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boy, Corey could have looked the part.
    He lived with his father and was a latchkey kid.
    The crime team had the photographs from the box found at Billingsly’s place and were comparing them to the database for NCMEC, National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. CSI had also scoured Billingsly’s property in search of graves or bodies, but had come up empty.
    A relief. But that didn’t mean he hadn’t kidnapped others and handed them off to his contact.
    It was still anyone’s guess where they had gone from there.

    Amelia gulped in a big breath as the prison guard escorted her to the visitor’s room. It was cold. Empty. The table where she sat was scarred with crude words.
    She knotted her hands on top of it, studying her wrists where, at one time, she’d slashed them in an attempt to end her own misery.
    So much of her life had been wasted because of Arthur Blackwood and this woman.
    She hadn’t seen or spoken to Ms. Lettie since the woman’s arrest. She was the one person Amelia had trusted, the one she thought was protecting her from the Commander.
    Instead, Ms. Lettie had protected the Commander and the secrecy of the project by keeping Amelia drugged. As long as her mind was too foggy to remember the truth, her behavior was too disturbed and erratic for anyone to believe her.
    Amelia had been shocked to learn the truth about her caretaker.
    Sadie had suggested that it might be cathartic for her to confront Ms. Lettie, but the thought of facing the woman who’d betrayed her had hurt too much.
    Now she had no choice.
    The door squeaked open, and Ms. Lettie shuffled in, shackles around her bony ankles, her wrinkled hands cuffed. She’d aged drastically since Amelia had last seen her.
    The orange prison uniform hung on her thin shoulders. Her hair had grayed and was pulled back in a bun at the nape of her neck, accentuating the sagging skin of her neck and chin.
    Her skin looked pale, liver spotted, and held a yellowish cast, and dark circles made her eyes look sunken and weak, like she was hollowed out.
    When she looked up at Amelia, a spark of anger flared. “I figured you’d eventually come.”
    In spite of her anger, Ms. Lettie’s voice sounded worn and defeated, old as if she might be ill.
    Amelia summoned her courage. “You owe me some answers.”
    Ms. Lettie studied her for a moment, then dropped into the metal chair opposite her, cuffs jangling. The guard looked at Amelia, a nd she gestured that she was okay. The guard nodded, then assumed his position beside the door.
    “Funny, you know,” Ms. Lettie said with a harrumph. “He thinks an old lady like me could fight him.”
    Despite the fact that the woman had betrayed her, Amelia’s heart ached with grief. For years, she’d considered Ms. Lettie a friend.
    That anguish surfaced now. “How could you have done that to me, Ms. Lettie? I loved you. I trusted you.”
    Ms. Lettie looked down at her arthritic hands, her fingers gnarled as she curled them into her palms. “I had my orders.”
    “So I was just an assignment to you? I thought we were family.”
    Ms. Lettie sighed, her false teeth clacking. “I thought it was best you not remember, Amelia. The drugs kept you calm, kept the bad stuff at bay.”
    “The drugs made me crazy,” Amelia said, disgusted. “They made me dissociate so I could never have any kind of normal relationship. Or life.”
    “I’m sorry,” Ms. Lettie said. “I . . . there was nothing I could do.”
    “That’s your excuse?”
    Ms. Lettie looked up at her with sad eyes. “What do you want from me, Amelia?”
    She wanted to know that she was sorry. But everything about the woman had been a lie. Maybe the Commander had brainwashed or threatened Ms. Lettie as he had the subjects.
    Amelia would never understand her logic or motives.
    “I’ve been undergoing hypnosis and remembering details from the past. I know I had a child.”
    “Amelia—”
    “Don’t lie to me again,” Amelia said. “I saw an