“I want a lawyer,” he whispers.

Charlotte’s startled by the sound of her own laughter. She didn’t intend to cackle like a mad witch, but that’s just how she sounds. It’s the tension release she needed, this pathetic, clichéd request from a man who has no idea what’s ensnared him. Before she thinks to stop herself, she pats him on the stomach. Too hard. He flinches and wheezes; she almost knocked the breath out of him.

She crouches down next to his head, whispering into his ear.

“What do you think I am? A federal agent? Dallas PD? You really think I let you keep me in that storm cellar for a day because I was trying to build a case against you?”

Cyrus Mattingly’s only response to this is a visible tremor in his jaw and several snotty inhales through his nose.

“What’s so damn important about keeping me quiet anyway? Why not just keep me in the back at your house? You could have had your way with me there just fine. Why take me on the road?”

Nothing.

“Where were you taking me, Cyrus?”

“I want a lawyer,” he whispers again.

His Adam’s apple bops nervously. Gently, she places one hand over it, covering his throat with fingers capable of tearing his voice box out.

“You know what I should do, Cyrus? I should break your neck right now and spare the world your sniveling jailhouse interviews where you whine and point the finger at your mom or mean girls or porn and blame them all for the fact that you’re a human monster while some journalist sits there scribbling it all on his pad like you’re a magnificent enigma, when the truth is anyone who’s seen you the way I have knows exactly what you are. A junkie for other people’s pain who can’t control his urges.”

“You c-can’t . . .” Cyrus stammers, reconsidering his words, or maybe trying to draw back the pathetic whiny tone with which he just spoke. “You can’t do this to me.”

When she hears Cole’s voice say her name quietly in her ear, she realizes she’s clutching Mattingly’s throat just a little too hard. She withdraws her hand, but slowly, more interested in making Cole comfortable than Mattingly.

“I can do things to you that you won’t be able to comprehend even as they’re making you scream. I’m something you will never understand and never have a name for, Cyrus Mattingly. And most important of all, I know what you really are, and I am not afraid. I’m not even all that impressed. The only value you have to me are your answers to my questions. So, start answering them or I will knock you sideways into hell.”

Mattingly whispers something.

“Louder.”

“Not women,” he whispers.

“You didn’t just take women? You took men, too?”

A traditional interrogator would probably speak of Mattingly’s actions in the present tense, getting him to talk by distracting him from how screwed he is. But she just got done telling him she’s not a traditional investigator, so she’s free to use dread as a tactic. She’ll keep it verbal, per Cole’s orders, but the weapon she needs isn’t just fear; it’s Mattingly’s absolute terror.

“They’re . . . not women after I take them.”

“What are they?”

His lips part, as if the answer is on the tip of his tongue. But instead of giving voice to whatever it is, he turns his head in her direction as much as he can under the strap, which isn’t much. “Seedlings,” he says with a leer. “They’re my seedlings.”

Even though she’d like to break his collarbone with a single crushing blow, Charlotte instead crouches down, bringing her lips to his ear.

“Seedlings gets planted,” she says quietly. “Where were you planning to plant me?”

Luke appears next to the open divider, gives a small shake of his head to indicate he found nothing of note.

“It’s what you are,” Mattingly whispers.

“What?”

“You told me I’d never come up with a name for what you are, but I’ve already got one. You’re my seedling, and you always will be because no matter how this ends, you’ll never forget what it was like to be under my command.”

“Oh, Cyrus, you just can’t see it, can you?” she says. “Did you really think I was under your command? I put myself here, silly. I followed you. First, the Cinemark 17 in Farmers Branch. Then the AMC Valley View. Both times I had to tail you after the movie because I didn’t get your attention in time. And I was there both times you cut and run. You think I’m really going to believe you can stand up to me now when you turned tail at the first locked gate or the first big, strong man coming home at the wrong time?”

Amazing, she thinks, that after overpowering him, tying him down, and threatening him to the extent she has, it’s the names of two suburban movie theaters that have brought him to the edge of sanity. The intermittent jaw tremor is now a steady quiver, and his mouth looks like it’s trying to form words that are being ripped backward down his throat at the last second. Maybe, as with this terrible trap, she’s simply worn him down. But she suspects it’s something else. She suspects the knowledge that he was being followed all that time has pushed him to the brink. It’s possible this is the weakness of all human monsters; they can’t accept the revelation that they were never truly alone during their moments of chosen solitude, moments when they managed to convince themselves they were some of the most powerful apex predators in the world.

“Do whatever you want to me.” His voice sounds thick with tears. “You’ll never stop the others, you fucking cunt.”

The lurch she feels inside at these words is mirrored by Luke’s response to them. He raises the Glock in both hands instinctively before he stops himself. Their eyes meet, and she sees him nod. He heard it, too; not the slur, the word that came just before. Others.

“What did you say?” she asks Mattingly.

His lips are pursed again, his chest rising and falling.

“Others? What others?”

But her mind’s already answering the question. Other trucks just like this one, other psychos like him, only the victims at their mercy don’t have her power, her support. Each with a tortured seedling within. What can that all mean? They traffic women and then impregnate them?

Mattingly is whispering something under his breath. She leans in, realizes he’s actually singing softly, lyrics that seem familiar, lyrics of a classic song her grandmother used to play while she cooked in the kitchen, “The Sound of Silence.” To hear them from the mouth of this monster poisons their gentle metaphors.

Others being lectured by madmen to stay silent, others being subjected to devices like the one she managed to get free of. Others crossing night roads right this minute, unable to break free.

“What others?” she asks again.

But he just keeps singing softly.

“That’s enough silence,” she says; then she brings the side of one hand down on his forearm with just enough force to snap the bone within. But the sound of the bone breaking is instantly devoured by Mattingly’s screams. They’re high, barking things that emit as much terrible surprise as pain.

She expects Cole to start protesting in her ear, but she hears nothing except Mattingly’s screams turning to gasps turning to a string of hissing profanity between clenched teeth.