“I’ll wrap her up in a blanket. I’ll take her somewhere.”

No, you’ll leave prints. You’ll leave DNA. You can’t take that chance. You need to put her someplace where she’ll never be found.

He thought through the possibilities—placing her in the river, burying her in the woods somewhere. The Adirondacks? He really had no idea. How do you get rid of a body?

Lonnie would know. If only he were—

Maybe it’d be best not to move her anywhere. Leave her down here. Bury her here.

“But this is my house. This is where I live. I could never stay here knowing she’s down in the basement.”

You can’t move her out of here. What if you aren’t careful enough? Bury her here, then make sure you haven’t left any evidence that you two ever met. Nothing in your house, nothing in your car.

Timothy took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and then scratched at the bugs that were crawling incessantly across his arm.

It was as if his skin were giving birth to them. Always always always more and more and more.

He knew that if he buried her in his basement and anyone found out, they would most certainly think that he had done something bad to her, that he was the one who’d killed her.

He scratched again and finally decided that the safest thing, the best thing right now, was to listen to the voice and just make sure no one ever, ever found out that she was here.

Timothy Sabian headed to the garage to get a shovel.

39

The feed came on.

An FBI SWAT unit was outside Blake’s condo and the team was coordinating its incursion.

Agent Raudsepp had the camera that was mounted to his helmet turned on, and I watched as he hustled up the stairs behind his team leader, watched as they positioned themselves outside the door, as they shouted, as they broke it down, as they rushed in and began to clear the condo. Shouts. Flashes of movement. Agents flaring off to each side as Raudsepp moved swiftly to the bedroom. It looked empty. He searched under the bed. In the closet. Nothing. Called out, “Clear!” and a few seconds later, returned to the living room where the rest of the team was assembling.

Greer and Sasha stood behind me as I sat at her kitchen table and watched things go down.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Sasha whispered. “I wonder if Blake cleared out because he somehow learned that you found me.”

I didn’t want to speculate on that either way but turned on the audio feed to Raudsepp and asked him to return to the bedroom. “Take us on a tour.” Then I said to Sasha, “Watch carefully. Let me know if you see anything out of the ordinary.”