Izzy continued on to the next room, where Teresa was pouring herself a cup of coffee.

“Vera sets a timer for me.” Teresa held up her mug, the smallest smile on her lips. It countered the harsh lines of her face until she was almost pretty. “And, no. No family. No one visits.”

“Have you worked here long?”

“Five years,” Teresa said. “All right, he’s on the second floor. When he’s awake, he’s aware of what’s going on. You can see if he’ll answer any questions.”

Teresa led the way, and Izzy followed silently until they paused outside a closed door. Teresa knocked lightly and then pushed it open.

The room was like much of the rest of the place. Bare, utilitarian. There was a simple dresser, a nightstand, a single lamp in the corner by a chair. A man was asleep on the bed, his salt-and-pepper hair gone more toward the former than the latter. His body was clearly frail beneath the heavy comforter.

“Sleeping,” Teresa said, the I told you so evident in her tone.

“Oh.” Izzy grabbed Teresa’s wrist before she could walk into the room. “What’s his name?”

“Charles,” Teresa said, shaking Izzy off and heading over to fluff an extra pillow. “Charles Bell.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

MIA

Mia blinked into consciousness, pulled from the darkness by the pain at the back of her skull. She tried to lift a hand to explore, but something caught at her wrist, hard plastic digging into her skin.

Bound. She was bound. And had a head wound.

Panic threatened, a copper tang in her mouth, but she swallowed against it. She brought her tied hands up together and pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes, hoping to dispel some of the fuzziness as she tried to remember what had happened.

The picture.

Mia had been in Cash’s attic, going through the photo albums. There’d been that picture of the five of them, her and Lacey in the foreground. Now she was in a small room. But what room? Was she still at Cash’s?

She opened her eyes. Wherever she was being held looked like a basement. An old one. The walls were stone, the floor concrete.

Mia was propped up against something heavy and large, and there were small puddles of water gathering in the slight dips of the floor.

Her feet were bound with thick rope instead of the plastic zip ties that held her wrists, and her pulse points fluttered against each other, her heart refusing to steady out. She breathed through it.

Wrists tied, ankles tied. No gun. But that was to be expected.

Her fingers trembled anyway, fear turning them shaky.

One thing at a time.

The rope. That she could deal with. Knots were made to loosen, and she’d been taught every kind there was while growing up in a fishing town.