Page 432 of Cold Case, Warm Hearts

“Hank.” The name was a groan from his lips. Jacob coughed. The movement caused a spasm in his gut that tore through him like a laser. A tear rolled down his face.

“Shut up.” Hank shook his hands and paced, not looking at Jacob or Mona.

Jacob didn’t want to put it together. He didn’t want to realize how blind he’d been, how stupid. He’d trusted Hank. Maybe some sense of self-preservation had him hold back and keep the relationship the way it had always been. Or it was normal because they were two guys. But Jacob had never shared the real stuff with Hank, who had enough going on as a detective.

He’d told himself Hank didn’t need his drama. That they didn’t need to rehash what’d happened to him continually.

He’d ignored any sign of instability in his friend. Kept things surface level. Held back. Used the friendship as a lifeline and let the status quo stay as it was for years. He pretended he did the right thing, as though what they had when they hung out was about supporting Hank over Becca’s death.

Jacob knew what this place was.

“This is what you do when you’re ‘hunting’?”

Hank glanced over, anger flaring in his eyes.

“This is your cabin, right?” It wasn’t the original ones, as those had been renovated. “You told me you were going to buy the ones where we were held, but that you got outbid. I figured you wanted to burn them all down. But that wasn’t it, was it?”

Someone there that night, one of the survivors, had been Ivan Damen’s protégé. Jacob knew it wasn’t him or Addie, and Becca had died.

“Tell me how Becca died.”

Hank strode to the wall and kicked a hole in the drywall. Jacob thought it was only a random outburst until he saw behind the sheetrock.

“If you’re going to recreate what happened, I’d think you need Addie.”

“Next best thing,” Hank muttered as he pulled drywall away, exposing a duct normally covered by a vent. The kind of vent that insects had poured out of when Jacob had been trapped with Addie.

They’d both suffered hundreds of bug bites, tied to chairs in the center of the room. After they passed out, they’d woken up untied. No bugs in sight. As soon as both were fully awake, Ivan Damen had pumped music through speakers in the top corners of the wall. So loud it gave them hearing damage even with their hands over their ears.

Until they nearly went mad with the fear.

Maybe that was what’d happened to Hank. Instead of the outcome Jacob and Addie had reached, Hank might have made a deal with the devil to get himself out.

Who knew how he’d reacted? People made emotional decisions under duress. Torture victims said whatever their captors wanted them to say just to make the pain stop.

It could be that Hank was simply a victim like Jacob and Addie—and Becca—who had succumbed to the will of his captor. Damen could’ve messed with his head, just in a different way than he’d done with Jacob.

Hank had been twisted.

“I’m sorry he hurt you.”

Hank whirled around and threw something. Jacob braced. Pain tore through his abdomen, and a knife embedded in the wall beside him.

He didn’t even have the strength to reach for it.

“Why are you doing this? We’re friends. Mona is a kid just like we were.” Hank didn’t even look like he was paying attention. “You’re going to destroy her life, just like ours were?”

Jacob looked at the knife.

His hands were behind his back. He couldn’t even reach over to grab it.

Hank didn’t look at him. He just stalked over and pulled the knife from the wall.

“Is this because she knows too much about Celia and Austin?”

Hank had to know the police wouldn’t be able to ignore something like this. He was never going to get away with it.

“You want them to find you. Catch you.”

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