It doesn’t turn. Locked. I fumble around, looking for a latch or button. Can’t find anything. Can’t see. Can’t breathe. Fucking Joseph must have locked the door when he went out there. We’re trapped.

There’s a mighty crunch, and the door bursts open. It hits me in the face and I tumble over backwards. Francine slips out of my grip. As I hit the floor tiles, I take an involuntary gasp of poisoned air.

‘Blake?’ a voice says. Thistle. ‘Blake!’

I try to answer, but someone has turned my volume down to nothing. No matter how hard I push, the air in my lungs won’t turn into sound.

‘I’ve got you,’ Thistle says, grabbing my shoulders. ‘Can you hold on to me?’

I cough. ‘Francine is …’

But then the whole world fades away to nothing.

CHAPTER 35

CHAPTER 35

What do people pay for that they never want to use?

Francine looks at me like one of those starving kids in the World Vision commercials. Resigned and hopeless. Seems to me that she has more reason to be optimistic than she did before. But I guess that house wasn’t just her prison. It was her home.

‘You saved my life,’ she says flatly, without lifting her head off the hospital pillow.

I clear my throat. ‘Tell me about Shannon.’

My voice comes out in an Alex Jones rasp. According to the doctor, I’ll sound like this for a while. ‘You shouldn’t breathe bleach,’ he said, like I was an idiot. At least I can still use my slashed hand. I’ll have another cool scar in a couple of weeks.

This isn’t the same hospital that Abbey was taken to. It has nicer art on the walls, a bigger courtyard in the middle for exercise. More nurses, fewer patients. I gather that Francine had some kind of fancy insurance. They wouldn’t even have treated me except that Thistle implied that I was a cop, injured in the line of duty.

‘Where’s my husband?’ Francine asks.

‘Talking to the police,’ I say. ‘They’ll want to talk to you too.’

‘About what?’

‘About why you were locked in a room inside your own house.’ I sink into a chair beside her bed.

‘Joseph didn’t know the building was going to catch fire,’ Francine says. ‘He was just trying to keep me safe.’

Against all odds, she is safe. The doctors have reset her broken bones, and thanks to the wet towel, she didn’t inhale as much smoke as me.

‘I’m not interested in arguing about the kind of man your husband is,’ I say. ‘I want you to tell me where Shannon’s hiding.’

‘I already told you. On Monday he dropped off some laundry—’

‘And then he picked it up again. Didn’t he?’

Francine says nothing.