Page 103 of Drowning in Darkness

“As if she’d be that stupid,” James mutters.

“Maybe we should let him,” I say.

Silence descends. Even the goat is staring like I’ve lost my marbles. If he’s going to have opinions about me, he needs a name. Marvin? Yes, that fits him.

“I’m not following,” Eleanor says, breaking the silence.

“Absolutely not,” James snaps at the same time Hunter growls, “Over my dead body.”

“Hear me out,” I try.

“Stay exactly where you are,” Hunter demands. “If you dare leave that mountain, I’ll have you snatched up and confined to a basement until you’re safe.”

I sigh. Why doesn’t anyone treat me like the grown woman I am? “He’s not going to kill me there and then, right? He takes women and spends weeks, if not months, breaking them down before he’s done. His sick perversion is in the elongated suffering.”

I absorbed far too much from those files, and while it terrifies me, I can’t live like this. Sacred, isolated, unable to take a trip to the local town without considering how I can disguise myself. It’s exhausting, demoralizing, and everything I’ve fought against for years.

“That’s true,” James confirms. “But it’s unacceptable for you to even think of going near him.”

The beauty of my brain is the amount of information I can process and the inferences I can make in a short period. I’m more similar to Eleanor than they realize. “Christopher doesn’t take one woman at a time.”

“How do you know that?” James wonders.

“Look closer at the timelines. He has fast-burn victims, taken for a few weeks at most. Those are the ones with the more solid connections to the world. They have families and friends who raise the alarm. He gets a rush from the power of destroying that woman’s life despite the amount of support she has. Then he has the ones taken for months; they are the slow burn, with a lack of people who give a shit. His adrenaline rush doesn’t come from evading the authorities with them because it’s likely the first time they’ll be missed is when their bodies turn up in a dumpster. Those are the ones he plays with.”

It hurts my heart to explain all of this. I know I was in the former category, and while I wasn’t kidnapped, my gang rape was a bunch of mini Christophers, boys with power who got off on breaking a girl with connections, with a high-profile family. They loved the danger and the rush of getting away with it. Well, they did at the time of the attack—before I snapped back.

There’s an extended period of silence as everyone processes what I’ve said. Not just a pretty face, my professor had once said to me in my criminal psych course. Pity that pretty face attracts evil men.

“How is putting you in his path a plan?” Hunter asks. I can hear how he’s trying to hold himself in check.

“Because it’s highly probable those women are kept in the same place.”

“Nope,” James snaps, following my line of thinking. “Not a chance.”

“Let me get this straight,” Hunter says. “You want Burnside to take you so we can what? Track where you are and then do some kind of bust? I think he’s smart enough to ensure you don’t have your phone on you before kidnapping takes place.”

“I’m not dumb,” I growl. “I was thinking of a tracker.”

“That still involves you being taken, and fuck knows what he’ll do to you before we can reach you,” Hunter interrupts.

I purse my lips and pinch the bridge of my nose. Send help. I’m surrounded by cavemen only thinking with their lizard brains. “No, that’s not what I’m suggesting.”

“Let her speak,” Eleanor advises.

“Fine,” Hunter growls.

“He’ll let me get close. In fact, he’ll force the issue. But we’ll have every exit covered, so I won’t be in any real danger, and I can slip a tracker into his pocket.”

“And then we can see where he goes,” James mumbles. “What if he’s keeping these women somewhere inside his home?”

“Then we’ve lost nothing, and Camryn knows she needs to demand a warrant to raid his home.”

“I don’t like it,” Hunter says. “There are too many variables.”

“You don’t like anything that doesn’t involve wrapping me in cotton wool,” I snap.

“It’s not a crime to want to protect my sister. You’re fragile, Stephanie.”