Survival

30. It's All Over

Stephanie stared down at the metal encompassing her wrists incredulously, pulling back against where they were connected to the table every once in a while, and curiously testing the strength of the chain. Was this for real? It seemed more like something she'd watch on CSI or some other crime show on TV. She'd certainly never imagined herself in this situation, out of all of them.

She'd been alone for a little while, just waiting until the agents actually on the case stationed in the closest field office arrived to question her. The cops who had arrested her had done their job; this wasn't in their skill set.

"Miss Armstrong."

Even the most accommodating man of the law was getting impatient, but Stephanie couldn't help that she couldn't keep her attention focused in a room so closed off, where she was sitting in a cold metal chair with two pairs of eyes hard enough to match. She hadn't been allowed time to recover. Her head still ached viciously and threatened to just explode and be done with it, but unfortunately it hadn't had the chance to yet.

She peeled her eyes away from the painted brick wall, placing them carefully back on the man who sat under the harsh light with her. Unconsciously, she rubbed at the place where the handcuffs were, her thoughts slow and disjointed.

"The sooner you talk to us, the sooner you can go rest. But we need to know what happened before we let anyone go anywhere."

Instead of answering, she found her eyes wandering the contours of his face. Tired. A five o'clock shadow harshly lined his face and dark bags rested above his cheekbones, underneath grey eyes that just made her heart ache as viciously as her head. He ran a hand over his haggard face.

"It'll be easier on you if you just talk to me now, you get that right? The FBI won't be as accommodating. Not with you having been at the center of two of these incidents now."

"I," Stephanie said, pressing the heel of her palm against her forehead. "Do you- do you know who..."

The officer's eyes softened. "I can't discuss what happened to everyone else with you right now."

She nodded, hating that tears cascaded down her face once more. "Okay." She took a breath to calm her nerves and nodded again. "Okay."

They sat in silence for a few moments more, waiting for Stephanie to collect her thoughts and make sure that her words would match up to what she was thinking. She'd had a concussion before, but she couldn't remember it ever being this bad.

"I was... alone in the house. With, ah- with Lily Seymour. We heard someone downstairs, and I knew it wasn't her parents or her brother." Already, her frustration was building, knowing that her story would never make sense, not even if she had full control of herself. "We hid in the closet and I managed to get her behind a set of shelves.

"He came into the room and dragged me out of the closet, and I fought him but he knocked me out. Next thing I knew he was carrying me outside-"

"Why didn't he just kill you?" The officer asked.

His shrewd eyes were pinned on her. Stephanie thought about it for a moment, her face screwing up in concentration. Another dose of pain emanated from the base of her skull and she rubbed at it absent-mindedly. "I don't know- to, to bait everyone else, I guess?"

"Everyone else, who?"

Stephanie knew that she'd slipped up and would have mentally banged her head against a wall, but she suspected that would hurt too. "Um... I don't know. The people looking after me?" He raised an eyebrow, and Stephanie knew that he didn't buy it, but she just sighed and held her head in her hands. "There's not much else that I know for sure, except that Daniel's dad-" She choked out, trying to force the image out of her head.