The Downside to Perfection ✔

Chapter Eleven

Delilah just nodded, not taking her eyes off him. She wasn't taking notes—she never did, which was exactly what he liked about her. There wasn't any pressure; they could sit in silence for minutes too, and neither of them would mind.

A few seconds went by in which Langdon just looked at Anderson, and Anderson stared back until Langdon's colleague sitting next to him leaned in and whispered something in his ear.

"When were you approached to take on this job?" the officer asked then.

But the silence pressured him to talk more. "And why they let us go."

"They let you go?" she repeated. The tone in her voice had changed; she was no longer the objective therapist. She hadn't heard Jason mention this before, which wasn't strange; Jason had never told anyone about those last few moments in confinement. He was scared to admit that the truth was different from what most people assumed had happened. After they escaped, he and Emily had become heroes, and the role of being looked up to fitted his motivation to fall back into the perfect character he'd been before the kidnapping.

"It wasn't obvious or anything," he said. "It was just too easy. We'd tried it before, but even our best plans never succeeded. We never got close to escaping. But this time, it was a spur of the moment thing, and we managed to get out with only one guy following us, while there had been at least three close by. It just doesn't make sense."

"Just a week before the kidnapping," Anderson said, and the coldness in his voice was a tone Jason had heard too often. It brought him back to when a knife had been held against his throat, pushing him back until his head met the wall. "They told me what I'd have to do, and because it sounded easy and it would pay well, I agreed."

Again, just a nod.

"They never actually held the door open for us," he continued. "But I know now that we were supposed to escape."

"And you're sure about that?"

He took a small moment before shaking his head. At the same time, the thought appeared in his mind that maybe he'd said no because he wanted to believe that he'd escaped—that he was a hero.

"Have you told anyone?"

"What did they tell you exactly, on the day you were approached?" Langdon asked.

Anderson looked around the room, observing every inch of the room and letting his gaze land on every single person in the room, then staring at the big, black window Jason and the two agents were standing behind. Anderson couldn't see through it, Jason knew, yet it felt like he was staring directly at him.

The same negative motion of his head.

"Not even the police?"

"It never came up. Should I have?"

"Maybe," she said."Perhaps it could've helped the investigation."

He'd never thought about it like that but had always assumed he was wrong and that it wasn't worth telling. Although, now he had more information, such as the found ransom the kidnappers had never used, which suggested money had never been the motive. It also made the idea of Jason and Emily being let go more interesting.

"Let's go back to the interrogation," Delilah said.

"When I had agreed, they explained the plan to me. That next Friday, they would wait until the girl would walk out of the school and one of the men would walk up to her, going with her until she was close enough to the van."

Anderson stopped talking after that, and Langdon asked if that was all, to which he got a confirming nod.

"How long did you stay there?"