Be a Good Girl

by Tess Diamond

He needed to prove he was better than Wells.

  And two captives were better than one.

  Chapter 32

  “Abby! Abby! Come on, wake up!”

  Someone was tapping lightly on her face, well, more like slapping her face.

  “Please, Abby! I really need you to wake up.”

  She blinked. God, her head was killing her. She tried to swallow, and her mouth was so dry she sputtered, her tongue feeling like a wad of dry cotton in her mouth. Her vision swam, blurry and indistinct, until the brown-and-cream blur looming over her came into focus.

  “Robin,” she croaked out, trying to sit up too fast and nearly throwing up in the process. The world flipped upside down and tilted, the rough brown walls of the . . . where were they?

  “Sit up slow,” Robin encouraged her. “Whatever he gives you makes you feel like crap at first. But it wears off quick.”

  The teenager helped Abby sit up, leaning against one of the wood walls of the room—no, it was a shed. A windowless one. There was a stinking bucket in the corner and a thin, bare mattress against the far wall.

  And a giant, brown-red stain on the concrete floor.

  Abby sucked in a sharp breath, staring at the stain. Robin’s eyes flew to the spot and the girl’s throat clicked as she swallowed.

  “I know,” she said. “Don’t look at it. Abby, did you see who took you?”

  Abby’s eyes widened. “You haven’t seen him?” He’d had Robin for two days. Surely she’d seen something in that time. How were they going to get out of here?

  Robin shook her head, pointing to the steel door, which had what looked like a flap welded to the bottom. “He shoves food through there twice a day.”

  “What happened, Robin?” Abby asked. “What can you remember?”

  “I was at the meet,” Robin said. “I’d finished my match and went into the girls’ locker room. It was totally empty because I’m the only girl on the team. I was going to shower, but I got really dizzy all of a sudden. And the next thing I know, I’m here. I think I got dosed.”

  Panic soared through Abby, and she was trying hard not to let it show on her face. She needed to stay calm, for Robin’s sake. She was the adult here. The last thing the poor girl needed was an adult freaking out just as much as she was.

  They needed to work together to get out of here. They both needed to stay calm and collected.

  And strong.

  “Do you remember drinking or eating anything different?” Abby asked. “Did someone you didn’t know give you a drink?”

  Robin shook her head. “I’m really anal about my water bottle,” she said. “I do these thirst-quencher mixes of grapefruit juice, water, and Gatorade.”

  He could’ve slipped anything in her drink and she probably wouldn’t have noticed the taste. Crap.

  “I didn’t have my bottle on me the whole time,” Robin admitted. “I didn’t think I needed to watch it. That was stupid of me.”

  “No, it wasn’t, sweetie,” Abby said, reaching out and hugging her. “This isn’t your fault,” she said, looking around the shed, trying to see if there was any way out. It was maybe ten feet across, and about the same wide. There was nothing in the shed but the mattress and the bucket, but Abby could see marks along the far wall.

  Someone clawing at the wood, trying to get out.

  She wanted to shake and cry and scream. But she couldn’t. She steeled herself, she pushed it down, the terror, the rising fear, the question of what the hell will become of us?

  She wasn’t going to let what happened to Cass, what happened to Keira Rice, what happened to all the other lost girls, happen to Robin.

  She was putting an end to this. An end to him.

  Starting now.

  “Robin,” she said, pulling away from her, looking at her seriously. Robin’s lip trembled, her eyes filling with tears. “We’re going to get out of this,” she told her, believing every word. “We are going to get home. Both of us. I want you to tell me everything about the last two days. And then we’re going to make a plan.”

  Chapter 33

  As one of the sheriff’s deputies drove him off the mountain and raced toward town, Paul did the thing he should have done from the start: he called Agent Grace Sinclair.

  “I just came in from my trafficking case,” she said, in lieu of a hello. “I got an illuminating email from Zooey. It seems you’ve been taking a working vacation. What’s the news on your niece?”

  “No sign,” Paul said. “And now he’s taken Abby.”

  “Your journalist friend?” Grace asked. “Shit. He’s spiraling. Tell me everything,” she directed.

  “I think it started out a typical teacher/student dynamic,” Paul said. “Somehow, Howard Wells found a protégé . . . someone he felt he could mold into the perfect killer. And then that perfect killer rebelled.”

  “The student outpaced the master,” Grace said. “That’s not a submissive personality. It means he was dominant from the start, Dr. X just didn’t recognize it, or he was hiding it.”

  “He seems to have a talent for hiding in plain sight,” Paul said.

  “Highly intelligent and highly manipulative is not a good combination, Paul.”

  “I know, Grace,” he said. “I’ve found his burial ground. Zooey’s digging up seven girls’ bodies right now.”

  He could practically hear her gritting her teeth through the phone. “Zooey’s email said you went to see Dr. X at the prison,” Grace said. “What did he say?”

  “He seems to be under the impression he created me,” Paul snorted. “Typical delusions of grandeur. Thinks he set me on my path. Wants to take credit for me. Talked a bunch about some Greek myth.”

  “Which myth?”

  “Um, some guy who fought Hercules and lost,” Paul said.

  “Antaeus the giant?” Grace asked.

  “Yeah, that was it.”

  “Hmm,” Grace said.

  “What?” Paul asked.

  “It’s just kind of an obscure myth,” Grace said. “It’s part of Hercules’s larger story, but it’s just kind of a small part of it. Was he comparing himself to Hercules?”

  “No, he said I was Antaeus. That my weakness . . .” It hit him all at once. “He said my weakness was Abby.”

  “Why would he . . . oh!” Grace said, in realization.

  “I can’t talk about it right now,” Paul said. Not when Abby was missing, locked up somewhere with Robin. God, he hoped the two of them were together. Abby would protect Robin with her life, and he was so damned grateful for that, grateful that she was that person.

  Grateful that he loved someone like that.

  She would die fighting for Robin if she had to. He just had to make sure it didn’t come to that.

  “Okay, but how would X’s apprentice know to go after Abby?” Grace asked.

  “She visited Wells in prison last week,” Paul said. “She’s been trying to get him to see her for months. That’s how this all got started. He finally agreed to see her. She went in there and told him she knew he hadn’t killed Cassandra Martin. And he messed up—he said something that confirmed her suspicions.”

  “But in Zooey’s email, she says that you initially thought the unsub was the deputy,” Grace said. “Ryan. And it turned out he wasn’t. Your unsub killed him before Abby could get to him. So my question is: How did the unsub know Abby was looking into Ryan? Or anyone for that matter? How did he even know she was onto him?”

  Paul blinked, thinking. How had the unsub known to kill Ryan Clay?

  “Wells,” he breathed in realization. “Wells and the unsub are still communicating somehow.”

  “I’d bet my art collection on it,” Grace said grimly. “Get Zooey on how they’re communicating. Gavin and I will work with our people in DC to get the prison warden in line.”

  “Thank you, Grace.” Sometimes he needed to talk things out to really see the full picture, and she was always the best at that.

  “Find out how they’re communicati
ng,” Grace said. “You’ll find him. And your niece. And Abby. You can do this, Paul.”

  He knew she was right.

  She had to be.

  When he called Zooey with the news, she’d been furious that she hadn’t made the leap herself. “What is wrong with me?!” she had demanded over the phone, something Paul wisely didn’t answer. After leaving Cyrus with strict orders to “watch those techs like a hawk, don’t let them damage my evidence!” she’d hopped on the helicopter and had almost beaten Paul to the tiny office in the sheriff’s station that she’d set up as her lab.

  Now she had four computers set up next to each other on a steel table and two more laptops rigged up behind her, running a complicated code that Paul had no clue about.

  “God, the prison’s security grid is like Silly Putty,” Zooey muttered, tapping frantically on the keyboard. “Okay, searching through every email sent on their network now.”

  “Hey, do a search,” Paul said. “For Antaeus and Hercules.”

  “From the myth?” Zooey asked, frowning.

  “Wells brought it up when I saw him,” Paul explained. “Grace thought it might be important.”

  Zooey typed the names in, hitting the enter button, but nothing came up. “Nada,” she said. Then her eyes lit up. “But wait a second.” She pushed her chair down the table, to the last of the computers, beginning to type. “I wonder . . .” she muttered to herself. “Oh, my God!” She jerked in her seat. “Boss! You’re a genius! Well, you and Abby!”

  “What?” Paul said, hurrying over to her.

  “One of Abby’s theories was that maybe Dr. X and his apprentice met online. Apparently Wells liked Craigslist, so that was one of the possibilities she floated. Look what happens when I run a special search algorithm I created for past and present Craigslist postings and add word Antaeus to the search terms . . .”

  Posts began to appear on the screen, one after another.

  “This one looks like the first one, dated right after Cass was killed and Wells was caught.” Zooey pointed at the screen.

  “‘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 g
oing 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?”