I turn and run back. He’s standing with his arms stretched up and his hands against the glass.

“Come back and I may tell you where to find the women I buried.”

Is that a promise he can keep? He said it out loud and he knows we can be seen and heard, so it must be something he wants them to know.

“Okay.”

“Come closer.”

Despite everything that just happened, I obey.

He lowers his arms and bends to put his mouth at the slit between the panes. I bend forward so he can whisper. His words are breaths, traveling from his lungs to his lips without passing through his voice.

“You tell him to choof off. He knows what it means.”

“Choof… what?”

He leans back. With a finger to the glass, he taps out the shape of numbers—I LOVE YOU.

4 5683 968

He has to do it twice, but I’ve thought about the placement of those letters so deeply I can place them where they go.

4 5683 968

Tension was holding me up, and when those numbers take it away, the bottom drops out of me. He got it.

4 5683 968

I LOVE YOU

Chapter 12

CHAPTER 12

DARIO

<CON NOR WAITS OUT SIDE >

On my knees, with my shirt in my lap, I watch her black skirt sway as she leaves.

<CON NOR WAITS OUT SIDE >

I’m going crazy. I’ve starved. Lived on the street. I’ve been locked in a closet for four days by the kids of a foster parent. Yet I’ve never been in a worse situation than I am now. I thought I’d stayed sane through all of it. Now I’m not so sure. A sane man wouldn’t be obsessed with fucking his wife right now.

<CON NOR WAITS OUT SIDE >

Five runic characters that weren’t runes at all. They were patterns on a keypad. Nine spaces. Upper left never used. A telephone. Each stich begins and ends in a key and each key has three letters. Each word is a single shape. Consecutive taps on the same key made a loop, which is where I got stuck.

Connor is an impossible name with four taps on one number, so she split it. It wasn’t until I got WAITS OUT SIDE that I figured out the first two.

It’s brilliant. She’s brilliant. What man wouldn’t be obsessed with her?

There are times I’m convinced I feel her in the building above me—sense her thoughts close by. Neither of us have the situation in hand. We don’t have any control over what’s happening, but in these moments, I know I have an equal partner somewhere above me who wants what I want and who can work to get us out of here.

I trust her. She’ll figure out how to do what I asked.

Chapter 13

CHAPTER 13

SARAH