She knew she should alert Frost. She could get out of the car and scream for the police. End the ruse; get them out of the ruins. Her voice would bring them running. They could save her, but they couldn’t save Lucy Hagen. And it would start all over again with someone else. She wasn’t going to let that happen.

She finally sent an e-mail back.

I’m right here. You know where I am.

Frankie held her phone in her hand, and she waited for him to reply. The silence went on and on. No e-mail. Nothing. It was a slow torture, as if he wanted her to suffer in anticipation.

Finally, her phone vibrated. She sucked in her breath, realizing that he was making a video call this time. He wanted to see her, and he wanted her to see him, too. That was part of the game. She wished she could throw the phone out of the car into the rain, but she held it up in front of her face and steeled herself as she answered the call.

There he was.

The mask.

Everyone else had seen it before, but not her. Frost. Todd. Lucy. They’d described it to her and shown her pictures, but the reality was a thousand times worse. Close up. Filling the entire screen. The plastic was deathly white, drained of all color. Candy-red lips grinned at her, a huge grin, stretching from the point of the chin to the high false cheekbones. His teeth looked like gold railroad tracks. The eyeholes were rimmed in silver, and where the eyes should have been was the gleaming black mesh of an insect’s eyes. Dreadlocks dripped down the mask in braids of fake hair.

The mask spoke to her.

“Fran-kie . . . Fran-kie.”

She knew he could see her, and she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of letting him see how terrified she was. She made her own face into a pale mask. Her lips curled with contempt. “Where’s Lucy?”

“Wanna see . . . wanna see?”

“Show me.”

Like a page turning, the camera reversed. Frankie couldn’t help herself. She cried out in anguish at what she saw. The screen blazed with whiteness, as if the luminous ivory paint on the walls could blind her. Everything was white—walls, floor, and ceiling. In the midst of it, she saw Lucy Hagen. Tears, like rain, streamed down the young woman’s cheeks. The huge whites of her eyes matched the walls. Frankie knew she was drugged. Hypnotized. So far into a trance that she stood on the surface of another planet. It was the look that her patients had when she was working with them to change their memories, but this was the dark side. This was everything she’d ever tried to do in life turned against her.