Chapman stopped for breath at the country road. “This is the farthest I’ve gotten. Which way?”

Past the cornfield, trees lined both sides. Caitlin didn’t see lights in either direction. “Left, toward State Road Thirty-Seven.”

“But don’t we want to get to town?”

Caitlin thought back twenty years, remembered the woman in the van who took her to the hospital after Woods’s attack. She’d come from her job at the hospice down the road.

“That’s what he’d expect, Angela. We go left.”

“Okay.”

Angela took off in a sprint. This time, Caitlin struggled to keep up. Half a mile down, the girl looked back, stopped in the middle of the road with her arms up, and yelled, “A car.”

Caitlin pulled her down against the embankment. “What if it’s him?”

She caught her breath, soothing her bloody feet on the wet grass. “I don’t know how much more I can run, Angela. You hide and I’ll flag down the car. If it’s safe, I’ll wave you over. If it’s him, I’ll run the other way.”

“I can’t leave you,” Chapman said between breaths, her face glistening from raindrops. “He’ll kill you.”

Despite the little light there was, the young woman’s face looked different than it had under the subterranean fluorescents. Flush with life, renewed by water, Caitlin saw Doris Chapman’s daughter Angie, and Lakshmi’s best friend Angela, ready to win a two-on-two basketball tournament and down a few beers with her friends.

Caitlin squeezed the girl’s hand. “Wait until there’s no way he can see you, then run until you find someone. Tell them you’re Angela Chapman and that Chad Branford kidnapped you.”

The girl shook her head. “Embower said no one knows who I am, that no one ever even looked for me.”

Caitlin moved closer, her thin pajamas wicking the rain from the grass, and grabbed Chapman’s shoulders. “Angela, your mom, your dad, Lakshmi, the whole campus, the FB-freakin’-I—everyone in Indiana—is looking for you. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

Now Caitlin heard the distant buzz of the car’s tires on the wet asphalt. She raised her head. The car had split the difference—maybe half-a-mile away. She leaned back, let the rain soak her face.

“And don’t call him Embower. He’s Chad Branford. The police know where he lives.”

Chapman nodded, took a deep breath.

Caitlin joined her, the bellows of their hard-working lungs the only sounds audible in the country night besides the falling rain and approaching car.

Angela broke the silence. “I read your book.”

“What?”

“In the playroom. I read Fallen Angels.”

Caitlin laughed. “What’d you think?”

Angela looked down at her wrist. “That men take what they want, and women don’t get anything but scars.”