Juanita: Fine. You testified that you managed to stitch together just over $49,000 from numerous accounts, that you placed the cash for the ransom in a box on the floorboard of your truck, and then...what? Where is that money now?

Cam: Maybe you haven’t heard, but I recently filed for bankruptcy. My property was seized and is being sold off to pay back investors and debtors. Whatever cash I had on hand, whatever else I owned of value...it’s all gone. My possessions were picked clean.

Juanita: Yes, but that $49,000, there’s no record of it in any of your bankruptcy documents. I know I’m not the only one who’s wondering, where did that money go? Who has it now?

Cam: [smiles] I don’t know, Juanita. But if you find out, I’d sure like to know.

J A D E

6:12 p.m.

The man shoves me into the kitchen, where he points me to the bar stools.

“Sit.” He punctuates the order by thrusting the gun at my face.

I hoist myself onto a stool.

“Stay.”

I don’t move.

Good dog.

He moves around the counter into the kitchen, settling the gun onto the island. “Now, let’s try this again. Where is Beatrix?”

With any luck, she’s in one of those boxes downstairs, or in a dark corner of the attic, or shimmying down a drainpipe and bolting for the neighbors.

“I don’t know.”

The man rolls his eyes, grabbing a kitchen towel and yanking open the freezer. While he fills the towel with ice cubes, I take in the damage I did with Cam’s screwdriver through the twelve-inch tear in his shirt. Underneath, almost as long, a seeping cut is slashed through the pasty skin between his collarbones, like a bloody ditch sliced through raw chicken. It leaks a red curtain down his back. Beneath it, all the way down to his waistline, the fabric is stuck to his skin.

My skin tingles with a triumphant shiver. I didn’t kill him, but I made him bleed. I maimed him. That’s going to leave a nasty scar.

“If you know where she’s hiding, you might as well just tell me now. Because I’m going to find her.”

“I already told you. I don’t know.”

He ties the four ends of the towel around the ice, picks up his gun and carries both across the kitchen. He stares at me, and my heart gives an ominous thud. “Here.” He stretches out an arm, the ice rattling in his hand. “This will slow down the swelling.”

I take the makeshift compress and hold it to my cheek, hissing when it hits the skin.

“Is it broken, you think?”