Stephen sat back in his chair, studying me. “You make a good point, Bill. I would want to kill whoever did that to her. I would probably tie him down and cut off each of his fingers and toes. I would cut him open and make him bleed for hours. I would rip his scalp, cut out his tongue.” He speaks with such calm ferocity as though he has planned this out long before he met me.

For the first time, I have no reply.

“What is your name?” he asks again but with the same calm voice that just described a man’s torture.

“Remi,” I say.

“Now that’s more believable. Why do you have a file on Jessi Paxton?”

“She is someone that I met in college,” I say.

“Sure, but what good does this file do for you? I highly doubt you would go into a hospital full of greyskins alone because you were hit with an overwhelming sense of nostalgia.”

“I’m from a place called Crestwood,” I tell him.

“I’ve heard of Crestwood.”

“The leader there is Robert Paxton. His daughter’s name is Jessi. He sent me to look for her.” Of course, I purposefully leave out the fact that I was banished from Crestwood and that the only way I could come back is to give him some information about his missing daughter.

“Alone?”

I nod. “He hasn’t seen her in four years. I knew she was pregnant because I knew her in college. The hospital was a shot in the dark, but it’s a lead. And apparently you know her.”

“I’ve never met her,” he says. I don’t expect it, but I feel disappointed that he doesn’t know her. How much more would have Paxton welcomed me if I were to bring him his daughter in the flesh rather than just some paper that said she had a baby?

“Then why are you so curious about what I’m doing?” I ask.

Stephen scoots his chair back and stands, walking around the table and behind me. I hear him pull out a knife and I close my eyes. Maybe he is psycho enough to do something to me. He doesn’t cut me; rather he cuts the ropes at my wrist and I feel an instant relief in my hands. I pull them up and rub at them, trying to get blood flowing to my fingers again. Stephen then walks to the door on the other side of the room and whispers to one of the guards.

“Get her shoes and coat,” he says, thinking that he speaks softly enough that I can’t hear him.

He closes the door and sits back down in the chair across from me. “You were right about us being in a town. Elkhorn, to be specific. However, we have isolated ourselves to a much smaller part of the city away from the University.”