The apartment manager was talking a mile a minute, expressing shock and horror at the seriousness of the crime for which they were investigating the tenant in Apartment #216, when he caught a glimpse of something that made him pause. It was a letter to a John Edmonson in care of Emmett Virtanen from someone—a woman, he assumed—named Edna Southwick. But it wasn’t the name that jumped out at him. It was the return address.

She lived in Alaska.

Taking the letter, he handed the rest of the mail back to the woman who was still yapping about Emmett—that he’d seemed like such a nice man, that he always paid his rent on time, that he didn’t bother his neighbors, that he kept his apartment clean and always parked in his designated spot.

“I’m afraid I’m in a hurry,” he told her as he slipped the Alaska letter in his pocket. “Can you take the mail to Detective Lewis inside the apartment?”

He’d cut her off mid-sentence, but he didn’t care. He needed to get out of there before Lewis caught wind of the fact that he’d beaten him to the mail, too.

“Oh. Of course,” she said, obviously taken aback by the interruption as well as his brusque manner.

“Sorry I don’t have the time to explain further,” he said as he circumvented her.

“No problem!” she called after him. “I understand. You have a job to do. I hope you find the woman who’s missing. What should I do if Mr. Virtanen comes back here? What if I see him?”

He stopped and returned to hand her his card. “Call me immediately.”

Anchorage, AK—Tuesday, 4:40 p.m. AKDT

Evelyn was hungry again, but she had no idea if they’d get another meal anytime soon. She assumed he was scrambling to get them moved, that relocating had stolen his attention, and hoped he was struggling with the logistics and wouldn’t be able to do it no matter how long he had to focus on that and leave them hungry. The moment they were taken away from here, their chances of being found went down dramatically.

It was her turn to sleep, so she was lying on the bed with her eyes closed. Her hand rested on her stomach just in case the baby moved. She wanted to feel it, needed the reassurance of a small kick or jab.

But she felt nothing. She couldn’t drift off because of that. She was too miserable, too worried and too intent on listening for sounds outside the room that might indicate Lyman was going to bring them dinner. Not only did she want to put a stop to the hunger pangs in her stomach, and for Edna to be able to eat, too, she also craved the chance to talk to him, to get some idea of what was going on in his mind as well as in the world outside their prison.

Finally, with a sigh, she gave up trying to sleep and opened her eyes to find Edna watching her from where she was sitting in the corner, using the angles to help support her back. “Are you feeling okay?” she asked. “Do you need to lie down?”