“She wouldn’t listen even after she found out he’d actually passed away?”

“Absolutely not. By that time, Denise was anti-anything-death-related.”

Cookie took a deep breath as if to calm her nerves. “The woman never ceases to amaze me.”

“You should try her meat loaf. It’ll put some pretty coarse hair on your chest.”

She chuckled. “I have enough hair to deal with, thank you very much. I’ll pass on family night at the Davidsons’.”

I shrugged. “Your loss.”

“So, you were four.”

Geez, she was so pushy. “Right. Four. So, my feelings were hurt as usual, and when we drove to the bar where my dad was having a beer, Denise left me on the bench by the kitchen to go tell on me to Dad. I loved it in the kitchen, but I was all mad and hurt, so I decided to run away. When Mr. Dunlop, the cook, wasn’t looking, I snuck out the back.”

“A four-year-old, alone at night, on Central? A parent’s worst nightmare.”

“Yeah, well. I figured I’d show her,” I said. “I wasn’t the brightest four-year-old on Central. Of course, the minute I stepped outside, I changed my mind. Not that I was scared. I don’t get scared like most people. I was just … aware. But before I could dash back inside, a super nice man in a trench coat offered to help me find my stepmother. Oddly, instead of going into the bar where I knew she was, we came into this building.”

“Oh, honey,” she whispered, despair in her voice.

“But nothing much happened,” I said with a lift of my shoulders. “Like I said, Bad saved me.” Trying to make light of a dark situation, I added, “Looking back, I don’t think that man ever planned to help me find my stepmother.”

Cookie reached toward me and wrapped me into a huge, long hug. It made me think of warm fires on winter nights. And, for some reason, roasting marshmallows.

After, like, an hour and twenty-seven minutes, I mumbled, “Can’t … breathe.…”

She leaned back with her brows creased in thought. “Is it just me, or does the fact that you live in the same building you were abducted into seem a bit morbid?”

“Pffft. It’s just you,” I said, discounting the entire bizarre, ghoulish thing.

I was so happy she didn’t push for more details. The devil was in the details, and I wasn’t feeling particularly satanic at that moment. “Oh,” I said remembering another incident. “This guy in high school tried to run me over with his dad’s SUV. Bad shoved the vehicle through a store window.” The memory brought a smile to my face.

“Someone tried to run you over in high school?” she asked, appalled.

“Only that one time,” I answered.

She pinched the bridge of her nose, then asked, “So, those are the only times you’ve seen Bad?”

I counted off silently with my fingers. “Yep, that just about covers it.”

“And our job is to figure out how Reyes plays into all of this?”

“Yep again. We should roast marshmallows.”

“Then I feel it my duty,” she continued, unfazed, “as friend and confidante, to analyze in panoramic detail the shower scene.”

I held back a giggle. “I’m not really sure the shower scene plays into this on a salient level. It seems more, I don’t know, nonsalient.”

“Charley,” she said in warning, “spill or die a slow and painful death. Who was in the shower with you? Reyes? The Big Bad? Work with me here.”

“Okay,” I said, acquiescing, “you know that Reyes called me Dutch that night when I was fifteen, right?”

“Right,” she said, clearly impatient to jump to the shower scene.

“And you know about the beautiful man showing up in my dreams every night for the past month, right?”

“Right,” she said, a sigh softening her voice.

“Well, today, Dream Guy wrote Dutch in the condensation on my mirror, and he called me Dutch in the shower.”

“Now we’re talking.” She scooted to the edge of her seat, then stopped abruptly in realization. “So, Dream Guy is Reyes?”

“That’s what I mean. I realized tonight Bad called me Dutch the day I was born.”

She frowned in confusion. “So, who was in the shower?”

I grinned and gazed at her, suddenly in awe of the woman sitting beside me. “You know, I just told you that this big, scary creature follows me around and saves my life every so often and that I remember the day I was born and that I know every language ever spoken, and you have yet to run out of the room screaming. How can you just accept what I say?”

After a long, thoughtful pause, she asked, “Are you purposely trying to change the subject?”

A deep chuckle almost doubled me over. I grabbed my aching ribs and cried out, “Stop! Don’t make me laugh. It hurts.”

“Sorry.”

She wasn’t. I could tell.

“What did you find out from the prison?” I asked, my tearful gaze returning to the screen. “Is Reyes still there? Is he … alive?”

“All the officer could tell me was that Reyes was still listed as an inmate in the prison registry, housed in D Unit. But I have to say, I got the feeling she wasn’t telling me everything.”

“I’m going tomorrow.”

“To the prison?”

“Yes.” I clicked on the personnel files that listed the administrators of the prison and highlighted the picture of Neil Gossett. “I went to school with the deputy warden.”