Paige lay on the bed, faced toward the wall.

He kept the beam on her, turned the bottom lock. No change.

He opened the door, smelled wet carpet.

“Paige, can you hear me?”

No answer. He swung the beam around the room, saw nothing out of order.

“I’m coming.”

His toes dipped into the water inside the room. A foot from the bed, something dragged across his ankle. He aimed his flashlight down, saw the black cord from Paige’s bedside lamp caught on the cuff of his jeans. He followed the cord’s path from the outlet on the left to the table on the right, where a paperback book weighed down the stripped and exposed ends of copper wire.

“No,” he said, reaching out.

Too late. Paige’s hand reached out of the darkness and knocked the book off the edge of the table. The exposed end of the cord fell into the water.

The shock knocked him off his feet.

*   *   *

He woke in darkness, his face wedged against the wall. Every hair on his body stood on end, every muscle tight. The sharp tang of ozone overpowered the smell of soil-rich water.

“Paige?”

His fingers searched for the flashlight, found nothing. He stood on shaky legs, felt his way back to the doorway, went toward a light coming from the left. But the light couldn’t be electric; the entire grid had blown when the cord hit the water. Stupid. He’d wired a ground fault circuit interrupter into his collection’s circuit box, but not into each circuit. Paige must have watched him shake until the breaker tripped, then ran safely out the door.

Daylight spilled down from the kitchen through the dumbwaiter’s shaft.

She’d climbed out.

Too big to risk getting stuck in the shaft, he limped to the basement entrance and worked the manual crank. The door inched open.

He ran around the water heater, up the stairs, and into the kitchen.

A mess of wet footprints led outside where Paige Lauffer ran through the field in the pouring rain.

Chapter 47

CHAPTER

47

CAITLIN HADN’T HEARD from Greenwood in forty-five minutes, and not from lack of effort. “Mary, get the camera.”

Lakshmi handed Mary the gear. “Me too?”

“Sorry, the restraining order might—”

“Sod it,” the girl said, the implications understood.

“Don’t worry, we’ll need you here, ready to break this story. Stay by the phone.”

They got to the Bro-duce farm twenty minutes later. A police cruiser and blue-paneled truck blocked the view. Across the street, another car blocked the road to Amireau’s trailer.

Caitlin and Mary walked toward the cruiser, the rain now only a slight drizzle. A male officer in a rain slicker stopped them.

“Excuse me ladies, no press.”

“That’s funny,” Caitlin said. “I don’t recall identifying myself as press. Do you, Lubbers?”

Mary had the camera out and at eye level. “Weird that you’d just assume something like that, Officer.”