“Hang on.” I put Caesar on speaker, then drag the playhead in the video back to just before the moment when Finn closes the shears around Tane’s earlobe. Blood spurts and Tane screams and his body convulses as he tries to flail, but the tape keeps him anchored to the chair and Finn has him in a headlock so he cannot move much. But Tane does manage to buck the chair just a little. Another reason why Finn probably removed the wires to the C-4. I rewind and watch it again, see Tane strain against the tape binding him to the chair, hear him scream and watch him try to flail—

“Carpet,” I say. “Tane manages to move the chair and it only makes a kind of thump.”

“Not a hard floor,” Caesar says. “That rules out concrete, tile, linoleum, wood.”

“So we just need to find a room in Atlanta with carpet, or maybe a big rug,” I say. “Should narrow down the possibilities to only a couple million.”

“Susannah,” Caesar says, “did you not see the kitchen shears?”

“Kind of hard not to see them, honestly. Why?”

“There’s a brand logo on the head of the nut that joins the two blades, just above the handles. It’s a brand that’s sold mostly online, although you can also get it from Target.”

“Great. There’s only a dozen or so Targets in the metro area.”

“Twenty, actually, in a twenty-five-mile radius. Narrow that down to ten miles from your house and you’ve got twelve, maybe thirteen.”

I see where he’s going with this. “You think Finn went out and bought a pair of kitchen shears?”

“If he did, he wouldn’t have gone far from wherever he’s holed up,” Caesar says. “Not after he had Tane. He wouldn’t order them online and have them delivered to his hotel room—either the delivery person might see Tane, or Finn would have to pick up mail at the front desk, which a clerk would remember. And I doubt he was carrying kitchen shears around with him beforehand.”

“Maybe he broke into a house and found the shears in the kitchen.”

“Too risky. He couldn’t guarantee when the owners would come back. From what you’ve told me, Finn sounds like a planner. Unless he knew how long the owners would be gone, and he was certain there weren’t any nosy neighbors, I don’t think he’d break into an empty house and camp out there.”

“So we locate Targets on the map and then look for hotels nearby,” I say. “But not any hotel. He’d want some privacy, wouldn’t want paper-thin walls so the neighbors could hear him talk to Tane.” Or interrogate him, that voice in my head whispers. I shove the voice away again.

“That won’t narrow it down a lot,” Caesar says, “but it’s a start.”