“Daddy, it’s fine. It’s good for me.”

He shook his head. “Look, I went over all this nonsense about the Capture Club during the investigation. It never led anywhere. All we ever found was a group of kids who pretended to kidnap each other. They talked about missing people, and got off by chewing on other people’s misery. Unfortunately, there’s no crime in that. I tried that summer, Dr. Cutty. I tried to find my daughter, and I tried like hell to find your sister. I looked at this club from every angle. And if you want me to open my books, I’ll show you a hundred other leads we looked at that are much stronger than a bunch of burnouts in a secret club. I’ll show you the sex offenders we are still watching. The three convicts paroled two months before Megan and Nicole were taken. One of whom is suspected in an assault outside of Raleigh. I’ll show you the interviews with the informants we have inside the jails who tell us about anyone bragging to high-profile crimes.”

“But now we’ve got more to go on,” Livia said. “We’ve got the forensics. We’ve got science that shows these girls are connected.”

“You’re talking about getting three different states involved in the same investigation. Reopening old cases and getting everyone on the same page and moving in the same direction. Once we cross state lines, we’re talking about involving the FBI. A very tall order. And you say you want my help? I won’t be able to do a thing once the Feds are called in. Hell, once I get detectives from Georgia and Virginia involved, I’ll be pushed to the side. I’ve been through that process before and I didn’t like it.”

“Daddy, that’s why we’re asking for your help. We know you can’t do it all by yourself. I know if you ask for help from all those people—the detectives and the federal agents—they’ll take things from you like they did before. But it wasn’t your fault, Daddy. It wasn’t your fault that I was gone for two weeks. It wasn’t your fault that no one could find me. Nicole is not your fault. I know that, and Livia knows that. But you can help. You can make a difference. All Livia wants is some attention put on these cases. On Nancy and Paula. And on Nicole.”

Megan ran her hand across the information on the desk. “All of this evidence will generate that attention. And I know it will bring attention to me, too. I’m okay with that. I want that. I want to be more than the girl who made it home, Daddy. I want to be the girl who found the man who took her. I want to be the girl who helped other girls, Daddy. Really helped them. Not in the way we’re all pretending my book is helping them.”

Terrence Scott McDonald ran his hands through his strawberry blond hair and slowly nodded his head. His eyes darted around the information and photographs on his desk. Finally, he looked at his daughter. “I’ll make some calls. See what I can do and who I can convince.”

Megan smiled and looked at Livia, grabbed her hand in victory.

“Thank you,” Livia said.

Terry nodded. “Don’t thank me yet. Let’s see where this goes first. This is good work you’ve done.”

Livia nodded a gracious thank you and packed her things. She stood and walked with Megan to the door while Terry McDonald remained at his desk.

“Dr. Cutty,” he said. “If I could have brought your sister home that summer, I would have. I did everything I could to find her.”

“I know you did.”

Terry McDonald pursed his lips. “I’ll be in touch.”

CHAPTER 39

Megan sat Indian style in Dr. Mattingly’s chair, eyes closed, arms resting on the overstuffed wings. In a deep mode of hypnosis, she could barely hear Dr. Mattingly’s voice. She was careful not to venture too far on her own. His voice was her lifeline. Her safety net in case things went wrong and she needed to quickly exit this part of her brain where her suppressed memories were buried. But part of her, Megan knew, wanted to be free from the tether of his voice. Part of her wanted the liberation that came from venturing off on her own, without Dr. Mattingly’s influence to guide her movements or control her destiny or limit her progress. Megan had grown frustrated during the last session when he so quickly pulled her back to consciousness just as she was ready to discover the thing that bothered her for so long. She could not tolerate being restrained when she was inches from unveiling the mystery buried in her memories. If only she were able to peel back the blanket of suppression that concealed it, that secret was waiting to be discovered. Megan just needed to get there.

For a moment now, in this session, Dr. Mattingly’s voice disappeared. Megan felt like an astronaut on a spacewalk, leaving the familiar view that framed the earth to journey to the dark side of the space station. But, not able to advance farther due to the tether that held her, she unclipped herself to drift freely in space. The wrong move now would send her floating away with no way to return to safety. In her hypnotic state, Megan moved freely in the cellar of her captivity, released from the leash of Dr. Mattingly’s comforting voice that she had always clung to during these sessions.

She stood from the bed. It squeaked as she rose, the springs expanding without the compression of her weight. She shuffled to the plywood-covered windows, her feet scraping against the concrete floor and her shackles clinking as the chain became redundant upon itself. Every noise, Megan noticed, was amplified now that she was free from Dr. Mattingly’s voice—from the bedsprings, to her shuffling steps, to the shackle. She ran a hand over the plywood and listened to her skin skate against the grain of the wood. An airplane soared overhead and she listened to that familiar sound of jet engines high in the sky, having just made the long journey across the Atlantic and now on the descent into Raleigh-Durham.

When the plane was gone, she stayed still and continued to listen, unmoving and expectant. It came after a moment, that long, low whistle. Megan knew now, after hours of research, that it belonged to the freight train that ran through Halifax County. When the whistle was gone, eaten by the midnight darkness of the cellar, she turned from the plywood windows and walked blindly to the only piece of furniture she could reach—the small table near the stairs where he left her meals. She ran a hand over the surface, hearing her unclipped fingernails scratching the wood. She came to associate the food and drink left for her with a deep, groggy sleep that came afterward. The nourishment was where he’d placed the ketamine, Megan had decided. The drug that made her dance above her sleeping body. The preparation that brought hallucination and out-of-body experiences in that dark, lonely cellar. The medicine, which after two weeks of ingesting, she had worried she was coming to depend on.

Empty now, she shuffled from the table and made it back to the bed, lying on its thin mattress and hearing again the coiling of the springs under her weight. She lifted her legs onto the bed and heard the chain of her shackle clanking against the bedframe. She closed her eyes, which had little effect in the darkness. All the noises disappeared as she lay still. No planes. No whistles. No walking. She heard her breath leaving her lungs, but nothing more. No shackles, no chains. Dr. Mattingly’s voice was nowhere in this place Megan had found. The place of her captivity. It was a new place without Dr. Mattingly. She knew, as she waited on her bed, that it had to be this way. Despite the desire to reach for the familiar voice that could so easily pull her to safety, that could rescue her in an instant, Megan needed this isolation from her therapist. She needed seclusion and loneliness, the way it had been for the two weeks of her captivity. She needed to be vulnerable. She needed to be back in the place where she had been, with no one to help her but herself. She needed to find her dying spirit and revive it. It was, she had determined, the only way to find what she was looking for.

Then, through the subtle sounds of her slow and calm breathing, she heard it. A car engine. Far off at first and then closer. Wheels crunching over gravel. Brakes crying in a small whine as the car came to a stop. The thump of the driver’s-side door closing. The footsteps climbing outside stairs. The door opening and closing behind him.