She shut out the past as she parked on a side street where she hoped the truck wouldn’t be noticed. The library was open until 9:00 p.m. on Fridays, a quirk that was left over from the fact that Mrs. Winslow didn’t like having to sit through the reruns of Knight Rider her husband had insisted on watching each week back when he’d been alive.
She was also blessed with the fact that Mrs. Winslow, unlike most people in town, knew how to mind her own business. The woman simply squinted up at Eliza when she walked into the library, harrumphed a little at the clock—it was 8:30, the place would be closing promptly at the top of the hour—and then went back to her novel.
The computers that seemed older than Mrs. Winslow herself ran along the back wall, mostly hidden by the three sparse stacks of books. The positioning offered a thin suggestion of privacy, or at least enough warning that Eliza would be able to close out of her searches if needed.
Eliza pulled out the file folder, the one that Deputy Zoey Grant had left so carelessly open on her desk just when Eliza had been visiting the other day. It was copied from the original, so Eliza guessed Hicks didn’t even realize Zoey had been looking at it.
He certainly wouldn’t realize that Eliza had been looking into the seven-year-old case that had never been closed.
Why did you keep this file, Hicks? She wanted to confront him, wanted to shove it in his face. But a bigger part of her wanted to keep him out of this. And that’s the part that won out.
She met the girl’s eyes in the picture paper-clipped to the inside of the folder. They were black and gray and pixilated, but Eliza knew them to be brown and warm.
A pretty girl, a kind laugh.
Sweat beaded beneath her turtleneck, and she tugged at the stifling collar as the computer chugged through checking her credentials. With careful deliberation, she laid her palms on her jean skirt–clad thighs, concentrating on the rough drag of the fabric. At times it felt like a panic attack had been hovering at the edges of her sanity for the past five days, just waiting for a sign of weakness before it would swoop in and take her down.
Eliza would be damned if it happened in the back corner of the library because the computer was taking too long to load.
When she was finally able to launch a window, she squeezed her eyes tight until bright lights popped against the velvet black of her lids.
She let out a breath, opened her eyes, and clicked into the search box. Her fingers struck the keys, and the letters slowly took the shape of a name. The one that was listed beneath the girl’s, the FBI agent who’d worked the case.
Lucy Thorne.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
LUCY THORNE
Friday, 11:00 p.m.
Lucy didn’t smoke. She would swear up and down to anyone listening that she didn’t smoke, and she almost believed it herself.
Sometimes she needed to stand outside, though, and she told herself that doing that without a cigarette in her hand was unusual enough for people to take notice. She wasn’t sure if she could rely on that excuse this time, shrouded as she was by the night, in a rocking chair hidden carefully away in a corner of the darkened back porch of the B and B. But habits, and all that.
The guilty twinge that slipped in beneath the buzz as she dragged in nicotine made her promise whoever was keeping tally of her vices that she’d quit after this case.
Just like she’d promised on the last case.
It was too cold to be outside, but after Lucy’s conversation with Dr. Ali, she’d been craving the fresh bite of frigid air. She could always rely on the way it ate away at the tacky, viscous thoughts that clung to the crevices of her brain, clogging everything up. With the chill came silence; with the nicotine came clarity.
If Dr. Ali testified at a trial for Eliza, the prosecutor’s solid case would be upgraded to airtight. Juries didn’t see nuance, not the kind Dr. Ali had been talking about. Lucy didn’t discount the way he’d hedged, didn’t dismiss his doubts.
But those were worth the paper they were written down on when it came to lifetime sentences and narratives and confessions. Unless something solid came up in the next two days, Lucy was going to have to accept that sometimes gut instincts weren’t worth following.
Sometimes open-and-shut cases were just that, no matter how much they seemed otherwise.
For now, she let herself obsess, though—let herself shine a light into the nooks and crannies of her conversation with Dr. Ali.
Eliza had asked for Lucy. That had been something Lucy wrote off in the early-morning hours following the confession, but was it as meaningless as she’d convinced herself?
Walk-ins were known to ask for agents by name sometimes. But that was when the walk-ins were local. Or somewhat local.
Eliza—born-in-a-small-town-and-raised-in-a-cult Eliza—had traveled five hours to get to Seattle just to get to Lucy.
Shit.
That couldn’t be random. Not now that Lucy realized the sheltered life Eliza led. This wasn’t some lark—she hadn’t just been near Seattle, hadn’t just picked it off a map. It would have taken planning. Just as much planning as the rest of it.
But why? Lucy didn’t recognize anyone in town. She’d never heard of Knox Hollow before, hadn’t heard of the Church, either.
She had had cases close to Knox Hollow before, sure.
She’d been based in Missoula for a bit of time right out of training. Then in Spokane, before she’d settled on the coast. The agents and crime techs had liked her in those offices, had watched her with approval as she’d trekked through backwoods not unlike the ones where Noah’s body had been found. Had liked that she’d known things like ammonia could scare away predators—even though they’d never had a case where that was put to the test.
Still . . . That had been years ago, seven or eight by the time she’d left Missoula, six since she’d moved to Seattle. Lucy couldn’t swear she remembered every detail of every case she’d ever worked, but she would have remembered something like this.
A clean kill. The knife. The Bible verse.
Other things carved into skin? Yes. Crosses, religious symbols. That wasn’t even rare. But not a verse, and almost the same didn’t seem to count in this instance.
A verse wasn’t a cross and it wasn’t just a religious symbol. It was a message.
For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
On its face, that was obvious. For Eliza, Noah Dawson had fallen short of the glory of God, a sin punishable with death. Yet that kind of religious fervor usually burned bright in the eyes. Eliza’s had been cool, calm.
Perhaps it was nothing more than a product of Eliza’s environment.
The Church called itself that, but it wasn’t anything more than a dressed-up cult from what Lucy could tell. After talking with Dr. Ali, she’d fallen down the research rabbit hole, watching videos of those who’d left the True Believers Church behind.
There were only a handful of “congregations” across the country, with hierarchies and demographics that were practically taught in Cult 101. There was a powerful man as the head of the Church, and he was always surrounded by a shadowy grouping of “elders” behind him.
Most—but not all—of the bone-chilling stories from those who’d gotten out were of the gaslighting and abuse that ran rampant through every aspect of daily life.
The accounts had been jarring, and Lucy had been hooked, tapping from one testimony to the next almost before the previous one had finished.
Lucy wouldn’t have said she had been underestimating the Church, not with the way Hicks was crusading against it. But Josiah Cook, while perhaps a bit self-satisfied, had seemed somewhat harmless. If even a percentage of what happened in the stories Lucy watched occurred within the Knox Hollow Church, she needed to reevaluate exactly how innocuous the good pastor was.
She knew—she knew—that evil didn’t always wear an ugly face. She knew it often paraded beneath the guise of righteousness, of friendliness even.
But she had been th
rown by the accounts. And the information shifted those involved into a new light. It shifted the verse into a new light.
Now, more than ever, that moment in the interrogation room when Eliza had been insistent about the verse took on a kind of importance that Lucy may not have given it before watching those videos.
What was Eliza trying to say?
It was past midnight when Lucy finally stubbed out her dying cigarette into the soil of the potted plant standing sentry at her elbow. As she did, the motion sensor light over the back door flared to life. She stilled, knowing it hadn’t been her small twitch that had caused it to switch on.
A black cat streaked through the dull yellow glow. Lucy released a breath that had caught at the back of her throat as the animal curled around her feet.
Just a cat.
“Hello,” she crooned at the animal that was watching her with only one good eye. The other had a years-old scar sealing it shut. Its ear was torn, and there were healed scratch marks along its flank. The ribs poking out at its sides made her think it was too fickle to settle down as a pet. A brawler by nature, clearly.
She’d always been susceptible to fighters too stubborn for their own good.
After Lucy meowed at it, it chatted back, winding around her boots, rubbing its cheek against her jeans.
Calm, happy, content. Until it wasn’t.
It was just when Lucy went to stand that it suddenly froze, hissing and shivering, its little body rigid. Not at her, but a warning nonetheless.
The cat’s eyes were locked on the darkness beyond the porch, its haunches raised, its weight on its front paws, its neck curved so that its head was up and alert.
Lucy stilled, half out of the rocker, half in it. Her gun was upstairs in her room, impossible to get to in a few short strides.
It was a mouse. Or a raccoon. Out here? There was no shortage of animals making merriment in the dark. Maybe even something bigger than a raccoon. A fox?
But the cat was taut and shivering in the thin sliver of silver light from the crescent moon. It was spitting, too, the noise signaling danger, not prey.
Silence.
There shouldn’t be silence. Not on a night like this. There should be crickets and owls and the skittering of little mammal feet on loose soil. But there was nothing.
Lucy burned hot, then went cold—her thigh trembling from holding her position too long, her knuckles white against the arm of her chair. She had to make a move.
Slowly, so as not to spook the cat even further, Lucy reached into her pocket for her phone. She steadied out her breathing as she slid the right app up, trying not to telegraph her moves.
Three . . . two . . .
On one, she hit the flashlight button.
The cat pounced as soon as Lucy held up the phone, but it landed on nothing, its paws sinking into the earth, fruitlessly. It yowled its displeasure, but the fear was already melting out of its body.
Somehow Lucy was able to take her cue from the cat, and most of the endorphins faded as quickly as they’d flooded her system, leaving behind only a slight quiver in her hands.
It hadn’t been anything. It had been a mouse. Or a raccoon.
Still, when she went inside, she dead-bolted the back door despite the fact that Annie had told her she needn’t bother.
When Lucy got to her room, she crossed to the safe, then pulled out her gun, checking obsessively that it was loaded properly, ready to fire, although she knew that it was.
Then she dragged the antique chair from the other side of her bed over to the door, shoving it at an angle beneath the knob, not trusting the weak lock to do much of anything beyond serve as decoration.
As she went to close the window that had been cracked, she heard the cat still prowling the perimeter beneath her, hissing into the nothingness of the night.
CHAPTER TWENTY
LUCY THORNE
Saturday, 7:00 a.m.
In the morning, Lucy was still jittery from the evening, nerves rubbed a little raw from a night where she’d only half dozed, her fingers reaching out to touch the butt of her gun as if it would disappear if she didn’t.
Walking out of the B and B had only served to ramp up the unease that pulsed like a fresh bruise beneath her breastbone.
She and Hicks stood on the sidewalk, coffees in hands, staring at the profanity that had been keyed into the side of her sedan. It certainly wasn’t the first time she’d been called that word. That’s not what was bothering her.
It was Hicks’s next suggestion that had her shoulders inching up toward her ears.
“We can drive it into the body shop,” Hicks said. He hadn’t commented much on the vandalism itself past a quick grimace when he’d first seen the butcher job. “Joey is a good kid. He’ll fix it up.”
Lucy made a practiced effort to unlock the muscles in her neck. “I’m guessing he doesn’t have a loaner.”
“Maybe we could rustle you something up.”
That was a no. Most people in these types of places had a spare or two, transportation being too important to rely on just one car. But she had even less interest in driving some stranger’s personal truck than she did in being stranded in town.
“No, it’s fine. I’ll make do for the day,” Lucy said, hoping it would be only for the day. Her sedan might not be much to look at, but there was a freedom in knowing it was there. Now, she was stuck, at the mercy of Hicks or his deputy, whom she still hadn’t met. For just a second she considered driving it anyway but dismissed that idea. There were kids around, after all.
“Can Joey come pick it up? I’ll leave the keys with Annie. Then we can go out to the Thomas place.”
“Yup.” Hicks had already pulled out his phone, dialing the garage while Lucy ran into the B and B to explain the situation to Annie.
They were on the road to Frank Thomas’s house two minutes later.
“I’m sorry about the . . .” Hicks nodded back in the direction of the B and B before turning off the main street toward the highway. “Don’t see much of that around here.”
Lucy shrugged. “Not your fault. Not much you can do about it, either.”
Hicks’s hand clenched around the steering wheel, but then he sighed and dropped the subject. They both knew there was next to no chance of finding out who had keyed the car. There weren’t any surveillance cameras that would have caught the perp, and the B and B was down toward the end of a dark block. Even if Lucy thought it was worth canvassing the neighbors, she doubted anyone had seen anything.
What she couldn’t tell was if the defacement had been personal.
Could be that it was some punk kid envisioning himself a hero, poking at the feds so he could go brag to his friends about sticking it to the government.
If that was the case, she could write it off as an annoyance.
But what if it wasn’t? What if she’d hit a sore spot without even knowing it? What if her mere presence had threatened the security of someone who was sure they’d gotten away with a crime now that Eliza was sitting in FBI custody a state away?
Was this meant to throw her off? Scare her off?
“Tell me about this Molly Thomas situation,” Lucy said, cupping both hands around her coffee cup and keeping it close to her lips as if she could absorb its warmth by proximity. It was a cold Idaho morning, the damp earth from the day before freezing solid beneath a thick layer of frost. She’d already sent an email to Vaughn requesting her old files from when she’d worked in Missoula and Spokane. Those would hopefully be coming her way soon. For now, there wasn’t much to do this morning but concentrate on the runaway girl, who may or may not have anything to do with the case.
“Can’t say I know much about it.” Hicks lifted a shoulder beneath his bulky ranching jacket. “Wouldn’t be the first teenager to skip town.”
“So her parents just found a note three weeks ago that she was leaving for greener pastures?” Lucy tried to strip the question bare of sarcasm, but she thought a little might have snuck in t
here at the end.
The guess was confirmed by the look Hicks shot her. “That about sums it up.”
“And there wasn’t an investigation?”
“Everyone in the DA’s office laughs their asses off when I walk through the door,” Hicks said, the caustic edge of his tone sharp and purposeful. He could conceal it when he wanted to, which meant he’d intended for her to hear it. “I’ve brought them runaways before and nothing ever happens. They think I’m crazy. The Knox Hollow Don Quixote.”
“Mistaking windmills for giants,” she murmured. It was unfortunate, but she saw both sides. She’d seen her fair share of agents who let personal grudges cloud their judgment. And if they came to her enough times with outlandish theories? She would start writing them off, too, as boys who cried wolf.
Those theories rarely involved anything as important as a missing girl, though.
“Did you suspect anything was strange in Molly’s case?” she asked.
There was a hesitation there. But when he answered, it was firm. “No.”
She’d find a way to get him to answer something. “How did you hear about it?”
“Someone mentioned she had left, so I stopped by her parents’ place and the Cooks’, too, for good measure. Informally, of course.” His voice was detached, unemotional. She wondered if he knew he did that when he had something to hide.
“Found nothing suspicious then?” she asked lightly.
“They always clam up around me,” Hicks said, managing to dodge the question in that roundabout way of his.
“They really don’t like you, huh?”
“Most of them don’t care enough not to like me,” Hicks corrected. “To them, maybe at most, I’m a gadfly that’s best ignored. The ones who do care, though . . .”
“Care a lot,” Lucy guessed.
He tilted his head, opened his mouth, then closed it. He’d been about to say something else. But in the end all he did was smile slightly and nod.
Lucy cursed herself. That had been a rookie mistake. She took a swig of coffee, hoping to banish some of the fuzziness in her head. “So you dropped by Molly Thomas’s home to check things out.”
Her Final Words Page 12
