Page 30 of Absent Feeling

“Idon’t know,” Ashley said. “It’s possible. What happened to me was wrong. Howmany other people has this happened to?”

Itwas both frustrating and a glimmer of hope. Frustrating because the alibi wasthe end of Ashley Seaver as a potential suspect, but he had a point. How manyother peoplewerethere out there who thought that they’d been wrongly incarceratedin a psychiatric facility because of the Rorschach test?

“It’snot people like me you need to watch out for,” Ashley said. “It’s the peoplewho like the Rorschach test who are the dangerous ones. I bet one ofthoseisthe killer you’re looking for.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

ForColm, staying hidden was just another kind of puzzle to create. It was aboutleaving hints in all the wrong directions, about building up layers that heknew the authorities would never be able to unpick.

Currently,he was in a safehouse that he’d put in place for exactly this kind ofeventuality. Colm liked to plan ahead. The safehouse was on the highest floorof a rundown apartment block in DC. Ordinarily, he wouldn’t have stayed inanywhere that high up because it limited his options for escape, but he’dalready plotted out a route across the surrounding rooftops that gave him theoption to come down to street level at any one of half a dozen differentlocations.

Itwas secure enough for now, although he would move on soon enough. This was a placeto hide, not one from which to conduct the kind of puzzle construction that hehad in mind. Forthat,Colm would need specialist equipment.

Thatmeant money, so he was currently in the process of discretely draining fundsfrom a number of hidden online accounts into a fresh one that he had set up specificallyfor his latest endeavor. Most of the hidden accounts were even ones thatbelonged to him, although there were a couple where people simply hadn’t madetheir passwords complex enough.

Forthe next part, Colm was careful to route his internet access through a dozendifferent countries, not wanting anything to lead back to him. Of course, anyaccess meant a degree of exposure, but that was a game in itself, trying to createlayers of puzzles so complex that he would be long gone before the US Marshalseven got close.

Colmsearched for Amber Young, determined to find out more about her. He alreadyknew a lot. He’d been determined to learn about her, had even played through someof the puzzles she’d set. There had been something fresh about those, somethingthat had caught Colm’s interest. Of course, she’d obviously been holding backfor most of them, trying to persuade the stupid people of Washington that theyweren’t so stupid after all. But there were a couple where she’d let slip whatshe could do, where she’d set the puzzles that she clearlywantedtoset, unhindered by the efforts of the editors to hold her back.

Colmfound those fascinating. They made him feel alive. They made himfeel,whenordinarily the world seemed so grey and boring.

Colmhad to tear himself away from the puzzles to focus on a more immediatequestion: locating Amber Young. TheWashington Newsdidn’t publish theaddresses of its staff, for obvious reasons, and it didn’t seem to be somethingthat she’d been foolish enough to put up online.

Amberwasn’t foolish. Anything but. It was what made her so interesting.

Evenso, Colm had his ways. Public records were worth their weight in gold, ofcourse. It didn’t take Colm long to find an address for her. And he knew thatAmber was currently elsewhere because the quickest of searches showed all thenews reports that were coming out about her working on the case in Guisborough.

Itseemed like the perfect opportunity to go see the place where Amber lived.

*

ReachingAmber Young’s apartment without being spotted or leaving a trail that otherscould follow proved to be an interesting puzzle for Colm. He’d had to find waysto disguise his features that wouldn’t themselves draw attention. He’d had tofind routes that avoided the watching gaze of cameras, or which let him passthem without his features being visible in a way that would help facialrecognition technology.

Enteringthe apartment building was easier because Colm simply timed his approach tocoincide with someone with a key, following them in and brushing past, movingquickly. So long as he looked like he knew where he was going, he was sure thathe wouldn’t be challenged.

Andif he were, well, he had weapons hidden just in case.

Colmreached Amber’s door without incident, looked around to make sure that no onewas watching, and then quickly picked the lock. It wasn’t a good lock, but hedidn’t blame Amber for presenting him with too weak a puzzle. That one was downto the building’s management, not her.

Theinterior of her apartment opened up to Colm like a prize. And itwasaprize, a treasure trove of puzzles and half-made designs. With carefully glovedhands, Colm shut the door behind himself and started to move through theapartment.

Therewere puzzles everywhere. Some were other people’s, things Colm recognized, puzzlesthat Amber clearly kept around for the joy of solving them. There were stacksof board games, a couple of chess sets out in the open, with positions set upin the middle of puzzles. Colm stood there for more than a minute in front ofthem, making sure that he had the solutions. He resisted the temptation to makethe next move in each of the puzzles as a clue to Amber. That would be thefirst move in a different kind of game between them, and Colm wanted to find adifferent way to make that move.

Colmturned his attention then from the puzzles that Amber had collected to the onesshe was working on. They were much more interesting. It was like looking intothe interior of her mind, seeing how she thought. There was a breadth andimagination to her work that impressed him, from complex word problems tocollections of quiz questions and a design for a puzzle box that seemed to haveseveral interesting twists on the approach. Colm took photographs of the moreinteresting ideas, not to steal them, but perhaps because imitation couldbecome the sincerest form of flattery.

Colmcontinued to make his way through the apartment, through to the bedroom. Colmsuspected that he should have felt something intimate about this moment, but tohim, all of this was intimate. It was a chance to engage with another mind that,unlike those in the rest of the world, did not bore him.

Colmsaw something on a small bedside table. A diary? Was Amber Young the kind ofwoman who would disappoint him by keeping a journal full of bad poetry and thoughtsabout the men she liked?

Colmcouldn’t keep himself from flicking through that journal, and he was instantlyglad that he did so. Oh, there were the stream of consciousness ramblings he’dbeen expecting, the diary notes about her worries, but interspersed with themwere the designs and the drawings, the ideas that had clearly come to her inthe night that she absolutely had to get down. There were the seeds of puzzleideas there, fragments of them that spoke to Colm. He knew this momentperfectly: when the idea finally fit into place, when he finally saw how allthe pieces of a puzzle worked with one another.

Itwas beautiful, and it was exactly what he’d been looking for.

Carefully,precisely, Colm tucked the journal under his jacket. He picked his way backthrough the apartment, making sure that he left everything exactly as he hadfound it. He let himself out and locked the door behind him.

Itwas time for him and Amber Young to play a game.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

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