Sooner or later, someone was going to recognize that image. Someone was going to start to connect dots.

Especially if the police got their hands on his computer.

Jason careened around the table too fast, catching his knee on the corner of the washing machine. The pain lanced up his thigh and finally forced him to stop. For an instant, the world spun, so he clung to the top of the washer, breathless with pain.

When he could finally focus again, the first thing he noticed was the spider, the tiny little brown garden spider hanging right in front of him by a thread.

Jason jumped back, clipping the edge of the beat-up table with his shin and nearly yelping from the pain. But that was okay. He could take the pain. He didn’t mind the pain, just so long as he didn’t see that spider again.

And for a moment, it was too much. For a moment, one tiny little cellar spider had him spinning back to a place where it was always dark except for the eyes that glowed from the dozens of terrariums edging the room. A place where screams started in the basement and worked their way up through the walls. A place that smelled routinely of death and decay and no amount of ammonia was ever going to make a difference.

A place little boys and big girls went to die.

Jason placed a fist in his mouth. He bit his own knuckle until he tasted blood and he used that pain to ground himself again.

“I will not lose control,” he murmured. “I will not lose control, I will not lose control, I will not lose control.”

The phone rang upstairs. He gratefully left the basement and went to answer it.

The caller was Phil Stewart, the principal from Sandy’s school, and he sounded uncharacteristically flummoxed.

“Is Sandra there?” Phil started.

“She’s not available,” Jason said automatically. “May I take a message?”

There was a long pause. “Jason?”

“Yes.”

“Is she home? I mean, have the police located her yet?”

So the police had interviewed people where Sandra worked. Of course they had. That was a logical next step. After checking here, they might as well check there. Of course. Jason needed something intelligent to say. A statement of fact, a party line that summed up the current state of affairs without delving into personal territory.

He couldn’t think of a single damn word.

“Jason?”

Jason cleared his throat, glanced at the clock. It was 7:05 P.M., meaning Sandy had now been gone for what, eighteen, twenty hours? Day one nearly done, day two nearly beginning. “Umm … she’s … she’s … she’s not home, Phil.”

“She’s still missing,” the principal stated.

“Yes.”

“Do you have any ideas? Do the police have a lead? What’s going on, Jason?”

“I went to work last night,” Jason said simply. “When I came home, she was gone.”