Page 92 of The Angel Maker

The one who looked after people.

When he passed her his phone, she flicked through until she found the contact number for Chris and then dialed it. The call went to voice mail.

“His phone is turned off,” she said.

“I already tried.”

“So I’ll send him a message.”

Alderson sounded alarmed. “Don’t read—”

“I’m really not interested.”

She opened up the SMS conversation between Alderson and Chris. Her brother’s phone might have been turned off right now, but if whoever had taken him wanted the book that badly, then perhaps they would switch it back on again at some point.

I have the book, she typed.We need to talk.

She hesitated for a moment.

And then decided to be forceful.

Hurt him and I’ll burn it.

She pressed send and put the phone on the table beside her. Alderson stared at it, as though thinking of asking for it back, then clearly decided it was better to let her handle this.

Katie wished she felt half as confident about that as he did.

“So now what?” he said.

“Now,” she said, “we wait.”

Which is what they did.

Every now and then she checked the phone, but there was no response to the text she’d sent. At one point, Alderson asked if it was safe for him to go outside for a cigarette. She thought about it and decided it probablywould be: if anybody was going to find them here, it wouldn’t be because they randomly spotted him skulking outside. He was gone awhile, but she wasn’t worried. She figured he was probably chain-smoking—loading up for the night—and being alone gave her a chance to think. Not just about everything he’d told her, although she was still trying to make sense of that, but about her life up until now, and how the events of the past few days had knocked it off course and brought her here.

To this hotel room. To this situation.

And while she didn’t properly understandthosethoughts either, they gave her an odd, incongruous feeling. She was frightened, yes. She was scared for her family. And she also knew she was in real trouble after running from the police. But there was also a strange kind ofrelief. It was like a lever had been pulled that had unexpectedly released her from rails she had been dutifully following without even realizing.

Like she had a chance to put something rightbeforeit went wrong.

Alderson hooked the chain on the door when he came back, for all the good that was likely to do them. Then he lay down on his bed with his hands beneath his head and stared up at the ceiling.

“I just want Chris back,” he said quietly.

“I know.”

“I keep kicking myself. If only I’d done this. If only I’d done that.”

I know the feeling, Katie thought. He sounded so despondent that she wanted to console him, but she knew there was nothing she could say that would make him feel better. The past was sealed away. All you could do was your best in the world it had brought you to.

Which reminded her of something.

“I liked your painting, by the way,” she said.

“My painting?”

“The one of you and Chris. The one made up of lots of smaller paintings. I know it wasn’t quite finished, but I thought it was lovely. And maybe that’s something to cling to, you know? That while you might have made some mistakes along the way, you also made lots ofrightdecisions too.”

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