Chris Mooney - The Missing

So let's assume Boyle spotted Banville. Boyle grabs the shotgun, and before he heads downstairs, he makes a phone call. Who was he calling? Who could possibly help -

' Oh Jesus.' Darby grabbed the back of her neck. 'Boyle made that phone call because he had someone working with him. Traveler wasn't one person – it was two. Boyle was calling to warn his partner.'

Darby turned around. Evan looked off in the distance, his eyes filmed with thought.

'Think about it,' Darby said. 'Boyle orchestrated three bombings – the bomb in the van, the bomb he planted inside a mannequin stuffed inside a FedEx box, and the last one, the fertilizer bomb that took down the hospital.'

'I know where you're heading. Boyle could have dropped off the van the night before, left it there and headed out the next morning with the FedEx truck.'

'The listening devices turned on at a specific time. The only way Boyle could have done that was if he was watching us. But he couldn't have been watching us and driving the FedEx truck at the same time.'

'It's not a bad theory,' Evan said. 'Maybe Slavick was his partner. We found plenty of evidence inside his house.'

'Slavick wasn't the partner – he was the fall guy.'

'Maybe Slavick turned on Boyle, and Boyle decided to let Slavick take the fall. With Slavick dead, Boyle can pack up and leave. He was getting ready to leave, wasn't he?'

'You told me you searched every inch of Slavick's house and didn't find any prison cells.'

'Correct. But you found them at Boyle's house.'

'They were holding pens.'

'I'm not following.'

'There were only two prison cells at Boyle's house,' Darby said. 'Rachel told me about the other women who were with her – Paula and Marci. That's three women – no, four. There were four other people with Rachel. Paula, Marci, and Rachel's boyfriend, Chad. So besides Rachel, there were three other people being kept where she was. Boyle must have kept them all someplace else.'

'Maybe Chad was with Rachel first. After he was gone, maybe Boyle brought this Marci woman in first, and after she died, Boyle – or Boyle and Slavick – brought in Marci.'

'No. They were all there at the same time.'

'You don't know that for sure,' Evan said. 'Rachel Swanson was delusional. When she was in the hospital, she thought she was still inside her prison cell.'

'You heard the tape. Rachel told me there wasn't any way out, only places to hide. The cells at Boyle's house were small. There wasn't any place for Rachel to hide. And she wrote those directions on her arm. They were directions out of somewhere. Rachel said, "It doesn't matter if you go right or left or straight, they all lead to dead ends." Rachel and the other women were kept someplace else, I'm sure of it.'

'I know how much you want to find Carol, but I think you -'

Darby brushed past Evan.

'Where are you going?'

'Back to Boyle's house,' Darby said. 'I need to talk to Banville.'

Evan shoved his hands in his pockets. 'Have you considered the possibility that Boyle brought Rachel and the other women to his basement? Maybe he chased Rachel and the other women down there. There are plenty of rooms, lots of places to hide.'

'How do you know so much about Boyle's basement?'

'Because that's where I killed Melanie,' Evan said, and pressed the chloroform-soaked rag against her face.

Darby came awake to a hazy layer of thoughts. She was lying on her stomach – not on a bed, no, it was too hard. Her good eye, the one that wasn't swollen shut, fluttered open to pitch-black darkness. She turned onto her back and sat up.

For a brief moment she thought she might have been blinded in some terrible accident. Then she remembered.

Evan had pressed a rag against her face. The man who had tried to comfort her that day on the beach when he told her about Victor Grady and the fate of the missing woman was the same man who had pressed a chloroform-soaked rag against her face and said he killed Melanie – Evan was Boyle's partner. Evan planted evidence while Boyle abducted women and brought them here.

Darby stood, dizzy in the dark. She tried to breathe it away as she patted down her body. Her jacket was gone, but she was still wearing her clothes and boots. Her pockets had been emptied. She wasn't bleeding and she didn't seem hurt, but her legs wouldn't stop shaking.

The dizziness passed. Now she had to get her bearings.

Hands reaching out through the cool darkness, Darby inched forward, stopping when her fingertips bumped up against a flat, rough surface – a concrete wall. She moved to her left, counting her steps, one, two, three – her leg bumped up against something hard. She reached down, felt the shape with her hands. A cot. Five steps and the wall ended. Turn. Six steps, another bump against her leg. Here was a toilet. She was in a prison cell similar to the one that she had seen at Boyle's house, the one that had held Carol.

A buzzer sounded, loud and angry like the ringing of a school bell.

The door was opening, clank-clank-clank, a thin skin of light parting the darkness of her prison cell.

She needed to defend herself. She needed a weapon. Search the cell. Everything was bolted down. There was nothing in here she could use.

The door had opened to a corridor of very dim light.

Music started playing – Frank Sinatra's 'I Get a Kick Out of You.'

Evan didn't come in.

The dizziness was gone, lost in the adrenaline. Think.

Was Evan waiting for her to come out?

Only one way out, Darby inched closer to the strange corridor, straining to listen for any sound behind the music. Watch for sudden movement. If he came at her, she'd go straight for the eyes. The son of a bitch couldn't hurt her if he couldn't see.

Darby stood with her back against the cell wall. Okay. Get ready to run. Her heart was racing faster, faster… Okay, do it now. She turned and stepped into a long corridor holding six doors made of wood.

All of the doors were shut. Some had doorknobs. Two of them were padlocked.

Across from the doors were four opened prison cells. Darby checked the other three rooms. Empty. She checked them for something to use a weapon. Nothing. Everything was bolted down. In the last cell she detected an intense body odor that immediately reminded her of Rachel Swanson. This was where Rachel Swanson had been kept. This was where Rachel Swanson had lived all those years.

The alarm bell sounded again. The steel doors clanked shut and locked into place.

A new sound coming from somewhere far ahead of her – doors opening and slamming shut, opening and slamming shut.

Evan. He was coming for her.

She had to move, had to think about moving, but get moving to where? Pick a door.

Darby tried the one directly in front of her. It was locked. The door next to it was unlocked. She opened it and stepped into the kind of maze that haunted her dreams.

Facing her was a narrow corridor with no lights. She could make out the shape of four doors, two on each side – no, five, there was a fifth door at the end of the corridor. The walls were made of nailed-up sheets of plywood. Some of the wood had been split open. She looked through a small hole and peered into another room similar to this one.

And then it hit her, the numbers and letters Rachel Swanson had written on her arm and on the map – they were directions for this maze. Rachel had figured out a way through each of the doors.

Darby scrambled to recall the combinations of numbers and letters as doors opened and slammed shut all around her – someone else was in here besides Evan. Was Carol here? Was she alive? How many women were down here and why were they running? What was Evan going to do to them? To her?

No time to think, Darby moved into another room, this one with two doors to choose from, only one unlocked. There were holes in the wall. Bullet holes. Evan had his gun. If he had a gun, oh Jesus, what would she do – what could she do? She couldn't do anything. She had to keep moving and find a way to sneak up on him and hurt him. First, she needed to find something to use as a weapon, had to find it quick.