Page 166 of Hunting Pretty

What I discovered at the bottom of the stairs made me want to scream.

The basement was split up into two rooms.

In the first room, I had to pick yet another solid metal door.

Inside, there was a single bed with pink sheets on it. On a bookshelf were brand-new books, their spines uncracked, and several dolls, brand new, the plastic smell still lingering. There was also a small closet filled with frilly pastel dresses.

I fingered the material. Brand-new dresses. With price tags still on them.

It might have been a lovely little girl’s room if it not for the fact that this basement room had no windows, the walls made of thick concrete and there being a security camera positioned above the door.

I stared at this bedroom—no, this prison—my mind spinning.

What the fuck? Did Dr. Vale make his daughter sleep down here?

Or… a chillier thought crossed my mind. Did Dr. Vale plan on keeping a girl down here?

Had he kept girls down here before?

Had Liath spent time in here?

I closed the door and kept going.

The second room was locked as well. But the door wasn’t solid metal.

The second room was set up like a small study, a computer linked up to a large-screen TV and stacks of CD disks.

I scanned the disks, my blood going cold when I realized they were all girls’ names and dates.

Clients.

Dr. Vale had been taping his clients.

A name jumped out at me.

Liath Byrne.

And then I found the other names.

Sarah Hickey.

Keela Hawkins.

The two other missing Darkmoor girls.

They’d all been clients of Dr. Vale. How had no one put this together?

The next name I found made my blood run cold.

Ava McKinsey.

Dr. Vale had been treating all three of the missing girls.

And Ava was next.

I should have left then. But I couldn’t leave these tapes behind. There was something here. Evidence.

God, there were so many tapes. It’d take me forever to go through them.

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