“I came here, but it gets mixed up. I remember some now, but it’s all blurry and jumbled up.”
“Why don’t you tell me what you remember, and we’ll see where that takes us?”
When she did, he listened. When she spoke of the prod, or the probing, he took her hand, held it.
She cried again. She couldn’t help it.
“I can’t remember more. I don’t think I made her up, the girl with red hair. I think—I think she’s my friend. But if she’s my friend, why can’t I remember her name, or how come we were running together?”
“Sometimes the mind protects us from what we’re not ready to remember.”
“But I want to!”
“And you will. You’re so much better already than you were just hours ago. A little patience, Dorian.”
“I don’t like patience.”
Now he laughed, and she liked the sound of it.
“I can’t think who does, and still we need it. Why don’t you rest awhile?”
“I—can I get up? I don’t want to stay in bed. Can I get up and see more of where we are?”
“If you promise to tell me if you get dizzy or feel sick, or if you have pain.”
“I can promise. I don’t lie after I promise, so I don’t promise if I think I’ll need to lie.”
“That’s a very clever philosophy. I follow a similar one myself. Well then, let me give you a tour. We can start here. This is your room as long as you need it.”
It wasn’t very big, but she’d never had big. It was clean, and had a window where the sun shined in. It had a bed and a dresser with three drawers and walls painted a bright, bold blue.
“I like the color. It’s pretty.”
“The last girl who stayed here painted the walls her favorite color.”
“What happened to her?”
“She moved on. She liked to cook, and got a job in a restaurant kitchen, and a little place of her own. It’s how it should work, the moving on when the time comes. Until it does, this is your room.”
“Do I have to pay for it?”
“You do, by following the code, helping to keep it clean, sharing what you have or acquire with everyone.”
She got up slowly, then stood in her borrowed pajamas—sweats shorts and a T-shirt. “I don’t feel dizzy. I promise.”
“An excellent start. Let’s continue our tour.”
* * *
While Dorian got her tour, Eve walked into the bullpen.
“Listen up! I need volunteers to take shifts manning a tip line.”
She ignored the collective groan because she—sincerely—sympathized. “We’re looking for information on this girl. Peabody, put Dorian Gregg’s ID shot on the main screen.
“Dorian Gregg, age thirteen—you can read her data. A runaway and likely abductee. We believe she was held in the same child trafficking facility as Mina Cabot. Cabot, also thirteen, was found early yesterday morning, impaled.”
She briefed them quickly.
“Officer Carmichael, if you’ll select four uniforms to assist on the tip line. Detectives, you can rotate, two hours on unless you’re running hot.
“We need to find this girl before whoever killed Mina Cabot finds her. Any tip that doesn’t include her being carried off by alien overlords gets a follow-through. Even the alien overlords get documented. The media’s about to cut loose on this, so we’ll get the leading wave of calls in the next twenty-four.
“Any problems, I’m in my office till end of shift, and working this at home when I get there.”
Because, Eve thought as she went back to continue her searches, if they didn’t find her in the next twenty-four, odds were she went rabbit, or got herself caged like one.
10
In her office, Eve pored over search results.
She knew the expression was “finding a needle in a haystack,” but that was bogus. Who the hell would put a needle in a haystack? Plus, she wasn’t entirely sure what a haystack was, exactly.
Still, she accepted trying to find probable, even possible buildings that fit her requirements in the whole of New York equaled the damn needle.
On the other hand, if somebody was stupid enough to toss a needle into a stack of hay, the needle was in the stack of hay. So she adjusted some factors of the search, started another run.
While that worked, she shifted to Peabody’s progress, and McNab’s, and Feeney’s.
Too many girls, she thought. Too many names and faces. But she believed she had a better shot at finding a pattern.