Page 13 of If Anything Happens To Me

“I don’t know,” she said, putting her hands over her ears. “I don’t know!” Then staring at me, she added, “He was nice at first. I liked him. I do remember that.”

“Did you go with him willingly?” I asked.

“I don’t think so,” she said. “I would have, at first. He seemed like someone I could trust. But then he changed into a monster.”

“Iris, we have to call Detective Tyrone,” I said firmly. “We need to find out who did this to you. And that will help find my sister’s murderer. It has to be the same person, right? To put you in the same grave where she was buried? He must have thought you were dead—that he had killed you, like he killed Eloise.”

My mind went white-hot with rage, terror, grief. Who was he? How could he have taken Iris and her sister? And Eloise?

“I played dead,” Iris went on. “I remember that part now. It wasn’t hard because he’d given me those drugs, knocked me out. He thought I wouldn’t wake up, but I did.” Slowly she touched two spots on either side of her head. I could see faint pink circles under her fingertips. “Sticky,” she said softly. “It feels like glue.”

“Who would put glue on your head?” I asked.

“Him,” she said. “He did.”

“Why? What does he look like?” I asked.

“I can’t see him,” she said. “His face is a blur.”

“Think, Iris. It’s in there, you just have to bring it up.”

She squeezed her eyes tight, trying to remember. Then she opened her eyes. “I can hear his voice. I can’t get it out of my mind.”

“You’d recognize it if you heard it again?” I asked.

“Yes, definitely.”

“That’s good,” I said. I wondered what his voice sounded like, and I thought of the terror it must have caused Eloise. “Iris, we need to call the police. To rescue Hayley. To get her away from him.”

“Oli,” Iris said. “I can still see the words I told you about:No Police. And now I know why. He said that to us over and over. That if we tried to escape, and if one of us ever managed to, and told the police about him, he would kill the other. If you call the police, my sister will die. Please, Oli.”

I took that in. Iris seemed clear now, levelheaded. I thought of Dr. Hirsch and what she had told me about trauma reactions. I knew it was possible to block out the worst—violence, terror—and I realized that that was why Iris had so much memory loss. But her emotions were intact. She was positive that whoever was holding Hayley would murder her, and her certitude convinced me.

I knew he was capable of it, because he had done it to Eloise.

“I’m going to find my sister myself,” Iris said.

“How can we do that?” I asked.

Iris stared at me. “You said ‘we.’?”

“Of course I’ll help you,” I said. “Did you think I wouldn’t?”

Something Iris had said before made me think there had been more than one kidnapper.

“You mentioned the room wheretheykept you,” I said. “So it wasn’t just him? There was someone else?”

“I’m picturing someone in a white dress,” Iris said. “Or maybe I was thinking of the paintings of those girls.” She paused. “If only I could rememberwhenhe took us, and how. I feel as if we were in the back of a truck, or a van, or something. And he took us somewhere strange. It wasn’t a normal room.” She sighed. “It’s still blurry.”

“We just need a clue of where to start,” I said. I was trying to put together everything we knew so far, even the barest hints.

He was nice at first.

She thought she could trust him.

But then he took them, Iris and her sister.

Held them in some room with paintings.

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