“Who, though? What type of person could do that? But wouldn’t call for help for us?”
He crossed his arms over his chest, leaning his shoulder on the cabinet that held the television. She chewed at the inside of her cheek for a moment, trying to see the entire picture of what they were discussing. It was difficult, though. They were assuming quite a lot, and the rest of it sounded too unbelievable to be true. But they had to brainstorm. What else did they have?
“Evan,” she said after a moment. “I have to tell you about this man.”
“What man?”
“One of the men who rented me.”
She saw him tense, but he took his time answering, taking a long drink of water and using the back of his index finger to wipe his bottom lip slowly. “We said we were never going to talk about that.”
“We never said that.”
“It was understood, Noelle.”
She tipped her head, conceding the point. “It was. Yes. But now?”
He pushed off the armoire, pacing toward the wall. “Now what?” he asked when he’d turned back to where she sat.
“Why honor that understanding? We kept secrets then out of self-preservation. But now . . . don’t you think it will help to talk about some of what happened in that second-floor room? Maybe not all of it but . . . we don’t have anything to be ashamed of, Evan. We were victims, you know that.”
He didn’t say anything. She saw the churning emotion in his expression, and she wanted to go to him, but she didn’t. She sensed by his stance that he’d push her away. “One stands out,” she said. “One man stands out. And I think there’s a possibility that he’s the one who sent the items we needed. He’s the one who requested that I write him a note or draw him a picture with the pencil that I broke to extract the graphite. He led me toward that conclusion even before I was given the tool.” Break . . . You’re so hot. “I picked up on his clues because he used a form of the language we’d been speaking, very subtly murmuring some words and emphasizing others. The blindfold helped because it made my sense of hearing that much more sensitive, but mostly I was primed to listen in a specific way because of our secret language.”
“Do you think he knew what we’d been doing?”
“Maybe. But if he did, he didn’t use it to expose us. He used it to help us.” She took in a deep breath. “But it wasn’t only that. It’s like . . . he knew me. He played me like a fiddle. And thank God, but how?” Her eyes were cast to the side now, and she stared behind Evan, unseeing, thinking aloud as much for herself as for him. “I think he sent the rose petals and the fingernail trimmers and probably the mallet too.”
He stared at her, his expression so troubled. She saw the light of curiosity, and she knew he thought she might be onto something. It made the pain of the recollection worth it. She was pulling forth these awful memories for a reason. He took the few steps to her, and he reached out his hand. Without thinking at all, she grasped it, and he pulled her to her feet and led her to the small sofa near the window.
They both sat down, facing each other. “What else do you remember about this man?” he asked gently.
She pulled in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “He didn’t wear a mask, or at least he said he didn’t. But he had me blindfolded, so I never saw him. But his voice . . . he sounded older, maybe late fifties or early sixties. He called me little rabbit,” she murmured. She closed her eyes, bringing him forth, not able to help the grimace that took over her features. She didn’t hide it. She didn’t need to, not from Evan. “He was . . . cultured. I could tell that. He had a slight accent, very slight. It was odd, though, because it seemed to almost . . . move between different ones and only linger in certain words.”
“Different accents?”
“Yes. I don’t know how to explain it. But in any case, it’d been a long time since he’d spoken exclusively in whatever language, or languages, he’d once used.”
“Like that man who owned the antique shop that we spoke with.”
“Yes . . . but Mr. Baudelaire’s accent was very obviously French, and only French. I recognized it. I’d heard that language before. It was easy to identify his accent.”
“Do you think you might recognize the other man’s accent if we played some recordings of people speaking in different languages?”
She opened her eyes and gave her head a slight shake. “I don’t know. Probably not. I can’t even bring it forth now. The FBI had me describe what I could of the men from that room, other than their faces, which were masked, and I couldn’t describe that man’s accent then either. Just that he had a very slight one. But I didn’t listen to recordings.”
“Maybe we should try that. When we get back to Reno,” he said.
“Maybe.” Although she didn’t know how that would help. What if she listened to hundreds of recordings and thought she recognized his accent as Turkish or Swedish or somewhere else she’d never been? What did they do with that?
“What else?” he prodded gently. Their knees were touching, and his nearness made her feel slightly nervous but mostly comforted.
“He talked about jewels.” She squinted her eyes, trying to cast her vision back, turning on lights in the place she’d tried so hard to black out. “He told a story about a man who collected women and draped them in jewels.”
“Collected?”
“I think he meant abducted. Stole. He said something that related the situation to us.”
“Okay.” His voice held a deeper note of curiosity now, and it spurred her on.
“I think he told me that a pregnancy occurred with one of these women, and twins were born, a boy and a girl. And he mentioned a ball that turned into a massacre.”
He blinked, reaching out and taking her hands in his. “Noelle, all of that might be something to look up. Certainly if there was a massacre of some sort, it would be in the news. So would women reported missing . . . maybe there was even an arrest of someone who now is free, someone we can investigate.”
“Or maybe it was all a load of crap.” She paused. “I gave that information to the FBI, too, and they told me at the time that there was nothing in police databases that matched that type of crime.”
He deflated slightly. “Maybe they weren’t looking for the right things. Or maybe no one ever got caught.”
“Maybe.” She drew her shoulders up. She’d been the one who’d pushed this conversation, and she’d been eager to speak about it, to get it out. But it’d taken a lot out of her, too, and she suddenly felt the exhaustion that came with the weight of the memories from that upstairs room. The men who’d raped her, the way she’d bled, the way it’d hurt, how revolting she’d felt attempting to clean herself with her underwear and then putting them back on—the way the remembered pain hit her sometimes when she least expected it. My God, it was so unspeakably disgusting. She leaned back, depleted. Who had that man been, and how had he known her so objectively?
“We should go to bed,” Evan said. “And talk more in the morning, or when something else comes to one of us.”
She nodded, meeting his gaze. He was searching for something in her face, so she averted her eyes. She knew what he was looking for, and he’d find it if she didn’t turn away. She wanted him too. She felt vulnerable and sad, and she wanted him the way she always wanted him when she felt alone in the dark. Noelle stood. “Thank you for tonight,” she said. “I know it didn’t exactly end as fun as it started off.”
He stood too. “It’s okay. You didn’t really make this trip for fun. I enjoyed tonight.” He looked briefly shy, boyish. “And maybe we have another something to follow when we get back.”
He walked her to the door and then stood watching as she let herself into her room. She was exhausted, physically, mentally, and emotionally, and yet after she’d sent Paula a quick text and climbed into bed, she spent a long time staring at the ceiling, restless and sleepless and swearing she could feel Evan’s heat emanating from the wall next door.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE