Win (Windsor Horne Lockwood III #1)(70)

PT leans further forward. “Did what a lot?”

“Gave me hope. I think he got off on it. Sometimes, after he raped me in that hut, he would tell me, ‘Oh, Patricia, you’re going to go home soon.’ He would say that my family was finally ready to pay the ransom. One day, he told me he finally got the money. He tossed a pair of handcuffs and a blindfold into the shed. Said to put them on for the ride. ‘You’re finally going home, Patricia,’ he tells me. He led me to a car. Helped me into the backseat. He put his hand on top of my head. ‘Don’t bump your head, Patricia.’ I remember how gentle he was, putting the seat belt across me. Like suddenly he was too modest a man to touch me. Then he got in next to me. In the back. Someone else—maybe the guy from the first night, I don’t know—he drove us. ‘You’re going home,’ my rapist kept telling me. ‘What are you going to do first when you’re free? What food are you craving?’ Like that. On and on. You can’t imagine. For hours…and then at last, the car stopped. Both of them took me by the elbow. They march me to what I hoped was freedom. I can’t see anything, of course. I’m still blindfolded and handcuffed. ‘Your mom is right up ahead,’ he whispers. ‘I can see her.’ But now I know.”

For a moment, no one moves.

“Know what?” PT asks.

But Patricia doesn’t seem to hear him. “They lead me through a door.”

The room is completely silent, as though even the walls are holding their breath.

“And I know for sure,” she says.

“Know what?” PT asks again.

“That familiar stench.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You don’t forget that stench.” Patricia raises her head and meets his gaze. “I was back in that same shed. They just drove me around in circles. I can hear them both laughing now. I’m back in the hut and I’m handcuffed and blindfolded, so they both come in…”

She wipes her eyes, shrugs, forces up a smile.

For a while no one says anything. Even the creaks of this old home stay respectfully silent. After some time passes, PT gestures at Max, and Max pulls out a sheet of paper.

“Could this be the man who raped you?” PT asks in his gentlest voice.

He slides a sheet with six different images of Ry Strauss. The first was a closeup of the famed Jane Street Six image. The last was Ry Strauss in death. The four between them had probably been created using age-progression software. One image would theoretically be Ry Strauss at thirty, another at forty, at fifty, at sixty. In some, Strauss had facial hair. In others he did not.

Patricia stares at the photographs. Her eyes are dry now. I am still trying to sort the possibilities in my head. Did Ry Strauss know my uncle Aldrich? I’m assuming so. Did Ry Strauss coerce or blackmail Aldrich or my family into giving him substantial financial assistance? Again I’ll assume that it was an affirmative. So what happened next? Why the art heist? Why kill Aldrich? Why kidnap Patricia?

What am I missing?

“I don’t know,” Patricia says with a shake of her head. “I could have seen this man years ago. The kidnapper always wore a mask, but this could be him.”

PT puts the images away. “After you escaped, you found a way to turn your personal tragedy into some good.”

It is a compliment, of course. The words, that is. The tone, however, tells a different story. We seem to be at this interrogation’s conclusion, but there is still something hanging in the air. I have found that in these circumstances, it is best not to force it.

“To be clear,” PT says, “I’m talking about your creating the Abeona Shelter.”

She wants to move this along, so she says, “Thank you.”

“May I ask how you came up with the name?”

“The name?”

“Abeona.”

I snap, “Why, PT?”

I instantly regret it. PT is no fool. He doesn’t ask dumb or pointless questions. I cannot see how the name of her shelters could possibly matter, but I know that his interrogatory here is not a casual one.

“Abeona is the Roman Goddess of Safe Passage,” Patricia explains. “When a child first leaves from home, Abeona is there to protect and guide them.”

PT nods. “And your logo, the butterfly with what looks like eyes on the wing.”

“A Tisiphone abeona,” Patricia says, as though she has answered this question a thousand times, which she probably has.

“Yes,” PT says. “But how did you come up with it?”

“Come up with what?”

“The idea of using the Roman goddess Abeona and the Tisiphone abeona butterfly logo. Was it your idea?”

“It was.”

“Did you study ancient Roman religions? Were you, I don’t know, a collector of butterflies?” PT leans forward, and suddenly his tone is inviting, kind. “What inspired you?”

I am trying to read Patricia’s expression right now, but the signals are mixed. Her face has lost color. I see confusion. I see fear. I see what might be some sort of dawning realization, but really, who can tell?

“I don’t know,” Patricia says in a distant tone I don’t think I’ve ever heard come from her.

PT nods as though he understands. With his eyes still on Patricia, he stretches his hand toward Max. Max is ready and drops the sheet into his hand. PT slowly and almost tenderly hands it to her. I look over his shoulder. It’s a photograph of a forearm. And on the forearm is a tattoo of that logo—a Tisiphone abeona butterfly.