“‘My dear Paeon,’” Paul read. “‘Have you learned your lesson? Yours truly, Antaeus.’”
“This one’s dated around the time Ramona Quinn disappeared. ‘My dear Paeon,’” Zooey read, moving on to the second. “‘The Harvest has arrived, and what a bounty! It’s such a pity you aren’t here to share it with me. The fruit is so ripe, so ready to be plucked.’” She made a face. “Is he . . . is he talking about the girls?” she asked Paul.
Paul felt about as sick as she looked. “I think so,” he said quietly. “Look at this one: ‘My dear Paeon, It is so hard saying goodbye. Sometimes I wonder if your way is better: plucking the fruit before it’s ready. I suppose I cannot blame your crude, base palate. Sometimes unripened fruit can be sweet. But I prefer to ripen the fruit myself, I take such gentle care until the fruit is just so sweet. You really can’t go back after you’ve tried it my way. Yours truly, Antaeus.’”
“Fuck, that’s creepy,” Paul said. “The other name. Paeon. What does that mean?”
“He was the physician to the Greek gods,” Zooey said.
Well, that made sense. “Of course he was. See if there are any from Wells, under the name Paeon. He’s gotta be reading these letters from our unsub. Is he answering them?”
Zooey ran a second search. “There’s only one,” she said. “Dated the day Abby went to see Wells the first time.”
Paul looked at the letter.
Antaeus—
A sweet little fox visited last week. I sent her your way.
Happy hunting, my young protégé.
This time, the lesson to be learned is yours.
—Paeon
His stomach clenched. Wells had compared Abby to a fox when they’d seen each other. He’d sicced his fucking protégé on Abby. Practically served her up on a silver platter.
Abby was Wells’s final lesson to his protégé: a woman with more nerve than she knew what to do with and a determination that didn’t quit.
She was his worst nightmare.
He would see her as his greatest challenge.
“Find a way to trace this shit,” he gritted out to Zooey. “I need some air.”
Chapter 34
“So he brings food before it gets dark,” Abby said.
She’d been drilling Robin for the past three hours, trying to get an idea of the schedule their captor was on. They needed to find a window of opportunity to escape.
Robin nodded. “I didn’t want to eat at first, I was worried it’d be drugged, like my water at the meet. But I got so thirsty . . .”
“You need to keep your strength up,” Abby said. “We need to stay alert if we’re going to get out of here.”
She paced around the little shed, kicking at the walls again. She stood on her tiptoes and pressed her fingers against the ceiling, hoping there would be some spot with some sort of give. Anything.
He’d built this prison smart. Strong.
But he’d never kept two girls at once. He was out of his element here. Taking on a new challenge. There’d be a period of adjustment, where he’d be finding his footing, adjusting his rituals and precautions.
She needed to get him to make a mistake. Because the only way they were getting free was out that door. Which meant getting past him.
“What can you see out of the flap?” she asked Robin, who was scrunched down on the floor, her face pressed against the door, trying to peer through the gap.
“Just a lot of dirt,” Robin said.
“No trees?” Abby asked.
“I think we might be at the bottom of a hill or something. I can’t see the horizon,” Robin said. “I . . .” She sucked in a quick breath. “Shit.” She dropped the flap down, scrambling away from the door. “He’s coming.”
“Get behind me,” Abby directed her, pointing to the far corner of the shed. She grabbed the bucket, ignoring the smell. It was her only weapon and she was gonna use it.
There was a scuttling sound, and then two plates full of what looked like canned beans and bread were pushed through the flap. She could hear a dim whistling sound.
That damn bastard was whistling.
Her temper flared and she marched over to the door, pounding on it with her fists. She bent down, pushing the flap on the door open, peering through it, trying to see anything.
“Hey!” she shouted through the flap. “I see you, you fucker! Why don’t you come face me like a man?”
She could see his boots in the crack, heading away from her. Desperation spiked inside her and she thought about Zooey’s theory earlier. That Dr. X and the unsub were related.
“Don’t you want to hear what your father told me about you?” she yelled.
The boots stopped. Yes. Fear and panic, mixed with adrenaline flooded her as she leapt to her feet, gripping the bucket tighter in her hand. Robin hugged the wall, her fists clenched, ready to spring at Abby’s signal.
Abby nodded to her. Get ready.
There was a scrape of the key in the lock. Then another.
One more . . .
The final lick clicked free, and the door swung open.
Abby squinted in the sudden light, her eyes tearing up.
“Oh, my God,” Robin said behind her, when she saw who it was.
“You . . .” Abby breathed, her eyes widening.
She had no time to process it. No time to react.
She had to attack.
She screamed. A warrior yell. A battle cry.
Swinging the bucket high, she charged.
Chapter 35
“You got anything yet?” Paul asked.
He’d spent a good ten minutes pacing around the little courtyard in front of the sheriff’s station. He finally stopped when the woman who owned the coffee shop across the street came out with a cup of chamomile tea.
“You look stressed, sweetie,” she’d told him with a motherly smile.
He didn’t have the heart to tell her that no tea was going to help him. He’d just taken it with a thank-you and steeled himself to go back inside to see if Zooey had made any progress.
He needed to check on his family. He needed to check on Jonah, Abby’s orchard manager. Abby would never let him hear the end of it if he didn’t make sure her employees were being well treated. He needed to check in with Cyrus at the crime scene.
He needed Abby by his side, not lost, somewhere in those mountains, likely the only thing standing between his niece and a terrible fate.
God, he just wanted to sink into the ground and never get back up. But he couldn’t.
If his sister lost her only child, Georgia would never recover. You didn’t recover from something like that.
His mother had endured more than most in her life, but he knew she couldn’t survive the death of her first grandchild.
He couldn’t survive losing Robin.
He couldn’t survive losing Abby.
So he was going to have to make sure that didn’t happen.
Hang on, he thought. Hang on. I am coming for you. I promise.
He squared his shoulders, made sure his gun was securely holstered, and he went back inside.
“You find anything yet?” he asked.
Zooey shook her head. “I’m triangulating locations from the IP addresses of his posts, but I think he’s got spoofing software to bounce the signal. I pulled up the Antaeus myth,” Zooey said, rolling her chair back to the second computer she had set up. She had a pair of glasses on her head and a second pair on a chain around her neck, but wasn’t wearing either. She tapped at a few keys, and then rolled back to the whiteboard.
“So Antaeus is a half giant. He’s the son of Poseidon and Gaia. He’s invincible, as long as he’s connected to the ground, aka his mother. So he’s this huge, famed fighter no one can defeat—until Hercules comes along. Hercules figures out Antaeus’s weakness, and he lifts him off the ground, and crushes him.”
“Yeah, I know this,” Paul said.
“Antaeus is all about winning,” Zooey said. “Remind you of anyone?”
“It’s all a competition with this guy,” Paul said disgustedly.
Zooey’s black brows scrunched together. “It’s a competition,” she echoed, her eyes narrowing. And then they widened, almost comically huge and she smacked Paul hard across the shoulder with the notebook she was holding. “It’s a competition!” she said again. “Boss, it’s a competition!”