It doesn’t feel that way now.

She’s afraid. Not of dying, but of what she’ll see when she enters the belly of the beast. And she’s afraid of what will happen to her sanity in the long run since she’s barred from talking about any of it with Luke once she’s home.

The phone buzzes in her purse.

i’m talking 2 u.

She almost curses.

Instead, she starts for the nearest lamppost, turns to face the street, and leans against it.

A glance to her right. No sign of the pear-shaped woman or the brown Camry.

She returns her attention to the street, and that’s when she spots Richard Davies’s brown pickup truck headed straight for her. The headlights blind her for an instant, then she can see again.

The truck’s slowing down.

7

Richard can’t get a good look at the girl until he powers the driver’s side window down. That’s when she uncrosses her arms and steps forward.

She’s too young, he thinks. Not a kid. He wouldn’t even pull over for a kid. She’s just not the age of his usual prey. Not as broken down.

“How yah doing, mister?” There’s a defiant tone in her voice, and her expression’s searching and a little hard.

Not nearly as desperate as what he’s used to.

Not like Mom. But before this little whisper in his ear can make his stomach swim with sickness, another one answers it. More like Stephanie. She thinks she’s too good to be out here. Too good for you. That’s interesting.

“I’m good,” he answers. “How you doing?”

“All right. It’s kinda cold out. What you looking for?”

“Nothing complicated. Car stuff.”

She steps closer, leans her head in through the window. “I don’t know much about cars, but I’m willing to learn about you, handsome.”

Oh, you’ll learn, bitch.

“How’s whatever fifty bucks’ll get me sound?”

She takes her time considering this. She probably wants to charge more. Probably thinks she’s worth it, but she’s reconsidering because he’s not twenty pounds overweight and doesn’t reek of body odor. “Oh, it’ll get you something good,” she says with a smile that looks more genuine than the last one.

“You need some of it now?” he asks, playing the part of the good, honest, decent john.

“Nah. Payment for services rendered’s just fine.”

“You need to see it?”

“You seem like a reliable guy.”

He unlocks the doors. “Hop in.”

She does. When he takes his foot off the brake, the nerves in his legs are tingling with excitement, and there’s a stirring in his groin similar to the one he felt when Stephanie handled his wallet. “You new around here?”

“Kinda. Yeah.”

“Where you from?”

“Far enough away.” She turns and gives him a grin. He can’t tell if she’s telling him to mind his own business or trying to pass herself off as some kind of free spirit. “Dad kinda cramped my style, you know?”

“How’s that?”

“Just . . . bullshit. Expectations. That kind of thing. I mean, he’s some fucking dirt farmer. What does he know about life?”

A lot more than you do, you stupid little whore.

“Dads can be a pain,” he says.

“You’re telling me. But it helps if they’ve got a bad hiding place for their cash, if you know what I mean. Helps you get the hell away from ’em.”

He tries not to grit his teeth. He does it sometimes when he’s angry and sometimes when he’s excited. One time he even cracked one.

“How ’bout over here?” he asks, pointing to the alleyway up ahead.

“Whatever’s clever, handsome.”

8

Cole’s feeling a sudden burst of performance anxiety so strong he might as well be the one inside Richard Davies’s pickup. Then he notices something on the screen monitoring Charley’s vital signs. “Why is her pulse dropping?”

“It’s not abnormal.” The tech who answers, the balding one with the fine-boned face, hasn’t said anything up until now, probably because his work just started a little while ago. He’s in charge of monitoring Charley’s vital signs, and out of some show of respect for her privacy, they kept that particular monitor dark until she stepped out from the back of the transport truck.

“She just got in a car with a serial killer. I’d say a drop in heart rate’s pretty abnormal. Give me her blood ox.”

The balding tech nods, taps keys on his computer. The boxes displaying Charley’s vitals shift and change size so her blood oxygen reading can pop out to dominate the lower left quadrant.

96%, it proclaims in Day-Glo orange.

Normal, especially when Cole considers what it might reach before the night’s over.

Blood trackers have been circulating through Charlotte’s body for months. To the control center and to a central lab facility farther away, they transmit a constant stream of data about almost every chemical interaction happening in her bloodstream. Protein levels, white and red blood cell counts, you name it. The second any of her levels become abnormal outside of a testing period, Cole gets an immediate call from the lab.