The Butcher knows her name. She might have passed him in the asylum’s halls, and Simon has shared her name, and they are trapped here, trapped here, and Emma wants to throw up.

“Now,” Ross says, “you’re going to help me. Drag the boy over to the desk, beside Miss Gutmunsson.”

Emma feels herself shifting into an altered state of perception: her breaths hard and fast and deep, her skin acutely sensitive to the temperature of the air and the fabric on her skin. The taste of copper is in her mouth. Sounds seem to mute and narrow their focus. She can smell the musk of testosterone from the three males in the room.

The black mouth of the gun looms large in front of her eyes.

Ross tilts his head. “Do I have to repeat myself?”

“No,” Emma says.

“Move slowly. Take him under the armpits.”

She sinks to her knees. She has to turn Bell over. The fabric under his left armpit is wet. When she tightens her grip on him, he makes a tortured noise.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I’m so sorry.”

“Emma.” His eyes are rolling with pain. “Why didn’t you run?”

She can’t look at him and do this. She grabs handfuls of his shirt, has to tuck her chin into the side of his neck to get purchase. He’s shaking. His skin smells warm and raw as she pulls him backward awkwardly, stumbling over her own feet, pulling again until her backside bumps the desk. She settles him against one thick wooden desk leg.

“Here, it’s okay now,” she whispers, uncertain whether she’s reassuring Bell or herself.

“Pull down his jacket and tie it around his wrists at the back,” Ross says from behind her.

“He can’t move. He’s just—”

The hard metal of the gun barrel presses at her nape. “Just do as I say.”

Emma shuffles on her knees to face Bell, uses her shoulder to prop him up as she sits him forward. When she tugs his jacket down his arms, he mashes his lips against her T-shirt, pants heavily through the thin cotton. She has to reach around his body to tie the sleeves of the jacket together. By the time she eases him back against the desk leg, his face is like wax.

“What if he bleeds out?” Her voice is quavering.

Ross presses the gun against her temple as he leans forward to inspect Bell’s wound. He pokes his fingers into the sodden red fabric under Bell’s armpit. Bell turns his head aside and bites his bottom lip, eyes squeezed up tight.

“Clean through the edge of the latissimus dorsi,” Ross pronounces. “Might’ve just grazed a rib. Don’t worry about him now. You have something else to do. Drag Miss Gutmunsson closer to the desk.”

Emma makes herself move. Compliance goes against all her natural instincts.

Dragging Bell has left a blood trail across the floor—Ross tuts disapprovingly. Emma has to step over the blood to reach Kristin. A large dark bruise is starting to form on the side of the girl’s forehead. Emma checks her pulse at the neck: It’s slow, but strong.