The idea that they might have shared the same emotion made her uncomfortable. She was nothing like him, yet here she was . . .

As if her body was not her own, she found herself getting out of her car and walking toward the bungalow. She kept her purse close to her body, her hand inside the pocket, resting on the Walther. Her heart was pounding like a fist against the wall of her chest. She kept her head down, the bill of her black baseball cap low over her face.

She walked down the side street past Ballencoa’s house and turned down the alley.

The property was the size of a postage stamp, blocked from prying eyes by ficus hedges on two sides. A dark, dingy tarpaper shed stood at the back of the tiny yard. It had probably been the original garage for a single car, now used for who knew what. The small windows had been painted black from the inside. The garage door was padlocked down to a piece of metal embedded in the concrete slab.

Lauren crept around the building, one hand pressed to the wall as if she might feel the life force of someone trapped inside. She tried not to breathe. She willed her pulse to stop pounding in her ears. If there was someone inside, she wanted to hear them. She heard nothing but the whoosh, whoosh, whoosh of her blood rushing through her veins.

Ballencoa might have kept anything in the shed. It might have been a home to lawn mowers and garden tools. He might use it for his darkroom. It could have been full of boxes, storage for whatever a man like Roland Ballencoa chose to keep with him but never use.

Boxes of keepsakes from his victims (she had always imagined there were more than Leslie). Boxes of their clothes. Boxes of their bones.

It could have been a place to keep a girl or hide a body.

In the theatre of her mind, Lauren played a terrible movie of bondage and slavery, young women hanging by their bound hands from heavy hooks in the ceiling. One of the girls was Leslie. The terror in her eyes was enough to make Lauren feel physically sick.

She tapped her knuckles against one of the darkened windowpanes and strained to listen for a sound, any sound.

Nothing.

She tapped a little harder and pressed her ear against the glass. She waited to hear a moan, a groan, a cry muffled by a gag.

She heard nothing.

She looked for a way to open a window, but they were solid, incapable of opening. There was a regular door on the side of the building that faced the back of the bungalow. It too was padlocked shut.

She glanced up at the house, half expecting to see Ballencoa staring out a window at her, but no face looked out.