Julian watched until his dad’s car was out of sight, before heading towards the house. His step faltered at the front door. His mind felt overloaded, ready to burst. The past, present and possible future paraded relentlessly through it, melting into one another like colours on a prism. He saw his dad on top of Deborah Bradshaw, Mia as she’d looked the last time he saw her, Jake dead with a hypodermic needle in his arm, Joanne Butcher’s bloated corpse, himself on top of Eleanor in the barn. Finally, he saw his mum in hospital hooked up to all sorts of IVs, tubes and machines. You’ve got to hold it together for her, he told himself sharply, she’s going to need you now more than ever.
Julian opened the door. “Where’s my mum?” he asked Wanda, who was dusting in the lounge.
“She’s sleeping. She was up late celebrating the good news.” As Julian started towards his mum’s bedroom, Wanda added, “You’re not going to wake her, are you?”
“I have to talk to her.”
“Can’t it wait?”
Julian shook his head. Without knowing it, his mum had already waited fifteen years to hear what he had to tell her. Every extra second was a second too long. Wasn’t it? Well, wasn’t it? Of course it fucking was! But even with this thought ringing in his mind, his feet dragged into the hallway like he was wading through deep mud.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” Wanda said. “Mike Hill phoned.”
Julian turned quickly to her. “When?”
“Several times yesterday and again this morning.”
“Did he say why?”
“No. He just said he wants you to contact him as soon as possible. He mentioned something about Eleanor. I think-”
Before Wanda could finish, Julian had his phone out and was punching in Mike Hill’s number. Mike picked up on the first ring, as if he’d been waiting by the phone. “Is Eleanor okay?” asked Julian.
“That’s what I wanted to ask you. I haven’t seen or spoken to her since she left the house with you the other day.”
Mike’s words drove all thoughts other than thoughts of Eleanor from Julian’s mind. A vision flashed before his eyes of him on top of her, not in the barn, but on the bed at Mr X’s house. Her face was bruised and bloodied, her clothes and throat torn as if by some wild animal. The image staggered him like a punch to the gut. The sound of his breathing filled the line as he tried to work out whether it was the product of memory or imagination.
“I assume from your silence that she’s not with you,” continued Mike.
“No,” Julian answered, the word barely audible.
“I also assume you don’t know where she is?”
Julian shook his head. “He wouldn’t do that.” He wasn’t talking to Mike anymore. He was talking to the inner voice that told him Eleanor hadn’t returned home because Mr X had abducted her.
“Who wouldn’t do what?”
“She’s not some bad girl who might overdose or runaway. He wouldn’t dare go near her.”
“What the hell are you on about?” Mike demanded, his voice swaying between confusion, anger and anxiety. “What’s going on? Julian. Julian…”
Julian didn’t answer because he was running for his car. As he screeched away from the house, he kept repeating to himself in a low, quivering voice, “He wouldn’t dare. He wouldn’t dare.” He drove with one hand on the wheel, the other holding his phone to his ear as it called Eleanor’s mobile. It went through to the answering service. He tried again, and still she didn’t answer. His chant grew louder and faster. “He wouldn’t dare…”
At the end of the road, he didn’t turn for the forest. He turned for the town-centre. Jumping red lights, overtaking wildly, narrowly avoiding oncoming rush-hour traffic, he soon came to the antiques shop. He sprang out of the car, sprinted into the shop and grabbed the mantrap.
“Hey!” shouted the shopkeeper, catching hold of his arm.
Julian elbowed him away and returned to his car. He flung the mantrap onto the backseat and sped back the way he’d come. The driver-side mirror clipped another car and was sheared off. Horns blared. He barely noticed. “He wouldn’t dare…”
The suburbs were behind Julian now, trees passed in a blur. He took the turn for The Old Forest Road so fast that he almost skidded out of control. The speed of the car was nothing, though, compared to the speed with which the image of Eleanor bloodied and torn turned over in his mind. Over and over, looping to feed his doubt, his fear, his rage. “He wouldn’t dare…”
He hit the gravel road without slowing. Stones kicked up, cracking the windscreen. His body was bounced around by the bone-jarring impact of potholes. “He wouldn’t dare…” The car ground up the slope, barrelling around the final corner. The gate came into view. Still he hurtled onwards, arms braced as straight as ramrods, every muscle tensed. “He wouldn’t fucking dare!”
There was a screech of rending metal and breaking glass as the car slammed into the gate. The air bag blew out, hitting Julian in the face. He sat dazed for a moment, trying to catch his breath, before clambering out of the car. The front wheels were off the ground, resting on the gate, which had buckled, collapsing a section of the fence. The sound of barking reached him from somewhere near the house, faint, but getting louder. He quickly retrieved the mantrap and pulled its teeth apart. He tore the bandage off his ankle and carefully placed it on the pressure pad. Then he got back into the car and ducked down. After a minute or so the dog appeared. The instant it put its nose to the bandage, the steel jaws snapped together, biting into its flanks. The dog jumped about five feet into the air, letting out a high pitched yelp. It staggered around briefly before collapsing. Julian took out his knife and warily approached it. It was obvious at once that it was fatally wounded. Its muzzle was flecked with froth and its breathing was laboured. Blood oozed out from around the steel teeth buried in its flesh. It rolled its eyes at Julian as if begging to be put out of its misery. There was no time for hesitation. He stabbed it several times, shuddering as the blade grated between its ribs. When he was sure it was dead, grimacing with each footfall, he ran towards the house.
Julian wasn’t surprised to see his dad’s car beside the Merc, but even so his heart constricted with anxiety. There was a metal bin with smoke rising from it outside the house. He slowed to an abrupt stop. A deep blackness seemed to emanate from the house’s windows. He felt it almost like a physical force holding him back. Sweat wormed its way down his face as, step by faltering step, like a child learning to walk, he pushed through the invisible barrier. Glancing in the bin, he saw the burning remnants of some white sheets — most likely, the blood-stained sheets, although it was impossible to tell for sure. The knife held in front of him, he reached for the front door. It wasn’t locked. He half expected to find himself faced by the chauffeur — his arrival could hardly have gone unnoticed — but the hallway was empty.
There was a door to the right and left of the stairs. Moving quickly now, Julian opened the right-hand door. It led into a living-room — sofa, armchairs, television, coffee-table, deep-pile rug. Everything as you might expect from a living-room, except the furniture looked new and unused, giving it a curiously sterile, unlived in feel, like a shop window display. The door to the left led to a dining-room — six chairs around a dining-table set as if for an elaborate meal. A fine sheen of dust lay over the table, plates and cutlery. Julian would hardly have been surprised to see mannequins occupying the chairs in poses of eating, drinking and talking. “All of it a fucking lie,” he muttered.
Suddenly, the muffled sound of voices yelling came from upstairs. For maybe ten seconds, Julian stood tense and motionless, vainly trying to make out what was being said, until an agonised shriek impelled him to action. As he sprinted upstairs, there was the sound of breaking glass, followed by a thud. Then silence descended over the house.
The first thing Julian saw when he reached the room was the chauffeur. He was on the floor, facedown, his head through the two-way mirror, which lay in jagged shards all around him. A thick, dark stream of blood flowed from his throat to form a slick around the toppled video-camera. His eyes bulged like marbles and his mouth gaped as mutely as ever, saliva foaming at its corners. His huge hands clawed spasmodically at the carpet. The next thing he saw was Mr X, knelt with his back to him, clutching a large triangular splinter of glass in both hands. Mr X’s breath came in rapid, hoarse clicks as he plunged the splinter downwards again and again. Finally, Julian saw his dad. He was laid on his back, arms flung wide, shirt torn open from neck to waist, chest tarred with blood, like some kind of sacrificial offering. With each plunge of the splinter, his head gave a little jerk.
“No!” cried Julian, charging across the room, white-faced and white-knuckled with intent.
Mr X jerked his head around, the same leering grin twisting his face out of shape. The grin disappeared as Julian buried the knife halfway to the hilt in his back. With a piercing scream, he toppled forward across Julian’s dad. Julian dragged him aside. He squirmed like a skewered worm, scream after scream curdling the air as he groped at the knife’s hilt. The horrific noise barely registered on Julian’s mind. His attention was focused on his dad. Blood welled from gashes like obscenely yawning mouths in his chest and stomach, pooling in the hollows of his body. His eyes were closed. He didn’t appear to be breathing. Frantically, Julian felt for a pulse. He couldn’t find one. He tried to give mouth-to-mouth, not sure if he was doing it right, but not knowing what else to do. A hot, metallic taste filled his mouth. It was blood. He doubled up, retching. Tears blurring his vision, he pressed his hands against the wounds, trying to staunch the bleeding, but it was like trying to hold back a burst dam. “Open your eyes, Dad. Live!” he cried, as if he could summon him back from the dead by the force of his will. But he didn’t possess his Grandma Alice’s power. His voice broke. He hung his head.
Gradually, Julian became aware of a grotesque gurgling. Mr X lay motionless on his belly, head twisted awkwardly towards him. His eyes were dull and glassy, his face pale as chalk. Blood ran from his lips, which he’d chewed to a pulp in his agony. His mouth worked slowly, forming barely audible words. Julian leant in close to hear what he was saying.
“Call an…ambulance,” Mr X croaked, blowing putrid little gasps of air in Julian’s face. When Julian glared incredulous hatred at him, he continued, “I didn’t want…to hurt your…father. He attacked-” He broke off, choking wetly. After a moment, trembling with the effort, he lifted his left arm a fraction to display a deep gash on his wrist.
“Where’s Eleanor?”
“Who?”
“Eleanor Hill. What have you done to her?”
“Nothing…Would never touch a girl like…her. Only nobodies nobody much will miss.” Mr X sucked in a tight, rasping breath, before continuing, “Besides, why would I need to when I’ve already got…you…where I want you?”
In a rush of relief and rage, Julian instinctively accepted these words as genuine. He’d never really believed Mr X would go near Eleanor, he realised with a sharp pang in his chest. He’d just needed an excuse to go after his dad, and try and save him from harm. He’d failed in that, though, like he’d failed to save Mia. He reached a trembling hand towards the knife, hissing, “Mia isn’t a nobody, she’s my sister. Where is she?”
Eyes bulging, Mr X gave a low moan as Julian’s fingers brushed the hilt. “Ambulance.”
“Not unless you tell me where Mia is?”
“Your film. If I…die…” Mr X’s eyes rolled as if he might lose consciousness, before refocusing on Julian. He forced his next words out in a gasp. “Your film will be sent to your mother, the newspapers, the police. And everything you love will be taken from you.”
“Who’ll do the sending if you’re dead?”
“Mr X.”
Julian’s face crumpled into lines of confusion. “But you’re Mr X.”
“No I’m…not.”
“Who the fuck are you then?”
“I’m nobody.”
Julian stared at the injured man as if trying to pierce his thoughts. “You’re lying.”
A repulsive sound that might’ve been laughter bubbled out of Mr X’s throat. “Am I?”
Julian grabbed the knife’s hilt, wiggled it, felt the blade scrape bone. “You’re going to tell me the truth,” he said grimly, as Mr X twitched and screamed, “about Mia, about yourself, about all of it, or I’m going to kill you.”
“Kill me and you kill yourself,” Mr X screeched, before his eyes rolled upward and he passed out. For a few seconds, his breathing continued to gurgle like a drain, then he fell silent. Julian felt for a pulse, and found it, weak and thready. Half-a-minute passed. Mr X’s eyes flickered open and looked at Julian with an expression of approval, even pride. He spoke quite clearly, as if buoyed by his feelings. “You’ve got even more potential than I thought.”
“Fuck you,” retorted Julian. He glanced warningly at the knife. “The truth.”
“Don’t be foolish. There’s no such thing as truth — at least, not the kind you’re after. There’s only perception. Now call me a fucking ambulance.”
Julian looked again at the shelves of videotapes and DVDs. His mind spoke in two voices. Your whole life, everything you hope for, everything you love will be lost, said one. Your whole life, everything you say, everything you hear will be a lie, said the other. There was a phone on the bottom shelf beside a video and DVD player. With these thoughts weighing on his breath like lead, he reached for it. “Good boy, I knew you’d see sense,” said Mr X.
Again, Mike Hill picked up on the first ring. “Have you found her?”
“No, but I don’t think you need worry, Mr Hill,” said Julian. “I think she’s okay.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I was right, he wouldn’t dare go near her.”
“Who wouldn’t dare go near her?”
“What are you doing, Julian?” said Mr X.
“I’m proving you wrong. There is such a thing as truth. And I’m going to show you it.”
“Fool!” Mr X spat the word and a mouthful of blood into Julian’s face. “Stupid spoilt, rich-” He choked off into a croak. Veins popping on his throat and forehead, he forced out a hoarse whisper, “You’re finished. You might as well jump off the bridge.”
Julian wiped the back of his hand across his face. “Better that than live the life you’re offering.”
“Who are you talking to?” asked Mike.
“Nobody. There’s something I need to show you.”
“For Christ’s sake! What’s going on, Julian?”
“I can’t explain over the phone, you need to come here and see it for yourself.”
“I can’t. Eleanor might return while I’m gone.”
“Leave a note. She knows how to contact you if she needs to. Trust me, you don’t want to miss this. It might be the biggest story you ever come across.”
“Where are you?”
Julian explained where he was.
“But that’s in the middle of the forest. What are you doing there?”
“I’m at a house.”
“I didn’t think anybody lived out there.”
“They don’t, not anymore. No more questions. Are you coming?”
Mike was silent a moment, doubt and unease vying with his professional curiosity. Curiosity won out. “Okay, Julian.”
Julian hung up and looked at Mr X, his hands slowly clenching and unclenching. He looked at his dad. Blood billowed like a dark red storm cloud around the corpse. His hands clenched harder and faster. Pale to his lips, he jerked his gaze back to Mr X.
Mr X’s pupils shrank with fear in their dirty-brown irises. Then he caught hold of himself, and his nostrils flared. “Go on. Do it. Do it!” His voice was defiant, almost goading.
As if someone had struck his elbow, Julian’s hand shot towards the knife’s hilt, but stopped just short of it. For several seconds, it wavered back and forth as if caught between two opposing forces. Then, with a sharp intake of breath, he snatched it back. Mr X’s leering, contemptuous grin returned as Julian rose and approached the shelves. Names and dates were written on the spines of the videotapes and DVDs, which were seemingly arranged in no particular order. He searched fruitlessly for his disc and any discs dating to the day of Mia’s disappearance. “You won’t find your disc,” said Mr X, guessing in part what he was looking for. “And even if you did, it wouldn’t do you any good. I told you, it’s just a copy.”
“I think you’re lying. There was no time to make copies.”
“Maybe you’re right, but even if I am lying you still can’t leave me alive. Not unless you want that reporter to find out what’s behind your mask.”
“I’m not afraid of showing people the truth of myself.”
Mr X gurgled with harsh laughter, blowing bloody bubbles. “Who’s lying now?”
“I’ve got nothing to be ashamed of.”
“I agree. All of us here do,” Mr X said softly, and with what seemed genuine sympathy, as if they were surrounded by phantoms with which he and Julian shared an intimate, sorrowful kinship. “We accept you for what you are, but no one else will. You’ll be an outcast, worse than dead. Is that really what you want?”
“I…” Julian’s voice faltered.
“It’s still not too late, Julian. Ring Mike Hill, stop him from coming here.”
“The truth…” Julian swayed as if he might fall over. “I’m going to show you…”
“How are you going to show me the truth?” Mr X’s voice grew stronger, as if feeding on Julian’s weakness. “By killing me? By destroying yourself? That’s not the truth, Julian, that’s just a different kind of lie.”
Julian clutched the shelves for support, his eyes moving back and forth along them. Most of the names were unfamiliar. Some he seemed to vaguely recognise. Two were all too familiar. The first of these didn’t surprise him. After everything Mr X had said, he’d guessed he’d find Tom Benson’s name. The second caused his breathing to stop momentarily. “Michael Ridgway,” he murmured. “The A1 Murderer.”
“One of our more illustrious members,” boasted Mr X.
Julian looked at him as if he doubted his sanity. “He was a serial killer.”
“No, merely a serial abductor. To my knowledge, Michael only ever killed one girl. The rest he sold to us. Funny thing is, the police charged him with the murders of all the girls except the one he actually killed.”
“Susan Carter.”
“Once again, you’ve impressed me, Julian. How did you know that?”
“My grandma tried to help her parents find her body.”
Mr X nearly choked on a bubble of mocking laughter. “Ah yes, of course, your psychic granny.”
“So Susan Carter and all those other girls died here.”
“I’ll let you find out for yourself what happened to them.” Mr X rolled his eyes at the shelves. “They’re all up there somewhere.”
A sudden thought struck Julian, shaking his certainty that Eleanor was alive and unmolested. “You said you never go near girls like Susan Carter.”
“I didn’t tell Michael to take Susan. He took her on an impulse, because he saw her and wanted her. I was angry. But I couldn’t stay angry with him for long. He was such a nice man.”
“A nice man!” Julian’s voice was rank with incredulous revulsion. Reassured, however, he removed Michael Ridgway’s disc and, very carefully, as if it was something fragile and precious, inserted it into the DVD player. The TV flickered into life, showing the adjoining room. Michael Ridgway was pacing agitatedly up and down beside the bed. He was middle-aged, balding, paunchy. Nobody out of the ordinary. Nobody you’d give a second glance. He stopped pacing when the chauffeur entered with his hands on Susan Carter’s shoulders, guiding her in front of him. The chauffeur closed the door, leaving her alone with Michael Ridgway.
Michael Ridgway looked at Susan Carter and she looked back at him. A minute passed, two minutes. Neither of them moved, spoke, or even seemed to breathe. Julian might’ve thought the DVD was faulty, if it hadn’t been for Susan Carter’s eyes. They were alive with fear. It seeped out of them, seemed to seep right out of the screen into his heart, pleading for help, for mercy. Suddenly, as if acting on some silent signal known only to himself, Michael Ridgway lashed out, hitting Susan Carter full in the face. Without a sound, she collapsed to the carpet and lay with her eyes closed, motionless as a doll. Michael Ridgway stared down at her a moment, his eyes blank and dead, like a shark’s. Then, straddling her waist, he hit her again, and again, and again, mechanically, relentlessly. To Julian, the beating seemed to go on for hours. He flinched at every blow, but didn’t turn away from the screen. Something was building inside him, something he needed. Finally, Michael Ridgway stopped and stood off Susan Carter. Except she wasn’t recognisable as Susan Carter anymore. Now she was recognisable only as something dead. A piece of meat. Michael Ridgway’s chest heaved, but his expression was calm, almost serene, as he looked at himself in the mirror, then looked through the mirror directly into Julian’s eyes. There was no spark of connection. The eyes were as unrecognisable to Julian as those that’d glared out of his Grandma Alice’s possessed face.
The screen went blank. But Julian continued to stare at it, trembling, pressure building inside him until he couldn’t contain it any longer. In an eruption of white-hot fury, he lunged at Mr X and drove the knife into him fully to the hilt. A scream croaked in Mr X’s throat. His body spasmed into a tight, foetal ball. Then he lay silent and limp.
After that, in a kind of semi-conscious frenzy, Julian started tearing the house apart, searching vainly for his DVD or any clues to Mia’s whereabouts. In one room, he found a trunk of dildos, lubricants, whips, chains, leather wrist and ankle restraints, and other sex paraphernalia. In another, he shuddered at the discovery of a cupboard neatly stacked with latex gloves, duct tape and plastic wrap. He was in the kitchen, flinging stuff out of a cubby-hole so that he could get to a trapdoor, when Mike Hill arrived.
“Hello,” Mike called from the hallway, his voice uncertain, perhaps even a little afraid. “Julian, are you there?”
“In here,” Julian shouted, yanking at the trapdoor’s handle.
Mike gasped when he saw Julian. “What happened to you?”
“Help me open this.”
“Why? What’s down there?”
“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.” Quivering tendons stood out on Julian’s neck as he strained to lift the trapdoor. He pitched backward as the handle slipped through his sweaty, blood-stained hands. “For fuck’s sake, help me.”
“No. Not until you tell me whose house this is, and whose car that is all smashed up outside, and why there’s a dead dog in some kind of-”
“There’s no time,” Julian interrupted breathlessly. “Don’t you understand? She might be down there.”
“Who’s she?”
“Mia!”
Mike’s eyes widened. “Mia Bradshaw?”
“Yes. Now help me.”
They both bent to grasp the handle. Faces reddening, arms trembling, they lifted the thick, wooden trapdoor. Stairs led down into darkness. There was a switch inside the hatch. Julian flicked it and a bulb flickered into life down below, illuminating a dirty concrete floor. The stairs led to a large, low-ceilinged cellar full of exactly what you might expect to find in such a place — a well-stocked wine rack, a tool bench, some dusty old furniture piled in a corner, a row of shelves crammed with cleaning products, rusting cans of paint, boxes, and glass jars full of nails and screws. Julian’s eyes scoured the room. He rushed over to the furniture, and started flinging chairs and tables aside. They concealed nothing.
“There’s nothing down here,” said Mike. “It’s just an ordinary cellar.”
“That’s exactly what he wants you to think.”
“Who?”
Without replying, Julian turned to the shelves and swept his arm along them, sending their contents crashing to the floor.
“Stop, Julian.” Mike caught hold of Julian’s arm and pulled him away from the shelves.
“Get your fucking hands off me.” Julian wrenched his arm free, hitting the light-bulb with his hand. Shadows whirled wildly around the room. The bulb flickered and Mia’s face leaped at him out of the momentary darkness, pale and blood streaked. With a gasp, he recoiled against the tool-bench.
“Okay, enough is enough,” Mike snapped. “I want to know what’s going on, and I want to know now.”
Julian wasn’t listening, he was staring at the floor, eyes narrowed. There were parallel scuff marks on the concrete, as if the tool bench had recently been moved. He dropped to his knees and felt around under the bench. His fingers detected what was hidden to his eyes. “There’s another trapdoor here.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Help me move this bench.”
Julian and Mike dragged the bench away from the wall, revealing a recessed metal handle. They heaved the trapdoor open, releasing a warm puff of air as fetid as the breath of a nightmare. Mike put the back of his hand to his mouth. “It smells like something died-” He broke off as the full import of his words swept over him.
Again, stairs led down. Again, there was a switch inside the hatch. Again, a light came on when Julian flicked it, illuminating a concrete floor. As Julian started forward, Mike said, “Maybe you shouldn’t go down there. Maybe we should call the police.”
“No police,” Julian retorted, scowling. “Not until we know for sure what’s down there.”
The smell grew stronger with every step they descended, until the air seemed thick with it. Julian could hear Mike swallowing hard behind him. Julian felt no urge to vomit. After what he’d witnessed upstairs, it would take more than a bad smell to sicken him. “What the hell is this?” Mike said in a low, nauseated voice, when they reached the second cellar.
A table stood adjacent to the foot of the stairs, its surface cluttered with unused hypodermic needles and brown medicine bottles. Several pairs of police-style handcuffs and leg-shackles dangled from nails above the table. Six human-sized cages lined one of the walls. In each of the first four cages there was a camping-bed and a bucket. It was too gloomy to see what was in the final two cages. Julian picked up one of the bottles and read its label. “Diamorphine.”
“Heroin,” said Mike, taking the bottle from him. “Looks like it was stolen from a hospital.”
Julian squinted into the darkness, thinking of Joanne Butcher. “Heroin for an overdose nobody would find suspicious.”
“More like for getting girls hooked on, then making them work for a fix. A sex trafficking operation, that’s what this is, isn’t it?”
“This is The Society of Dirty Hearts.”
“What’s The Society-”
“There’s someone in the last cage,” exclaimed Julian, darting towards the rear of the cellar. A dimly visible figure lay on a camp-bed, swaddled in blankets, head buried beneath a pillow. Julian’s voice trembled in the gloom, half fearful, half hopeful. “Mia!” The figure didn’t move. He frantically rattled the cage’s padlocked door, calling Mia’s name again. Still no response.
Mike’s lighter sparked to life. The wavering flame extinguished Julian’s hope. “It’s not her,” he said, staring hollow-eyed with disappointment at the wisps of red hair curling out from under the pillow.
“Who is it then?”
A name came into Julian’s head. Ginger. “We need to get this door open.”
“Wait here.” Mike dashed away. He returned after half-a-minute with a hammer. It took ten minutes to smash the padlock open. The figure on the bed never once stirred. Julian ducked into the cage and removed the pillow. As he’d suspected, it was Ginger. She looked dead. But when Mike felt for a pulse in her wrist, he said, “She’s alive…barely.”
“What do you think’s wrong with her?”
By way of explanation, Mike pointed at a row of fresh needle marks on Ginger’s inner forearm. “Help me move her. She needs to get to a hospital.”
Looking at Ginger’s sunken, pale bluish face, Julian felt no antipathy. But neither did he feel any sympathy. You were right, he thought, I’ll never understand. “Okay, but first I have to show you something upstairs.”
“There’s no time. She could die.” As Julian turned and headed for the stairs, Mike added, “Do you hear me?”
“I hear.” Julian started up the stairs.
Mike pursued him, catching hold of his arm. “What’s the matter with you? Don’t you care?”
“Yes I care. That’s why I need to show you this.”
“Show me what? What could be more important than that woman’s life?”
“The truth,” said Julian. “Only the truth.”