"Kayla was a fighter. Maybe she wouldn't go peacefully."

Amanda held up her hands. "We can talk in circles like this all morning and it won't get us anywhere. I heard the proof of life from the call yesterday. The girl sounded terrified. Not movie terrified, not fake, this-is-how-I-think-I-should-sound-when-I'm-trying-to-sound-terrified terrified. She was making the sorts of noises you only make when you know that you are about to die."

Will let her words sink in. Amanda was right. They had both heard true fear before—more times than either of them cared to remember. Emma Campano had not been acting. There was an ungodly tremble to her voice, a harsh rasp to her breathing. You couldn't make that up. Absolute terror was a secret language you only learned by experience.

Will asked, "Was there any background noise on Emma's part of the tape?"

"They say it'll be noon at the soonest before they have anything substantive. Preliminarily, there's traffic noise, a dog barking. The girl was in an enclosed area when her part of the recording was made."

"So he drove her somewhere, took her out of the car, then made the recording."

"That tells us that the ransom demand wasn't an afterthought. We've seen how these guys work before. They get heated up, they take the girl, they rape her, they kill her, and then they make their plan. This was thought out from the beginning. Before he stepped foot in that house, he bought rope and duct tape. He found a knife. He had a place picked out where he knew he could take her."

"If I were a more optimistic person, I would say that proves she's still alive."

"That was yesterday," Amanda reminded him. "We'll know about today in a little over two and a half hours."

"Was the lab able to tell anything about the kidnapper's voice?"

"You were right about him taping it off a computer and playing it back over the phone." She read from one of the notes, " ‘The VoiceOver utility is a standard feature found in Apple Macintosh's universal access software. The voice selected by the caller is called Bahh.' " She looked up from the note. "So that narrows our suspect pool down to several million smug Apple computer owners."

"Kayla Alexander's parents should be—"

"They're back," she interrupted. "And you're not to go within a hundred miles of them without an attorney."

"Why?"

"They're filing lawsuits against Westfield Academy, the Campanos and the Atlanta Police Department. I'm sure as soon as they realize we're on the case, they'll slap us with one, too."

"On what grounds?"

"The school couldn't keep the girl from leaving, the Campanos couldn't keep the girl from dying and the police department couldn't find their asses if you drew them a map."

Caroline called from her office, "Evan Bernard is on line three."

Will told Amanda, "Please let me handle this."

"Are you trying to redeem yourself?"

"I'm trying not to piss off the man who's trying to help us."

"Don't be ridiculous." She pressed the speakerphone button. "Mr. Bernard, this is Amanda Wagner, I'm the deputy director of the special criminal apprehension team. I've got agent Will Trent here with me. Thank you so much for helping us this morning."

"No problem," he answered. "The policeman you sent came with his lights and siren blaring right up to the front door." He gave a forced chuckle. "I have to admit, it was a little disconcerting."

Amanda smiled her grandmotherly smile. "Consider it incentive to keep your nose clean."

Will shook his head at the silence on the other end of the line. He took over the call, asking, "Mr. Bernard, can you give us your impression of the letters?"

"I have to admit, I find them curious."

"Can you explain why?"

"The first one, which I would read as ‘she belongs to me,' just doesn't ring true. I told you yesterday that each dyslexic is different, and perhaps you'd be better off talking to a linguist for regional dialect and such, but in my opinion, you're dealing with a phonetic speller, not a dyslexic."

Will asked, "How can you be sure?"

"Well, I'm not." He made a thinking noise. "All I can speak from is my own experience. With a dyslexic, I would expect the letters to be mixed up, not just misspelled or run together. Transposition is the most notable characteristic. For instance, Emma continually transposed the ‘e' and ‘l' in help, spelling it ‘h-l-e-p.' "

Amanda did nothing to hide her impatience. "What about the other ones?"

"The second one, ‘rapist,' is correct, of course, but the third one, the ‘lev her along' for ‘leave her alone'—and again, let me qualify this by saying that each person is different—but the ‘along' seems odd. Typically, you would not expect to find the ‘g' there. It's what I would call a heavy letter, meaning it has a definitive sound within a word. You often see it used for ‘j' or a ‘j' used in its place, but you never see it just thrown in for no reason." He made the thinking noise again. "But then the ‘lev' gives me pause."

Will was having a hard time following all the spelling, but he still asked, "Why is that?"

"Because, generally, that's a dyslexic spelling. It's the word in its purest form. No run-on, no ‘g' thrown in for effect. I would assume that spell-check added it there."

"So, what's your opinion? Is someone trying to appear dyslexic or do they really have the disorder?"

"Well..." The man hesitated. "I'm not a doctor. I'm a reading teacher. But if you were to put a gun to my head, I'd say that you are looking at the work of an adult, probably of average intelligence, who simply never learned basic reading skills."

Will looked up at Amanda and found her staring back at him. They were both unused to getting straight answers. Just to clarify, Will asked, "You don't think this person has some sort of reading disability?"

"You asked for my honest opinion and I gave it to you. I would say that the person who wrote these letters never learned how to properly read or spell. At best, they're on a second- or third-grade level."

Amanda was obviously skeptical. "How is that possible?"

"I saw it more when I taught in the public school system, but, it happens. Kids with all kinds of reading problems can slip through the cracks. You try to help them, but there's nothing you can really do. That's one of the reasons I moved to Westfield."

In the background, they heard the class bell ring.

Bernard said, "I'm sorry, but I need to get to class. I can get someone to cover if you—"

"That's okay," Will told him. "Thank you for your time. If you could give those notes back to the patrolman who gave them to you?"

"Of course. Please call me if anything else comes up. I wish I could have been more help to you."

"You were very helpful," Will told him. "I would appreciate if you kept this conversation to yourself. We don't want to do anything to jeopardize Emma's situation."