Page 33 of Catching Fire

Around her, all three of them motioned that they didn’t know.

Pacing the room now, she found the motion of her feet helped quell the churning of her brain. She asked another question. “How long does it usually take from when the person goes missing until the body turns up?”

No one had the answer to this either. She would have to figure it all out.

She stopped moving, looked up at her ceiling and did some quick math in her head. “There have been two recent bodies. The one they found before Geller was killed and the one associated with my ‘hello’ note.”

Pushing back on the churn in her stomach that she had a second note and no body, Seline kept working her way forward.

“What about before that?” Sebastian asked, popping to his own feet as he thought.

“It doesn’t matter before that. Before that he was taking at least some of them to the cabin, we need to know where he’s taking them after that, so probably only the two most recent cases matter.”

“Gotcha,” he replied but didn’t look at her. Maggie and Kalan remained seated, but she could see from the way Maggie was almost preternaturally still and the way that Kalan tapped his thumbs together and bounced his knee that both were very much in thought.

She grabbed her phone and started looking up what she could. In a few minutes she had enough news reports to put a little info together.

“It was Friday night that the first victim disappeared. They found her Sunday morning.”

“So, thirty-six hours?” Kalan asked.

“Wait.” She took a moment, pulled another article up and amended that. “The M.E. declared time of death at least by Saturday night. So that victim had less than twenty-four hours.”

Then there was the first note Seline had gotten, the one that saidhello. She did the math quickly on that one. “The second one was less than fourteen hours from when she went missing to when the autopsy declared she’d been put in the water, still slightly alive.”

That made Seline shudder. Sanders was a pro—if a serial killer could be called such a thing. But he’d missed with that one. Before that, he’d always put the bodies into the water already dead … this one had water in her lungs. She’d breathed it inafterbeing left to be found. Seline didn’t mention how she’d come to the number but reiterated, “Fourteen hours was the longest he could have had her.”

“What about the one with the second note, the third body from this cycle?” Maggie’s voice was tentative. No one had wanted to bring it up.

The one with my initials.

But Maggie’s question triggered her thoughts and the pieces pulled together into a single picture. “It took a long time to find that body. Could he have kept her alive longer?”

“Or—” Kalan’s voice was concerningly serious. “—maybe he gave you the note before he had someone.”

Seline looked to Kalan. “Like mind games? That just by leaving the note for me, he made all of us afraid? He was making the FBI look for a body that didn’t even exist yet?”

“It's a good ploy,” Maggie conceded with a heavy sigh. “The FBI said he wants to torment us. That works.”

It was all a good way to torture her, Seline thought. But she went back to the one thing she now knew. “The one time window I know is fourteen hours. So …”

She pulled out her own laptop now and settled herself where Verner had been the center of attention. Now she was the one clicking keys and pulling up images.

“His cabin was here.” She pointed to her screen. “Almost two hours away.”

“Three by water,” Maggie added softly, having made that trip herself, though she said she didn't remember most of it.

“So a long round trip isn’t out of the question for him. It doesn’t have to be a location nearby.” She thought it through. “Fourteen hours means it could be seven hours out and seven hours back. That gives us a very big radius from where he takes them.”

But Kalan was shaking his head at her as he sank onto the couch next to her. His arm brushed hers, his leg and hip pressed against hers, but if he noticed he didn’t show it. At least he didn’t? visibly pull away in front of her friends. Seline reminded herself she didn’t have time to pine over a man who was only pretending to date her.

“I hate to be the bearer of really shitty news, but there's evidence that he tortures them—for quite some time. So he needs a minimum of four to six hours with his victims at this location.”

Seline couldn't help it. She was glad for the information, not because of what Sanders was probably doing to Marina right now but because it gave them a much better timeframe.

“You’re right. Fourteen hours minus six is eight. A trip out and back gives us a four-hour radius from here.” She'd narrowed the map a little from her initial too-big radius around Redemption and Lincoln. The new one was still too big though. “What we need to know now, is if Sanders owns any other land within this circle.”

The others were nodding along. Sebastian was shaking one finger. “He needs to own the place or at least have unfettered access to it! For what he’s doing, if it’s not a place he owns or controls, someone will find it and figure him out. He’s too smart for that.”

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