Her Final Words

by Brianna Labuskes

  Peggy’s eyes swept over his expression. “She looked thin.”

  Hicks didn’t react, wouldn’t. Peggy didn’t seem to need him to.

  “Heard Molly Thomas went missing,” Peggy continued, her tone too casual to be anything but practiced.

  Lead settled heavy in Hicks’s gut, and his eyes drifted toward the stretch of trees in the distance. He didn’t like that her mind had made that jump.

  “Reminds me of Alessandra Shaw.” Peggy kept at it, because it was Peggy. She was nothing if not a dog with a bone. “Just disappearing like that.”

  Whereas Molly’s name came like a glancing blow, Alessandra’s hit him square in the jaw. His voice was rough even to his own ears when he spoke. “Heard Molly ran off.”

  “Like you believe that, Wyatt Earl Hicks.” Peggy sent him a twisted smile that was more grimace than humor. “If you do, I’ve got land up near the border to sell you.”

  Going on the defense here would just pique her interest further. Like blood in the water. So he stayed quiet.

  Peggy didn’t let it drop, though. He knew she wouldn’t. “Talk to Josiah about it?”

  That one was easy at least. He didn’t have to lie. “Yep.”

  Josiah had greeted him on his front porch, and if Hicks hadn’t known him, he’d think the man unruffled, disinterested. But he did know the pastor. Too goddamn well.

  “‘Missing’ is an interesting word choice, Wyatt,” Josiah said, and Hicks tried to watch his eyes, see if they drifted toward the trees, toward the barn, toward the underground shelter Hicks knew kept secrets beneath their feet.

  “Ran away,” Hicks said as if correcting himself, magnanimous with it because neither of them actually believed it to be a concession. “Strange, that. Wonder what on earth she’d want to run away from.”

  “Just because she’s running on a different path than the one we might have chosen for her doesn’t mean she’s running in the wrong direction,” Josiah said, donning his pastor voice, the words rounding and becoming heavy, practiced, and serious. It was smart, as far as deflections went. Hicks could admire the tactic. “Doesn’t mean she won’t find her way back.”

  Hicks laughed, obnoxious and purposely so. He shook his head and stepped away, knowing that if he didn’t, his fist would end up in Josiah’s face, and he’d have to haul his own butt down to the sheriff’s office.

  “Yeah, I don’t think she’ll be coming back from where she ended up.”

  It had been petty, that last bit. But he hadn’t been able to resist the parting shot. Hicks only wished he’d stuck around to see Josiah’s reaction.

  “He asked me, you know,” Peggy said as they paused beside her truck. “The other day. Asked me if I’d ever loved anything like I loved the Church.”

  Both their eyes slid to the rosary that hung from her rearview mirror. She’d never gotten rid of it, that reminder of the life she’d left behind.

  Peggy’s story wasn’t much different from Rachel and Josiah’s, except that she’d gotten out and recognized the abuse for what it was. Hicks had asked once when she’d known she would leave. It was when she was thirteen and her infant cousin died three days after Peggy had held him for the first time. Her entire family had said it was because she didn’t believe in God enough. Her mother hadn’t been quite as harsh as Rachel’s when it came to punishment, but she’d lashed Peggy’s back with the very rosary Peggy still used every Sunday at the new church she’d found.

  “‘When you love something that much, it makes you forget,’ Josiah said.” Peggy’s voice was distant now, hollow, her own eyes on the woods, and he thought maybe she was feeling the sting of beads against flesh.

  Hicks didn’t want to ask. He’d heard enough of the man’s bullshit to last a lifetime. Still . . . “Forget what?”

  Peggy shook herself a little, yanked the door open, hauled herself into the driver’s seat. “What it means to be good.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  LUCY THORNE

  Friday, 4:30 p.m.

  The Dawsons’ place would more aptly be called a cabin than a house. The land around it was wild, it was raw. This was true frontier living. For a disorienting minute, with no other twenty-first-century touchstones in sight, Lucy lost her place in time.

  Then Hicks touched her elbow, and Lucy came back to the present.

  “Rustic,” she commented. He raised his eyebrows at her as he swept his cowboy hat off.

  “Idaho,” he countered with a shrug, and then they were crossing the small distance to the door. It took only a few seconds to open once they’d knocked.

  Darcy Dawson was a plump, short woman with long black hair that reached to her lower back. In other circumstances, she’d probably be called pretty, with her smooth skin, round face, and big, brown doe eyes that were framed by thick lashes.

  But grief had clearly taken a toll.

  Even before any of them spoke, she started crying. “You’d think they’d dry up, wouldn’t you?” Darcy asked as she swiped at the tears with a tissue so wet and ratty that it was near on disintegrating. She shoved it in her jeans; then her eyes swept over Hicks. “Sheriff.”

  “Mrs. Dawson.” Both cordial, both polite.

  When Darcy waved them inside, Lucy began to introduce herself, but just like everywhere else she went in Knox Hollow, Darcy cut her off. She already knew who Lucy was.

  They ended up in a cozy kitchen, low flames simmering in the fireplace at one end, a cast-iron pot on the stove at the other. Darcy moved a stack of textbooks to the floor so that Lucy could sit at the table. Hicks leaned against the wall, just inside the door, and Darcy went to stir the soup, her back to them. If the choice had been a strategic one, it had been smart. Emotions had probably stripped away any well-practiced defenses Darcy might have employed otherwise, leaving her bare and vulnerable to their assessment.

  “You can ask your questions,” Darcy prompted, her voice still wobbly and small.

  “Is your husband home, Mrs. Dawson?” Lucy started. It would be preferable to see them together, see how they interacted and also reacted. To see if they were like the Cooks—a united front. Or if there were fractures there, ones that were deepening, made worse by the death of a child.

  And, apart from that, the fact that Liam was another connection to the Cooks couldn’t be ignored.

  “Just Darcy. Please. And, no, Liam’s in town.” There was a pause where the only sound was the wooden spoon against the pot’s edges. Then: “Looking for work.”

  “What about the Cooks?” It was Hicks who bit that particular bullet, and Lucy was thankful for it. The answer seemed obvious enough that it would have been bordering on aggressive or painfully obtuse for Lucy to ask it. Usually, she wasn’t one for partners, but there was something to be said for having someone else fulfill the bad-cop role.

  “You think Liam would work for that family now?” Darcy all but spit “that family” out. “After what—”

  She caught herself, stopped, sniffed, and the spoon slapped against the countertop where she dropped it. Her hands found her hips, her body bowing forward as if she’d just been kicked in the stomach. The grief that was evident in her curved spine turned the air in the room thick and syrupy, hard to breathe in. Lucy’s own shoulders hunched in sympathy, her muscles, her bones, her nerves reacting to the pure emotion before her logic could catch up and insist on maintaining a professional distance.

  Then Darcy straightened, breathed deep, her rib cage lifting, collapsing—the effort of collecting herself uncomfortable to witness, so much so that Lucy found herself with her arms up, across her chest, defensive and protective without even realizing it.

  Lucy tried to relax, but it wasn’t natural, wasn’t easy. Not with the hitched breathing that still broke the quiet of the room.

  Finally, Darcy turned toward them. The pain hadn’t gone anywhere, but it was muted, a private kind that lived in the eyes instead of in the body.

  So Lucy decided to rip the Band-Aid off. It was more humane tha
t way—get this done, make it as quick as possible. “Do you remember Eliza and Noah crossing paths at all? Especially in the past few weeks?”

  Darcy’s eyes darted to the sheriff at the question, but she turned her attention back to Lucy almost immediately. “No. Not more than a few seconds here or there in church.” She paused. “Noah played the piano for the mass sometimes. When he did, he’d wait in Pastor Cook’s office before the sermon.”

  Josiah Cook again. His name was woven through this investigation in ways that Lucy was starting to notice beyond Hicks’s obvious dislike of the man. Of course, it would make sense that Eliza’s guardian was mentioned time and again, but there was that itch under Lucy’s skin. The one that had been borne from experience with people in power. And if nothing else, Lucy was learning that Josiah Cook seemed to have a lot of power here.

  “Would Eliza wait there, too? In the office.”

  Once again, at the mention of Eliza’s name, Darcy’s gaze tracked over to Hicks. This time it held there for longer, before Darcy shook her head. “If she did, I didn’t notice.” Her words were heavy with exhaustion, slurring and blending together at the edges. “I wouldn’t have thought anything of it, though. Not enough to remember it.”

  No one would have. Any witness who saw Pastor Cook’s niece and the boy who played the piano for mass talking would immediately forget it, their mind dismissing it as useless information.

  “I’m sorry, I know this might be difficult, but can you take me through the last time you saw Noah?” Lucy asked.

  “We’d just finished up lessons for the day,” Darcy said. “He went outside to play while I was taking care of Rosie.”

  “Rosie?”

  “My daughter. Noah’s sister,” Darcy said. “There’s not much out here, and Noah knows to stay near the house, so I didn’t keep a close watch on him.”

  Her chin lifted, almost daring them to blame her. Lucy didn’t, wouldn’t. Who could have seen this coming? Who could have stopped it?

  But it did raise a good question, one that had been bubbling up on the drive out to the cabin. One that got added to Lucy’s list of things that weren’t adding up.

  How had Noah disappeared from here? The place was in the middle of nowhere, and that wasn’t just hyperbole. Lucy would have gotten lost at least four times if Hicks hadn’t been driving. And even for someone who knew the area well, it would have posed a challenge.

  That was if Eliza had been able to even get a car in the first place. Considering that there didn’t appear to be one at her easy disposal, it seemed odd that part of her plan relied on transportation. Especially since she could have nabbed the boy elsewhere if they were part of the same tight-knit community.

  Eliza would have had to plan it well. Had she found a service road to come up from behind the cabin unnoticed? Had she hidden in the woods and lured Noah to come to her?

  Either scenario spoke of a well-plotted kidnapping rather than a crime of opportunity. If Eliza had simply snapped, had simply been looking for an easy-access victim, it certainly wouldn’t have been Noah. Not while he was out here.

  Which meant that Eliza had been set on Noah in particular as her victim.

  But why, when there certainly was much easier prey to be found?

  What more could you want?

  A motive would be nice.

  “And that was Monday night?” Lucy said. “That he went missing.”

  Darcy’s gaze skittered to Hicks, darted away, darted back. There was something going on here, something simmering beneath the cordial civility that Lucy didn’t have the backstory on. She thought about the evasive way Hicks talked about Eliza, the swerving truck when she’d pressed him for information on Liam and Darcy. Lucy would put money on the fact that there had been no rabbit darting out into the road like he’d claimed.

  “Yes, Monday night,” Darcy answered. “I called the pastor then.”

  “Not the sheriff?”

  Hicks didn’t flinch. “The Church likes to take care of its own.”

  Which meant in Hicks-speak that they deliberately worked around him when possible.

  Darcy nodded along, a stubborn set to her chin.

  “What happened after you called Pastor Cook, Darcy?” Lucy asked instead of plucking at that particular thread. Hicks clearly wasn’t the Believers’ favorite person.

  “He started the phone tree.” Darcy pointed vaguely toward a piece of paper taped to the wall. “A good number of folks turned out that night. More the next day.”

  “About what time did you realize Noah was gone?” It was the easiest of the many questions forming, splintering and piecing themselves back together in the tangled mess of synapses that was her thought process.

  “Dinnertime,” Darcy said. “Around six, maybe.”

  Lucy turned to Hicks again. “Did you come out that night?”

  “Course. Word gets to me eventually,” Hicks said, and somehow his voice was free of any bitterness. She wasn’t so sure she would be able to do the same in his position. “My deputy came, too.”

  Zoey Grant, whom Lucy still hadn’t met yet. The one who didn’t like the shield laws, either.

  “We figured . . .” Darcy sniffed, took a vicious swipe at her eyes. “We figured he’d run away or something. Turned his ankle, maybe.” She paused, blew into her tissue that was nearly in shreds at this point, the mucus slicking her palms, clinging in wet little clumps to her skin. “You know at the time? I thought the worst that could happen to him was that he’d have to sleep outside all night.”

  “You obviously didn’t find him on Monday . . .” Lucy tried to soften her voice as much as possible so as not to pick at a still-weeping wound.

  “I didn’t sleep.” Darcy stared at the floor, her hands gripping the counter behind her. “Liam wouldn’t let me keep looking. Said I might get hurt. So I just had to sit here.”

  Without professional spotlights and a crew of searchers, it really would have been pointless, more harm than good if Darcy had injured herself. But there was logic and then there was a gut instinct that roared and begged for action, no matter how ineffective that action might be.

  “That was the right call,” Lucy said, because Darcy probably would be questioning it the rest of her life, in every quiet minute where she let her mind wander, in every aborted gesture as she reached to pat Noah’s head or give him a hug. She would wonder—if only she had gone out that night, would she have found him?

  The answer, of course, was no. Eliza had to have had this well planned. Lucy could say with some amount of confidence that if it hadn’t been Monday night, it would have been another time. But none of that soothed the guilt, none of it would.

  “More people from the Church and the town turned up right at dawn on Tuesday,” Darcy said. “Everyone . . . They came out to help.”

  “And Pastor Cook organized it again?” Lucy asked.

  Josiah Cook. He was an interesting piece of the puzzle. During her questioning, he’d seemed friendly and just the right amount of concerned, but that was easy to fake. It was strange that they were cooperating, especially with a government agent, but he could be sacrificing Eliza for the good of his Church. Answer the feds’ questions, get them out of town as soon as possible.

  “Yes, the pastor took charge,” Darcy said, her neck flushing red. It took Lucy a minute to remember the way Darcy had spit out “that family” when speaking about the Cooks. The salt in that particular wound probably burned like an all-consuming fire.

  The next question that Lucy had to ask wasn’t going to help, but she needed to get a handle on what Eliza had done for those two days. And she wasn’t going to just take the Cooks’ word about the girl staying at home. “Did—” Lucy cleared her throat. “Did you see Eliza during that time?”

  As she predicted, the color drained from Darcy’s previously pinked cheeks, her damp, dark eyes snapping to Lucy’s face before sliding over to Hicks. They stayed locked on the sheriff as Darcy answered. “No.”

  The nega
tive charge in the air lifted the hairs along Lucy’s forearms, the buzz of the ions nearly audible. Lucy was missing something. She knew she was missing something.

  But Hicks’s face was as impassive as ever.

  The light in the room shifted, and then all at once everything eased, a breath released, the moment passing without any casualties other than Lucy’s curiosity.

  “When we didn’t find him, didn’t find any sign of him even”—Darcy swallowed hard enough that her throat rippled—“I knew. I pretended I didn’t, but I knew.”

  “Did you keep up the search on Wednesday?” That night Eliza would have been traveling to Seattle. Toward Lucy.

  “All day,” Hicks said, and Darcy nodded in agreement. “By that point, it was an official investigation.”

  “Folks from Springville came, as well,” Darcy added. “The town over. We have some members of the Church who live there.”

  Then on Thursday—yesterday, that was—the FBI agents from Spokane would have shown up. Maybe not at dawn, but not much past that.

  “I just . . .” Darcy bit her lip, and desperation swam in the tears that clung to the rims of her eyes. “Did she say why she did it? Did she tell you?”

  Oh, but how Lucy wished Eliza had. Maybe then Lucy wouldn’t be here; maybe then she would have moved on to another case, barely blinking at just another confession from just another monster. Not quite a normal day, but not one remarkable enough for Lucy to derail her own life for.

  “I’m sorry.” The words were so underwhelming, so disappointing to everyone in the room that Lucy nearly winced when they landed with an ungraceful thunk, a rush of heat in her cheeks. But there was nothing else to say.

  A motive would be nice.

  They didn’t have one to offer. And that, more than anything, would fester in Darcy, would eat away at any chance of recovery. Lucy hoped they could find an answer to give her, because Lucy had seen that kind of existence before in the loved ones of murdered kids and she didn’t wish it on anyone.

  Lucy and Hicks saw themselves out after that.