Or had he, against all odds, managed to recover?

She supposed it was possible. The brain was an amazing organ. There was even a chance he’d managed to fool the doctors from the beginning. If anyone could pull off a trick like that, it would be the harmless-looking Bishop.

“Oh my God…”

“What is it now?” he grumbled.

She knew what Lyman would do to her if he had the chance. In less than ten minutes, she’d be the vegetable. “You’re working for a man by the name of Lyman Bishop. Do you know who he is? Have you heard that name in the news? He’s a psychopath and a serial killer! You need to go to the police right away!”

She was breathing hard, hoping she’d shocked him into doing the right thing.

Bishop’s hired thug stood there for a moment, as though uncertain.

Was he going to let her out?

She was hoping and praying for all she was worth—only to be disappointed when he closed the slot without another word.

“Wait! Please!” she cried. But it didn’t make any difference. He wouldn’t open it again no matter how much she pleaded with him.

Anchorage, AK—Wednesday, 7:00 p.m. AKDT

Amarok had taken only one quick nap in thirty-seven hours. He felt like the walking dead, and yet he was driving. But he couldn’t crawl into bed and collapse knowing that Evelyn was being held against her will. The thought of some sociopath harming her goaded him on like a red-hot poker.

Thanks to the security cameras at the Quick Stop, Amarok had been able to determine the license plate number on the carpet-cleaning van. He’d considered that a win, a huge step forward—until he ran it through the Division of Motor Vehicles database and found that the van had been reported stolen the Sunday before Evelyn went missing, early in the morning.

The registration showed a forty-year-old Anchorage man named Dax O’Leary as the owner. Amarok had spent most of last night and much of today trying to locate him. Not because he thought Dax was responsible for Evelyn’s abduction. Whoever had stolen the van was probably the man he was looking for, but Amarok still wanted to talk to Dax. Maybe once he described the ex-con with the scar and the prison tattoo, Dax would remember having seen him somewhere or be able to provide some other information.

Amarok wished he had something more solid to go on than the owner of a stolen vehicle, especially because it was going on two days since Evelyn was abducted. He was growing more and more desperate, but all he could do was take what the investigation gave him, go from one bread crumb to the next, and pray the trail didn’t end before he found her.

He was afraid it might’ve ended already. Locating Dax was proving to be difficult. The phone number on the DMV records was disconnected, and he no longer lived at the address listed—Amarok had just left that house—which forced him to spend valuable time tracking down information that should’ve been relatively easy to confirm.