sheets. But underneath … Sarah, that entire compound sits on top of a labyrinth of underground rooms. That’s where the real operations were going on. It was a hellhole. Chains on the walls, torture devices everywhere, blood splatter on the floor, buckets for human waste shoved in corners. And there were video cameras all over the place. They were filming it all.”
    “Filming it? Oh my God,” I said, repulsed.
    “Yes,” Jim went on. “We ran image-matching software against some of the footage left behind, and it looks like some of it was recently uploaded to an Internet porn site dedicated to ‘true slaves.’ You can’t get into it without sharing files of the same kind of content, so the users are all hardcore. That must be how Noah gets his clients.”
    I shut my eyes, as if that could keep the words he was saying out of my head.
    “Jim. Listen.” My voice was shaking. “Jack sent us letters. They were delivered to our hotel today—slipped under our doors.”
    “What? That’s not possible.”
    “Oh, but it is. They are here. Christine is holding them in her hands right now.”
    “What do they say?”
    “His usual stuff. They make no sense, but that’s not the point. The point is that somehow he knew where we were. Doesn’t that mean the person Noah had following us is also reporting to Jack Derber? Jim, there is definitely a link between these two. Listen, can you have someone on your team find out who uses or has ever used post office box one hundred eighty-two in River Bend? Noah Philben was sending letters to that address, years ago.”
    “One eighty-two?” I could hear his pen scratching over the line. “I got it, but listen, let me handle it. It’s my job. You three have been through enough.” He paused, perhaps realizing his understatement.
    At that moment the car swerved hard as Tracy maneuvered to avoid a vehicle passing in the other lane. She leaned on the horn, cursing.
    “Sarah, where are you?” Jim sounded upset. “Aren’t you in the hotel?”
    I mouthed the word fuck and covered the phone. I didn’t want to tell him what we were doing. We needed to find these answers ourselves. We’d come so far, we didn’t want to be relegated to passive victims at this point, sitting back, waiting