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Dave tried pullingagainst the winch, but he stopped instantly. He could feel how solid it was. Awinch like that could lift a car. He wasn’t going to be able to break free thatway.
“Please,” he said,desperation creeping into his voice. “Is there anything I can do to make this right?”
The figure shookhis head. “It’s too late for that. You had your chance to do the right thing,and you didn’t take it. Now, you have to pay the price. They demand it. Can’tyou hear them?”
“Please,” Davebegged, his voice cracking. “I didn’t know. I didn’t mean for anyone to gethurt.”
“You should havethought of that before,” the figure said coldly. He turned then and left theroom, slipping out of there as if Dave simply didn’t matter anymore. Or maybehe just wanted to leave Dave alone, knowing what was going to happen.
Little by little,the cable around his neck tightened.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Amber wasn’t surehow many more guesses she dared to make.
She’d been workingon the puzzle for a while now, trying desperately to find the location wherethe next victim was being held, pausing between each guess, wanting to get asmuch information as she could from it before she typed the next letter.
so-- -is- -ear zoo-e-i-- -earies
Amber’s fingershovered over the keyboard, ready to guess another letter. How many wrongguesses had there been now? She could feel a bead of sweat on her face, knowingthat even a correct guess could result in the death of the victim at thispoint. She took a deep breath, ready to type the next letter.
Suddenly, Amberpushed away from the desk.
“What are youdoing?” Francesca demanded, in a harsh tone.
“I can’t risk it.We have a lot already. We’veguesseda lot already,” Amber said. “I can’trisk killing the victim by making another guess.”
“We have to keepgoing,” Simon said. “Or we won’t get the location in time and the victim diesanyway. You know that, Amber.”
Amberdidknow,but that didn’t make it any easier to do this. She was the one who had to makethe guesses. She was the one with a life in her hands. She was the one who hadto live with the guilt if they were wrong about all this. The pressure of thatwas intense, almost too much to bear.
“I know, but weneed to approach this differently,” Amber said, trying to keep her voice level.“We can’t just guess and guess.”
“There isn’t anytime for a different approach,” Francesca insisted.
Amber wasdetermined, though. She couldn’t risk more letters, not now, not when she’dguessed so many already. The killer wouldn’t let them simply guess everyletter, wouldn’t let them take forever, solving this by brute force. They hadto see what was missing. They had to work with the shape of what was there.
Amber needed tolook at it with fresh eyes.
“I just need aminute,” she said, standing up from her chair. “I need to clear my head.”
“Amber—” Simonbegan. Amber held up a hand to forestall him.
“I’m not givingup, but I need to think. I don’t need to guess more letters; everything we needshould be there already. I need to work out what all of this means, and forthat, I need to clear my head. I can’t do this otherwise.”
Amber didn’t waitfor an answer before she stepped outside. She took a deep breath of fresh air,feeling the cool night breeze wash over her. She closed her eyes, trying tocenter herself, to push the fear and doubt out of her mind.
But the image ofthe victim, alone and frightened, kept coming back to her. She couldn’t shakethe feeling that they were running out of time, that every moment that passedwithout finding the location was another moment closer to the victim’s death.She knew that she was wasting time now, doing this, wasting precious seconds oftheir life. But without this, she wouldn’t be able to help at all.
She opened hereyes, feeling a sense of clarity wash over her. Her mind started to race,visualizing the words that were on the screen, mentally adding in differentcombinations of letters to try to find ones that made some kind of sense. Therewas enough there to guess from; Amber was certain of it.
“Near” wasobvious. So something near a zoo. The first word could be “Some” or perhaps “Sold”.Not “Soft” since there were no “T”s in the message. The second to last word hadthe most missing letters, but in the context of a location, didn’t it makesense that it might be “Behind”? The second word could be any number of things.“Wish” or “Wisp” or “Fish”…
“Sold wisp near zoobehind something” didn’t make any sense to Amber, but other possibilities madea lot more sense. One, in particular, seemed to stand out.
She hurried backinside.
“I need a map,”she said. “Something I can use as a reference point.”
