“There’s something I have to tell you. I just got the DNA and serologic results from the medical center. On that Kleenex you found at the scene this morning.”

“And?”

“It was Garrett’s semen all right. And the blood—it was Mary Beth’s.”

“He raped her,” Sachs whispered.

“Be careful, Sachs, but move fast. I don’t think Lydia has much time left.”

She was hiding in a dark, filthy bin that had been used to store grain long ago.

Hands behind her, still dizzy from the heat and dehydration, Lydia Johansson had stumbled down the bright corridor away from where Garrett lay writhing and had found this hiding space on the floor below the grinding room. When she slipped inside and closed the door a dozen mice had skittered over her feet and it took every ounce of willpower within her to keep from screaming.

Now listening for Garrett’s footsteps over the low-gear sound of the grinding wheel nearby.

Panic was filling her and she was starting to regret her defiant escape. But there was no going back, she decided. She’d hurt Garrett and now he was going to hurt her back if he found her. Maybe do worse. There was nothing to do but try to escape.

No, she decided, that wasn’t the right way to think. One of her angel books said there was no such thing as “trying to.” You either did or you didn’t. She wasn’t going to try to get away. She was going to escape. She just had to have faith.

Lydia looked through a crack in the bin door, listened carefully. She heard him in one of the rooms nearby, muttering to himself and ripping open bins and closet doors. She’d hoped that he’d think she’d run outside through the collapsed wall in the burnt-out corridor but it was obvious from his methodical search that he knew she was still here. She couldn’t stay in the storage closet any longer. He’d find her. She glanced out through a crack in the door and, not seeing him, she slipped out of the bin and ran into an adjoining room, moving silently on her white sneakers. The only exit from this room was a stairway leading up to the second floor. She staggered up it, gasping for breath and, not having her hands for balance, bounding off the walls and the wrought-iron railing.

She heard his voice echoing in the corridor. “You made him bite me!” he cried. “It hurts, it hurts.”

Wish it had stung you in the eye or crotch, she thought and struggled up the stairs. Fuck you fuck you fuck you!

She heard him ripping open closet doors in the room below. Heard his guttural moaning. Imagined she could hear the snick, snick of his nails.

That shiver of panic again. Nausea swelling.