Tess Gerritsen - The Silent Girl

Jane’s hand was humming with excitement and caffeine. She drained her coffee cup, poured another. Searched the volumes for Charlotte’s ninth-grade yearbook. She already knew what she would find when she flipped to the music section. To the photo of eight music students, posing with their instruments with the caption: BOLTON’S BEST QUALIFY FOR BOSTON SUMMER ORCHESTRA WORKSHOP. She did not see Charlotte in the photo, but there was Mark Mallory. By this time he was seventeen years old, darkly handsome, a boy who could turn the head of any teen girl. That year, Laura Fang had been fourteen. She, too, had attended the orchestra workshop in Boston. Had Laura been dazzled by one particular boy’s good looks and wealth, a boy for whom a girl of Laura’s humble upbringing would be invisible?

Or was Laura very much on his radar?

Jane’s throat felt parched, the buzzing in her head louder. She took another sip of coffee and reached for the next volume, Charlotte’s tenth-grade yearbook. When she opened it, the words seemed smudged, the faces indistinct. She rubbed her eyes, turned to the activities section. There, once again, was Charlotte in the orchestra with her viola. But Mark had graduated, and another boy stood behind the tympanies.

Jane turned to the athletics pages. Again she rubbed her eyes, trying to clear away the fog that seemed to hang over her vision. The photo moved in and out of focus, but she could still pick out Charlotte’s face in the lineup of tennis players. BOLTON TEAM TAKES SECOND PLACE AT OCTOBER’S REGIONALS.

Patty Boles was a tennis player, too, thought Jane. Like Charlotte, she was in her sophomore year. Had she competed at those regionals? Had she caught someone’s eye, someone who could easily learn who she was, and which school she attended?

Six weeks after that regional tournament, Patty Boles vanished.

Jane gave her head a shake, but the fog seemed to thicken before her eyes. Something is very wrong .

The distant jangle of a ringing phone penetrated the buzz in her ears. She heard Patrick talking. She tried to call for help, but no sound came out.

Struggling to her feet, she heard the chair topple over and crash to the floor. All feeling was gone from her legs; they were like wooden stilts, senseless and clumsy. She staggered toward the pocket doors, afraid that she’d collapse before she got there, that Patrick would find her on the floor in a humiliating heap. As she reached out toward the doors they seemed to recede, taunting her efforts, always just beyond her fingertips.

Just as she lurched toward them, they suddenly slid open, and Patrick appeared.

“Help me,” she whispered.

But he didn’t move. He simply stood watching her, his expression coldly dispassionate. Only then did she realize what a mistake she’d made. It was her last thought before she slumped unconscious at his feet.

SHE WAS THIRSTY, SO THIRSTY. JANE TRIED TO SWALLOW, BUT HER throat was parched, her tongue as dry as old leather against the roof of her mouth. Slowly she registered other sensations: the tingling in her left arm from lying too long in one position. The cold and gritty surface beneath her cheek. And the voice calling out to her, urgent and persistent. A woman’s voice that would not let her sleep but kept nagging, wheedling her back to consciousness.

“Wake up. You must wake up!”

Jane opened her eyes-or thought she did. The darkness she saw was so impenetrable that she wondered if she was trapped in the shadowy borderland between sleep and wakefulness, paralyzed but aware. Or was there another reason she could not move? She tried to roll onto her back and realized that her hands and feet were immobilized. She strained to free her wrists and met the unyielding resistance of duct tape. The floor beneath her cheek was concrete that bruised her hips and chilled straight through her clothes. She did not know how she’d come to be in this cold, black place. The last she remembered was sitting in Patrick’s dining room, paging through Charlotte’s yearbooks. Sipping coffee. Coffee that he served me .

“Detective Rizzoli! Please wake up!”

Jane recognized Iris Fang’s voice, and she turned her head toward the sound. “How… where…”

“I cannot help you. I’m here, against the wall. Chained 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.”