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sense of pity.
    What possibly could have caused this?
    “They gave me the poker,” he continued, his eyes wide and distant.
    “They gave you—? Why—?”
    “And they brought me to her. And I realized, she was the one with the answers. She was the one with the information. They wanted something from her. But she just watched … she just watched me do it, and she cried … but they asked her the same questions, and she still wouldn’t answer them. She wouldn’t answer them.” His voice hiccupped, his face flushing with sudden anger. “She let them do this to me.”
    Struggling to gulp, Scarlet finished off the wrapping and leaned against the mattress, her legs beginning to tremble. “Grand-mère? You saw her?”
    His attention flashed back to her, crazed again. “They had me for a week and then they just let me go. They could tell she didn’t care about me. She wouldn’t give in for me. ”
    Without warning, he pushed forward and clambered toward Scarlet on his knees, grasping her arms. She tried to shrink away but he held her firm, his fingernails digging into her skin. “What is it, Scar? What’s so important? More important than her own son?”
    “Dad, you have to calm down. You have to tell me where she is.” Her thoughts stammered. “Where is she? Who has her? Why? ”
    Her father’s eyes searched her, panicked and shimmering. Slowly, he shook his head and dropped his attention to the floor. “She’s hiding something,” he mumbled. “I want to know what it is. What is she hiding, Scar? Where is it?”
    He turned to rustle through a drawer of old cotton shirts that had clearly already been riffled through. He was sweating now, his hair damp around his ears.
    Scarlet used the bed frame to hoist herself onto the mattress. “Dad, please.” She tried to sound soothing, though her heart was thumping so hard it hurt. “Where is she?”
    “Don’t know.” He dug his fingernails into the space between the molding and the wall. “I was at a bar in Paris. They must have drugged my drink, because next I woke up in a dark room. It smelled damp, musty.” He sniffed. “They drugged me when they let me go too. One minute I was in that dark room, then I was here. I woke up in the cornfield.”
    With a shudder, Scarlet pulled her hands through her hair until the curls knotted up around them. They’d brought him here, to the same place they’d kidnapped her grandmother. Why? Did these people know that Scarlet was his only family—did they think she would be the best person to take care of him?
    That didn’t make any sense. Clearly they weren’t worried about her dad’s well-being. So what else? Was leaving him here a message to her? A threat?
    “You must remember something,” she said, her voice taking on a tinge of desperation. “Something about the room, or something someone said? Did you get a good look at them? Could you describe one of them to a profiler? Anything? ”
    “Was drugged,” he said, quickly, but then his brow drew together as he struggled to think. He made to touch his burn marks, but then let his hand fall into his lap. “Wouldn’t let me see them.”
    Scarlet barely resisted the urge to shake him and scream that he had to think harder. “Did they blindfold you?”
    “No.” He squinted. “I was afraid to look.”
    Frustrated tears were beginning to sting her eyes and Scarlet tilted her head back, gulping down patient breaths. Her worst fears, those sneaking, horrible suspicions, were true.
    Her grandmother had been kidnapped. Not just kidnapped, but kidnapped by cruel, brutal people. Were they harming her as they’d harmed her son? What would they do to her? What did they want?
    Ransom?
    But why hadn’t they asked Scarlet for anything yet? And why had they taken her father too, but then let him go? It didn’t make sense.
    Terror clouded her thoughts as all the possible horrors streamed through her imagination. Torture and burning and dark rooms …
    “What did you