“Show me.”
Like a page turning, the camera reversed. Frankie couldn’t help herself. She cried out in anguish at what she saw. The screen blazed with whiteness, as if the luminous ivory paint on the walls could blind her. Everything was white—walls, floor, and ceiling. In the midst of it, she saw Lucy Hagen. Tears, like rain, streamed down the young woman’s cheeks. The huge whites of her eyes matched the walls. Frankie knew she was drugged. Hypnotized. So far into a trance that she stood on the surface of another planet. It was the look that her patients had when she was working with them to change their memories, but this was the dark side. This was everything she’d ever tried to do in life turned against her.
Lucy had both hands wrapped around the black handle of a knife. Its silvery blade was almost a foot long, its razor point facing downward. Her arms were outstretched from her body. Every muscle trembled. She stared into the camera, her glassy eyes helpless.
“Help me,” she called, with the whimper of a child. “Save me.”
Then she screamed, so loudly that Frankie jerked back in her seat.
“Stop me!”
Frankie could barely hold the phone in her hand. She wanted to run to Lucy and gather her up in her arms. “Let her go,” she shouted into the phone. “Let her go. Take me. I’m the one you want!”
The camera reversed, and the mask came back, grinning at her with its red lips. Behind the mask, the Night Bird laughed. His laughter bubbled up from his throat and filled the SUV, getting louder. She could still hear Lucy in the white room. “Save me, save me, save me.”
“Where are you?” Frankie yelled into the phone. “I’ll come to you. I’ll let you do whatever you want. Let Lucy go!”
He kept laughing.
The call ended, and the screen went black. The Night Bird was gone.
“No!” Frankie shouted. “Tell me where you are!”
She waited. Her breaths were short and fast. Her fists tightened the way they would around the man’s throat. “Come on, come on, come on,” she murmured, knowing he wasn’t done with her, waiting for the next e-mail.
Ping.
She whipped her fingers across the screen.
You have five minutes.
Frankie punched back her reply in capital letters.
WHERE ARE YOU?
The seconds ticked. One, two, three, four. She rolled down the window, and rain poured inside. Where did he want her to go? What did he want her to see? She leaned out and looked up and down the street. She was alone.
Ping.
Another e-mail.
Only you can save her.
“I know that!” she shouted out the window. “Don’t you think I know that? Tell me where you are!”
Her fingers trembled as she typed a message.
I will come to you. Please. I will do whatever you want.
One minute of her five minutes was gone. Frankie cried; sobs wracked her chest. That was what he wanted. To torture her. And this was how he did it. Not by laying hands on her body, not by feeding drugs into her brain. He made her sit in the truck, impotent and desperate. He let the time go by, until there was no time for her to stop what came next. To pry the knife out of Lucy’s hands.
Ping.
She read the e-mail through her tears.
Look up.
Frankie pushed her head out of the window of the SUV and craned her neck to stare at the cloud-layered sky. It was night. Lightning flashed. Silver curtains of rain descended.
“What am I supposed to see?” she shouted.
But then she saw it.
She was across the street from a four-story white stone building. It looked like a government palace airlifted out of Washington DC. Columns divided the rows of windows. A balcony jutted out from one window, as if Evita might stand there, waving to adoring crowds. But this building, like everything also around her, was abandoned. Dirt marred the white stone. The windows were covered over. Everything was dark.
No, she realized as she looked closer. Not everything.
Where she’d seen nothing before, now a pinpoint light blinked on the top floor. It flashed behind the center window, on, off, on, off. A message. That’s where he was.
That’s where she had to go.
She threw open the door of the car.
Frankie climbed out, slammed the door shut, and ran.
Frost climbed into the open window frame. He braced himself against the walls on either side and delivered a kick to the diagonal plank that was nailed across the space. The first kick splintered the wood, and the second dislodged it from the side of the building and sent it spiraling to the ground. Behind him, Jess shouted, but Frost simply took a step forward and jumped.
The ground didn’t look far from the second-floor window, but it felt far as he dropped. He picked up speed and landed on his feet with an impact that shuddered through his spine. One leg crumpled under him, and he collapsed to the ground, which was a rocky slope of dirt and weeds. He got up and half limped, half ran toward the locked gates.
Jess yelled from the window. “What the hell are you doing?”
Frost pointed at the white building on the far side of the street, where Francesca Stein was disappearing inside. “There!”
He reached the property gates, which were eight feet high but free of barbed wire. He dug his shoes into the mesh and climbed. His fingers slipped on the wet netting, and spasms shot up and down his legs. He reached the top, wobbled, and basically let his body fall to the street on the other side.
“Frankie!” he shouted, but she was already out of sight.
He dragged himself toward the building’s main door at the street corner. A block away, he heard police officers sprinting to catch up with him. He limped up the outside stairs to a boarded door, which flapped open and closed as the wind blew. He wrenched it open and saw elegant marble steps in front of him, making a spiral toward the upper floors. Concrete dust littered the stone. Picture frames hung askew on the walls.
Heels tapped over his head, climbing the stairs.
“Frankie!” he called again. “Stop!”
She stopped, but not because he’d called to her. She stopped because at that moment, a guttural scream filled the entire stairwell. It came from speakers; it came from everywhere. High above him, and right beside him, he heard a man’s wail, throaty and terrible, begging for mercy that never came. It began, cut off, and began again, and died away into the gasp of someone laboring to breathe. It was a scream he’d never heard in his life, but there was no mistaking what it was.
It was a scream of death.
45
Frankie heard the scream. She froze halfway between the second and third floors of the building. The agony of it made her cover her ears. She fell against the railing and couldn’t take another step. The sound pushed through to her brain, no matter how much she tried to keep it out. If you came to the end of the road and saw the devil standing in front of you, that would be the howl of despair baying from your throat.
She wanted to turn back, but a woman’s voice rose over the scream. It was Lucy. “No, no, make it stop!”
Frankie shook off her fear and bolted up the last few steps. She found herself in a long hallway, with closed doors stretching the length of the building. The noise came from everywhere; she didn’t know which door to choose. She tried the first one, and it was locked. They were all locked. She went from door to door, shouting Lucy’s name.
Halfway down the hall, she found an open door, and she burst inside.
Her heart stopped.