I conveyed the greeting. Rae looked abashed. They hadn’t exactly been friends in Lyle House. Well, Rae hadn’t been friends with Liz. I think Liz had considered herself friends with everyone. To Rae, Liz was just a blond ditz. I’m sure that would have changed if she’d believed me about Liz’s death, but she hadn’t, and this was the first time she’d “seen” Liz since that.

“I’m really sorry that…” Rae cleared her throat. “I mean, obviously, I’m sorry you’re…”

“The word is ‘dead,’” Derek said.

Rae scowled at him.

“What?” he said. “You were trying to avoid saying it, which only makes it worse. She’s dead. The Edison Group killed her. It was a shitty thing to happen to anyone, but even shittier for Liz. She was—is—a good person who really didn’t deserve that.”

“Aww,” Liz said. “That’s so sweet. Tell him that’s sweet. And that I totally take back anything less-than-sweet I’ve ever said about him.”

I relayed it, verbatim. Derek smiled and then said, “So what’d you find, Liz?”

“Has Derek given you the lay of the land yet?” she asked. “I’m guessing he got a good look around outside.”

He had—when he’d woken, he’d told us that we were in what looked and smelled like an old lumber mill. Long abandoned, about twenty minutes outside North Bay, in the forest. Right now, we were in an office. There was a row of them, all window-free.

“Jacinda is being held in another office,” Liz said, “at the end of the hall. She’s bound and gagged. Obviously, none of you get the preferred-guest treatment. She’s fine, though. I also got to overhear their plans. Well, not all of them. I never seem to wander in at exactly the moment when they’re sitting around discussing their master scheme.” She glanced at me. “Do bad guys actually do that?”

“Only in the movies, when they need a convenient way to tell the audience what they’re doing…by repeating their plan to people who already know it.”

Liz snickered. “Well, I never hear those conversations. I just get people giving orders and talking on radios, and I have to piece it all together like a jigsaw. I didn’t hear anything about who they are or why they’re doing this.”

“Because you aren’t the action hero, tied up and about to die. That’s when you get to hear who they are, what they’ve done and what they plan to do. Then, you can stop them when you escape.”