Showtime

Her scream echoed shrilly off the walls.

Whimpering, Laila embraced her body.

Feeling guilty pushed her neck hard.

She felt unable to lift her head.

"I failed, as I failed with Jessica." Her whole body trembled, as if convulsed.

Danielle and all the others.

Laila was ashamed of her arrogance.

Although Danielle's case gave no indication of her kidnapper, Laila had never given up looking for clues and details.

Only over three years after Danielle's kidnapping, Laila had been hired by a group of parents to seek their children.

The group had joined forces in an internet forum for self-help groups.

Her staff had cautiously established contact and started an initial, cautious survey.

Laila's right hand met with the parent group.

At this first meeting they had hesitantly reported on one thing in common: their stay in Italy.

With this meager information, Laila had spent nearly three months compiling and comparing detailed accounts of the last two years of all seven families.

The showcases at Summersby's store were, above all, not remembered by the fathers.

So it took another three months for the result, the only really hot track, Summersby's store, to flicker on her computer screen with a 65% matchcode.

A re-interview of the fathers interviewed revealed that everyone could remember Summersby and its exceptional merchandise presentation.

Laila changed the matchcode to 100%.

Following an inner inspiration, she called Danielle's father in Switzerland and asked him the same question.

Match! The banker could still remember the whining Danielle and her d.e.s.i.r.e to own a dog.

Laila flew to Italy and spent another two frustrating and inconclusive months observing Summersby's life and shop.

By the success rate of the past orders Laila had become careless and self-sufficient.

God, she was good.

Many children returned to the w.o.m.b of their families, though not intact, but at least alive.

Always the molesters and killers were brutally executed by her creativity and ingenuity.

For her hard-nosed and interested clients, she shot photos of the carnage.

Most of the time, however, Laila was left alone with the horror visions and encountered their disfigured victims in the depths of their own nightmares.

But if you think that your own actions and your own person are perfect, then yes, you lose the grip and hover over things.

Summersby brought Laila back to the bottom of the facts.

The greasy accountant blunder had shown her thoroughly.

She wanted to ensnare, spy on, and ultimately kill him.

Despite the heavy weight on her neck, Laila lifted her head and forced herself to look into the faces of the boys and girls.

She recognized all seven children besides Danielle, whose parents had trusted Laila.

Some faces did not say anything to her, some knew her from the press articles that reported her disappearance.

The families of the nameless also mourned or fell into despair.

Laila thought of her own grief for Jessica and the satisfying feeling as she had killed her tormentor. The escape from Summersby's bas.e.m.e.nt was out of the question under any circ.u.mstances.

Laila smiled demonically.

She had an idea.

While driving Laila was lying in the backseat and always woke up groaning loudly.

At some point they reached Miguel's and Anita's house.

Anita pushed Laila onto a chair in the kitchen.

Soon it smelled of delicious coffee.

Anita pushed a stuffed cup under her nose and disappeared upstairs to throw some clothes into the suitcase.

As he did so, Miguel paced up and down the living room, keeping his ear on the phone, fixing everything for her escape from Mexico.

Laila saw all the excitement around him as if through a veil.

She looked around at Anita's country kitchen.

The cabinets were made of warm, honey-colored wood and stretched along two walls in an L-shape.

The walls were painted in a warm orange and formed a harmonious unity with the terracotta tiles. Everywhere stood pots of fresh herbs and blue chickens made of clay, which Anita herself produced and painted in her free time.

A hint of lavender was in the air.

A clean and peaceful ensemble in which Laila felt strangely out of place.

Laila leaned back in her coffee cup and looked at her dirty and torn prison clothes.

On her left hand she still saw faint traces of Lapuente's dried blood.

No question, she had to look like a foreign body in this kitchen.

Laila felt a compulsive d.e.s.i.r.e to rip off her clothes and scrub her skin with soap to remove the last traces of the previous night.

She guessed that the traces in her mind and soul were not easily washed away.

Laila got up and put the empty cup in Anita's sink.

For a long time she looked through the large windows and looked at the sky, bathed in orange-red light by the first rays of sunshine.

The light blue patches remotely reminded Brutus of irritating eye color.

Her stomach cramped.

Was he dead? She had shot him in the c.h.e.s.t at close range.

Laila estimated his chances of survival at less than 10%.

Even a colossus like Brutus had to succ.u.mb to these injuries.