“That was amazing,” Gage mumbled, leaning his head back against the wall of the hospital hallway.
“What was?” Fiona asked, totally oblivious. Her fingers were shaking a little bit, distracting her from her surroundings. She willed herself to calm down. It’s just a story, she told herself. It’s just a story in your head now. You’re free. You’re away from all of that.
“What you just did in there,” Gage said, lifting his eyes to look directly into Fiona’s. “Calming her down. Giving her hope. It was amazing.”
Fiona’s natural instinct was to argue with him. I didn’t do anything good. I just lied to her, made her feel like things are over. Things aren’t over. They’re going to continue to haunt that family until all of them die. This will never leave them. Instead, she just cleared her throat and shook her head. “They’ve got a long fight ahead of them,” she said.
“Yeah, but Mrs. Greenwood is better armed for it now that you’ve said what you said,” Gage argued.
Fiona shrugged, letting the topic fade away. She didn’t want to fight with him right now. She felt too tired, her muscles already aching, even though she hadn’t even talked to Tori yet. Her scalp started itching, a weird habit that her body pulled when she was under stress, so she reached up to undo her ponytail, letting her hair fall back down to her shoulders. “We still have a girl to save,” she mumbled, more to herself than to Gage.
Gage nodded. “Yeah. The girl who just went missing. I wonder if Tori saw her or if he kept them in separate rooms.” He paused for a second before speaking again. “I hope…I hope he hasn’t killed her yet.”
“The missing girl?” Fiona asked.
“Yeah,” Gage said. “I can imagine him killing her out of anger that Tori got away.”
Fiona shook her head, thinking back on all the crime scene photographs from before. “No, he wouldn’t do that. There’s a process to his killings. He…he wouldn’t let it get fucked up just because one girl got away.”
“What do you mean?” Gage asked.
“I mean, he cuts them very methodically. He’s not doing this for fun, at least not just for fun. He’s doing it because he thinks it’s his mission, and he has to do it right. The girls have to be cut up for several weeks first and then cleaned and prepared as if for a religious ritual. Then, the heart is taken out,” Fiona replied, her voice coming out wooden and flat, like she was talking about the weather or mathematics rather than the very real prospect of another girl being brutally murdered.
Gage nodded, stepping forward to close the distance between them. He reached out as if he was going to grab her hands, but then he stopped short, pulling back and leaving her untouched, at least for the moment. “I couldn’t do this without you,” he murmured, his eyes glued to the floor rather than looking across at Fiona.
Fiona didn’t know what to say to that. They hadn’t even accomplished anything yet. All of her expertise was good for nothing, as far as Fiona was concerned. But for some reason, she held herself back from saying that, at least while they were outside Tori’s hospital room. And…there was something else, some other reason why she fought against the despair that wanted to dominate her mind. For the first time in a long time, Fiona felt determined about something. She licked her lips and said the words that were on her mind. “No matter what, we’re going to get him. No matter how many girls he takes. We’re going to get him, Gage.”
“We will,” Gage said, and Fiona wasn’t sure if he meant it as an affirmation or a question, but it didn’t matter. She already knew the answer.
“We’re going to get him,” she swore, “if it’s the last thing I ever do.”
“Mr. Preston?” Mrs. Greenwood called from inside the hospital room. “Ms…? I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.”
“Fiona,” she said, turning to face Tori’s mother as she exited the room and walked out into the hallway. “I’m Fiona.”
“Fiona,” Mrs. Greenwood said, smiling sadly, the tears faded from her eyes. “Could you go in and talk to my daughter, please? I can’t…I can’t get her to tell me where she was. I thought maybe you could help.”
Fiona’s skin immediately prickled with anxiety, tingling almost painfully like it was waiting to be stabbed. That was how her nerves worked, at least for the last fifteen years. She was always waiting for her skin to be punctured, for her flesh to be torn apart. Fiona never quite got used to it, feeling that way, but she was better at shaking it off nowadays.