The Silent Girl

to the wall. We are in a cellar, I think. Maybe in his house. I don’t know because I can’t remember how I got here.”
    “Neither can I,” groaned Jane.
    “He brought you here hours ago. We don’t have much time. He’s just waiting for the other one to return.”
    The other one
. Jane struggled to think through the lifting fog in her head. Of course Patrick was not working alone. At sixty-seven, he would need someone to help him with the strenuous tasks. That’s why he’d hired professionals to kill Ingersoll, to attack Iris.
    “We have to prepare,” said Iris. “Before they come back.”
    “Prepare?” Jane couldn’t help a desperate laugh. “I can’t move my arms or legs. I can’t even feel my hands!”
    “But you can roll toward the wall. There’s a set of keys hanging near the door. I saw it when he turned on the light and brought you down here. They might unlock my handcuffs. You free me, then I’ll free you.”
    “Which way is the door?”
    “It’s to my right. Follow my voice. The keys are hanging on a hook. If you can get to your feet, grab the keys with your teeth—”
    “That’s a lot of ifs.”
    “Do it.”
The command pierced the darkness, sharp as a blade. But the next words were soft. “He took my daughter,” she whispered, sobs suddenly stuttering through. “He’s the one.”
    Jane listened to Iris crying in the darkness, and she thought of the other girls who’d vanished. Deborah Schiffer. Patty Boles. Sherry Tanaka. How many others had there been, girls whose names they did not yet know?
Even his own daughter, Charlotte
.
    She fought against her bonds, but duct tape was indestructible, the favorite tool of MacGyver and serial killers alike. No amount of straining and twisting would tear those straps from her wrists.
    “Don’t let him win,” said Iris. Her voice had steadied; the steel was back in it.
    “I want him, too,” said Jane.
    “The keys. You have to reach them.”
    Already Jane was twisting, rolling across the floor. Her bruised hip banged against the concrete and she gasped, breathing deeply for a moment as the pain faded. Then it was another twist, another tumble across the floor. This time her face landed on the concrete, scraping her nose, banging her teeth. She rolled onto her unbruised side, knees drawn up in a fetal position, fighting tears of pain and frustration. How was she going to do this? She couldn’t even make it across the floor, much less rise to her feet and reach the keys.
    “You have a daughter,” said Iris softly.
    “Yes.”
    “Think of her. Think of what you’d do to hold her again. To smell her hair, touch her face. Think.
Imagine
.”
    That quiet command seemed to come from somewhere inside her own head, as if it were her own voice demanding action. She thought of Regina in the bathtub, slippery and sweet-smelling with soap, dark curls clinging to pink skin. Regina, who would grow into a young woman, never knowing her own mother except as a ghost reflected in her own face, her own features. And she thought of Gabriel, growing old and gray.
A lifetime we’ll never have together if I don’t survive this night
.
    “Think of her.” Iris’s voice drifted through the darkness. “She’ll give you the strength you need to
fight.”
    “Is that how you did it all these years?”
    “It was all I had. It’s what kept me alive, the hope that my daughter might come home to me. I lived for that, Detective. I lived for the day I’d see her again. Or if it never happened, for the day I would see justice done. At least I’ll know that I died trying.”
    Jane rolled again and her battered hip thumped against the floor, her face scraping across rough concrete. Suddenly her back collided with a wall and she lay on her side, panting, resting for what wouldbe the next, and most difficult challenge. “I’ve reached the wall,” she said.
    “Get to your feet. The door’s at the far end.”
    With the wall as a support, Jane tried to squirm up to a kneeling position, but lost her balance and collapsed facedown, her mouth slamming against the floor. Pain shot straight from her teeth into her skull.
    “Your daughter,” said Iris. “What is her name?”
    Jane licked her lip and tasted blood. Felt the soft tissues already puffing up, swelling. “Regina,” she said.
    “How old is she?”
    “Two and a half.”
    “And you love her very much.”
    “Of course I do.” With a grunt, Jane struggled to her knees. She knew what Iris was