“A few times. I thought it would be fine. I believed him. But when I got to his truck where he was waiting for me, something was different.”

“He seemed agitated?” I guess. “Not himself?”

“Yeah. He was nervous, and talking to himself. Like, whispering. It was really weird.”

“Did you ask him to take you home?”

“I didn’t know what to do. Then we came to the stoplight heading into town, and he went the other way. He wasn’t going to the studio at all. There was no friend.”

“And then what happened?” I ask her as gently as I can.

“I tried to get out of the car. I was going to jump out. I was really scared.” Pulling up her blanket, she clutches at her arms beneath her cotton gown. I can see goose bumps under her hands. “He slammed on his brakes and screamed at me. He started to choke me and slammed me against the side of the window. I think I passed out.”

“And that’s when he took you to the shelter?”

“No, he took me someplace else first. A small dark room, sort of mildewy smelling. My hands were tied. I thought he was going to kill me right away, but he didn’t.” She turns toward the window, her body clenched as a fist. “He told me he loved me.”

There’s a long, charged silence. We bring her water. I ask one of the nurses for another blanket for her, a heated one, and notice my own hands are freezing in sympathy. My chest aches.

“How long were you there?” I ask, wondering why I hadn’t heard her the day I hiked near the Pomo shelter, why she hadn’t heard me.

“A week maybe? He kept giving me some sort of pill to put me to sleep.”

I glance at Will and our eyes catch. The forensics specialists have found traces of blood with luminol in the storage room at the Art Center, but none of the samples are large enough to match and type. They’ve collected more unidentified bits of evidence, too—nail shards, miscellaneous fibers. Some of the hair samples appear to match Cameron’s, but there are others that don’t.

“Did you see any signs that he’d kept anyone else either in the room or at the shelter before you?” Will asks Cameron.

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

“Did you ever see another model with him?” he goes on. “We’ve found a lot of photographs of other girls. One is Shannan Russo, a seventeen-year-old who was murdered earlier this summer, but most we haven’t been able to identify yet. It appears he’s been doing this a long time.”

From Cameron’s expression, I can see she understands what we’re saying. That she’s lucky to be alive.

“How did you finally get away?” I ask.