She wiped the tear that threatened to drip off her chin and leaned her head against the wall. She’d never dreamed she’d wish to see Lyman Bishop, but he could easily be the only person in the world who knew where she was.

And if he didn’t get here soon, she’d have no chance at all.

13

Anchorage, AK—Friday 11:00 a.m. AKDT

Evelyn’s head pounded as she sat on the floor and stared into the toilet. Could she drink the water?

When she’d first been put in here, she’d thought she could never do it, not after what she’d been through before. She’d become somewhat of a germophobe since Jasper, particularly careful with her food. Her water was always rigorously filtered, her food never more than a day old. Everything, even her clothes, was washed in water that came through the same filter as the water she drank, and while Amarok loved a big, juicy steak, most of the time she couldn’t stomach the thought of red meat. Occasionally, she’d crave a burger, but other times the smell alone turned her stomach, and it had been that way ever since Jasper had tried to force her to eat the roasted limb of one of her best friends.

The only thing that’d made healing possible was that she’d refused what he gave her, spat it out and retched every time he tried to shove it back in her mouth. He’d beaten her senseless for defying him. But she never gave in, and she felt that stubbornness was part of the reason he’d never forgotten her. There’d been some things he couldn’t force her to do, no matter what the cost, and he both admired and hated her for it. From what he’d said since, she was the only woman he hadn’t been able to break.

She pictured him sitting in his cell at Hanover House and wondered what he was thinking about her sudden disappearance. He was probably jealous and angry that someone else had managed to accomplish what he’d tried to do last winter. He was unrealistic enough to believe he was going to get out of Hanover House one day and have another chance. Grandiose sense of self was a common characteristic among psychopaths.…

Having him at Hanover House, where she worked and could speak to him at will, had also helped her put him and her ordeal into perspective. When he was at large, her mind had played tricks on her, had used her fear to imbue him with almost supernatural capabilities—the ability to be in two places at once, the ability to see through walls, to read her mind, et cetera. Every night after work, she’d have to check all the closets, behind every door, even small spaces where someone his size wouldn’t fit. And if she was alone, she’d tense at every sound, even the familiar ones.

It’d been highly therapeutic to see the human reality of the man who’d haunted her for so long—and understand that he was just a pitiful, manipulative individual with no love for anyone but himself and no conscience, either. He wasn’t special. As a matter of fact, he wasn’t all that different from the other psychopaths she’d studied. Maybe, like Lyman Bishop, he was smarter.