“Your name,” Hicks repeated. “She had your name written down, Zoey.”
“Oh,” Zoey said, seemingly to herself. Her eyes drifted toward the blank wall behind Hicks’s shoulder, and even her mug dropped to her lap in her distraction.
Then she cursed, snapping back into herself, before she slapped the desk with her free hand. “Picture. Show me . . . Show me a picture.”
The urgency of the demand seemed to drag at the three of them, their bodies leaning forward without thought, muscles locking up beneath the stretch of taut skin.
Hicks rifled through files on his desk. “It’s not here. It must be . . .”
He stood up midsentence, eyes dancing around the room, landing on the filing cabinet, the table by the window, Lucy, his desk. He walked out the door into the main lobby area without saying anything further.
Zoey’s fingers were clutching one of the arms of her chair, the lines of her neck rigid, sweat forming along her hairline.
“What is it?” Lucy asked.
At first, Lucy didn’t think Zoey would answer, thought she’d pretend not to have heard. But then she breathed out, shifted.
“If it’s who I think it is . . .” Zoey was watching the doorway where Hicks had disappeared; the words were quiet, more vocalized thought than anything with intention. In fact, it seemed to register too late to Zoey that she’d spoken aloud, her head jerking to look at Lucy, eyes wide. Revealing not the secrets themselves, but the fact that they existed.
“Say it,” Lucy prompted, even though it was a long shot.
Zoey chewed on her bottom lip, her fingers tangling in her lap—a woman at war with herself. Her eyes darted between Lucy’s face and the doorway, and she drew in a deep breath.
Finally, she settled on Lucy. “If Molly is who I think she is,” Zoey repeated, more deliberate this time but still low enough not to be overheard, “then whatever you’re looking into? I think it has to do with Hicks.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
LUCY THORNE
Saturday, noon
Once Zoey saw the picture of Molly, she got quiet, so quiet, just staring down at the girl, her breathing a little too fast for someone who had been sitting down.
Then she shook herself a bit, looked up, placing the photo on Hicks’s desk as she did. And she filled Lucy and Hicks in on the encounter she’d had with Molly in the back alley of the coffee shop.
Zoey was deliberate with her words, though, and Lucy couldn’t help thinking that the woman was leaving out some details.
Like what the hell Hicks had to do with any of this. Because the loaded glances exchanged between the two of them told a story in and of themselves.
Lucy was left wondering at that as they headed out to the Thomas place once again.
Zoey was driving, tiny behind the wheel of the monster SUV, black-tinted windows blocking out the glare from the sun. Lucy sat in the back, foot tapping against the floorboard, wishing she had her car, wishing she even had the keys to it. But no, she was still at their mercy.
Hicks had folded himself into the passenger seat, all easy nonchalance. If he had something to do with this, he was excellent at hiding any anxiety he might feel about it.
He’d been on the phone most of the way, trying to get a hold of a local judge he knew in case Frank Thomas gave them trouble. Lucy didn’t think it would be a problem, but better safe than sorry. She could appreciate that.
While Zoey and Hicks were occupied, Lucy pulled out her own cell, thumbing into the text thread with Vaughn.
Paranoia crept along the borders of her well-constructed grasp on reality. It was familiar, a friend and foe at once, something to keep around but in a controlled way so that it never took over a case.
Sometimes she would listen to the whispers. The ones that said those looks back at the station had been too loaded to ignore. The ones that said the eyes of everyone they’d interviewed about Eliza had lingered too long on Hicks for it to be coincidence.
Lucy tapped out a quick message.
All info on Sheriff Wyatt Hicks pls. ASAP.
The writing bubbles appeared immediately.
In your email within the hour.
Lucy almost pocketed her phone before thinking to check in on an earlier request for her old cases.
Find anything in the archives?
The phone rang one heartbeat after she hit “Send.” Lucy turned so some of her back was to the front seats, optimizing as much privacy as possible.
“The agent I have on it is still doing a sweep. What are you thinking?” Vaughn asked, keeping her voice pitched low because she was a professional and a mind reader rolled into one. “A serial killer? Someone you’ve seen before?”
“I don’t know.” How to explain what the hell was going on out here? How to explain the questions that kept cropping up that didn’t fit neatly into Eliza Cook killing Noah Dawson for fun.
Vaughn got it. “The info should be your way soon. I’ll go hover over the poor agent and look very menacing.”
Lucy laughed softly. “Appreciate it.”
There was a pause. “What happened with the body?”
“I wasn’t careful enough,” Lucy admitted. Owning up to it was always preferable to excuses. “I didn’t think they’d actually steal Noah back.”
“That was surprising,” Vaughn agreed. “They’re fanatics?”
An easy answer to that didn’t really exist. And Lucy certainly didn’t want to parse through the complexities of this community with both Zoey and Hicks listening in.
Lucy settled on, “They certainly play by their own rules.”
For a few seconds, the only sounds were tires on the road and Vaughn’s steady breathing.
“You okay?” Vaughn finally asked, and there was a lot packed in there: Do you need backup? Do you need me to pull you out? Do you need me to come there?
Lucy wasn’t sure if she was lying when she answered. “Yeah, I’m okay. Has Eliza said anything else?”
“Not a word. Won’t even talk to ask for a lawyer.”
Not surprising. “Okay, thanks. For everything.”
“Keep your wits, Thorne,” Vaughn said, in that way of hers that meant she cared but would rather take a bullet before admitting it outright.
“Always do.”
When Lucy shifted to face the front again, she found Zoey watching her in the rearview mirror. In the next minute, they were pulling into the driveway that they’d left only a few hours ago. There was no sign of anyone else having come home.
“Frank Thomas’s wife helps run the Bible school at the church on the weekends,” Hicks said, answering Lucy’s unasked question, and it sat in her chest, the strange feeling of him being able to read her too well. She refreshed her email one last time, knowing the information on him wouldn’t be there but unable to stop the compulsive tic anyway.
She slid her phone into her pocket and followed them out of the SUV.
Frank met them on the dirt path leading up to the house. “Is it Molly? What is it? Did something happen?”
Hicks took the lead, holding his palms up, soothing the distraught man. “Mr. Thomas, we have reason to believe Molly might have been frightened about something before she left. Frightened enough to contact Deputy Grant.”
The gentleness with which Hicks said it seemed to do nothing to actually soften the blow for Frank, who stumbled back.
“What? What does that mean?”
“Would you mind if we checked some of the surrounding property, Mr. Thomas?” Lucy asked. “And let Deputy Grant here have a look around Molly’s bedroom.”
At the mention of Zoey, Frank’s attention swung to her, clung as if she were a lifeline. “Yes. Yes of course. Anything. Is it . . . Does it have to do with Eliza?”
That caught Lucy up, though it probably shouldn’t have. “Why do you ask that?”
“Because you’re back. You came back.”
And for all that he was a nervous, flighty man, his eyes were focused and clear.
There was a second that she thought he would argue, force the issue. But then: “Can I help?”
He needed to feel like he was doing something, she knew. But she also knew she needed him out of her way. “Hicks and I are going to stay outside. Can you show Deputy Grant where to go?”
Zoey stepped forward with a little nod to Lucy, clearly knowing her role. She patted Frank on the shoulder. “Please, call me Zoey.”
Hicks and Lucy watched them walk off until they were through the door, and then Hicks swiveled toward the large expanse of property, hands on hips, eyes squinted. “How do we do this?”
This was tricky. If Hicks was hiding something about Molly Thomas, this gave him the perfect opportunity to destroy any evidence of foul play before they could find it. If she made those accusations outright, though, this was a bridge burned without a whole lot of reason for lighting the match.
Her eyes went to the fence line. Eliza.
If this were a normal search, they’d walk side by side, about an arm’s length apart with whomever she was working. Anything other than that was pointless as clues could be easily missed otherwise. But this, well, she didn’t know quite what this was. It was informal, at best, maybe a little sloppy at worst. And that was going to work in her favor.
“I’ll take this side, you go that way.”
He hesitated, his gaze lingering on the posts that were barely visible, the ones that separated the Thomas property from the Cooks’ place. It was the obvious location to start; he had to know it.
But he just nodded once, and then shifted, heading away from her, scanning the ground, the cars, the small shed that sat behind the house.
The fence was a good bit away, easy to see because of the flatness of the earth but harder to get to. This part of the property clearly wasn’t used for any purpose, the grass long, not unkempt but allowed to grow at will.
She mostly kept her eyes on the ground, but she doubted she’d see anything important. There was so much land, so many nooks and crannies, bramble and weeds.
What was she even searching for anyway? A sign that an unhappy sixteen-year-old didn’t in fact run away from home like all signs pointed to? What exactly did that look like?
As she got closer to the tangled wire and rough wood of the fence line, there was that itch at her back, and all she could think about was Eliza. How these two were neighbors. How Molly had disappeared only weeks before Eliza had shown up in Seattle.
Why confess to a crime you didn’t commit? They were thick as thieves, those girls.
Lucy yanked at the fingertip of her threadbare gloves with her teeth as she approached one of the posts. The Cooks’ house looked to be about a ten-minute walk or so, close enough to make out a blurred, indistinct shape but far enough away as to not be stumbled upon by restrictive guardians.
These were assumptions, and they shouldn’t be taken as fact. But some of the blurriness that had always hovered at the indistinct edges of the case was sharpening—even if it was into something that she couldn’t quite make out yet.
If the property line was a meeting site for the girls, this wasn’t the actual spot they used. The grass was high, maintained to some extent like the rest of the wild growth where she’d walked. There was no indent in the ground, no evidence that the girls had been there, even infrequently.
There was a well-trodden path that ran horizontal to the fence, stomped-down weeds and dirt, probably made when the Thomases were checking for and fixing any damages. Lucy followed it, staying within its careful boundaries.
She stopped at each post, her hands running over every one of them, searching for signs, her fingers trailing along cool metal wire as she walked the distance between each.
It wasn’t until the fifth marker that she found what she hadn’t fully realized she was looking for.
Instead of grass, dirt spread out in an almost concentric circle, obvious in a way she guessed they’d never thought about. Probably because the girls must have met in the dark, if they’d been sneaking out.
Lucy searched the area, walking the perimeter, ducking through the fence. It might not hold up in court if she found anything on the Cooks’ property, but she wasn’t thinking about court right now.
Not that it mattered, ultimately. There was nothing on the other side.
Finally, she crouched, running her palms over the rough grain of the wood, a splinter slicing into her skin toward the top. She ignored the tiny flare of pain and kept at it.
Her fingers skated over a smooth spot, toward the bottom, and she paused. Notches and grooves. Something carved there, right at the base. Her knees hit the ground hard as she bent forward to get a better angle.
Initials.
AS.
Lucy traced the letters, over and over, the jagged, careless edges worn down beneath a constant and familiar touch. Oil polishing wood. Who was important enough to warrant such devotion?
Her calf twinged at the awkward angle, and she twisted to sit fully on the ground, her back to the post, her hand still touching the carved initials.
They sat like this. Eliza and Molly.
What had they talked about?
Lucy closed her eyes, resting her head against the wood, imagining the answering warmth of a solid body on the other side.
Why confess to a crime you didn’t commit? They were thick as thieves, those girls.
Lucy stood up, pulled out her phone, took pictures of the spot and then of the initials. She made a mental note to ask Vaughn to run a search on those, too. They probably wouldn’t turn up much, but in a small town they could get lucky. Maybe there would even be a match on the list of children who had died while Jackson was coroner. Not that he had sent it to her yet.
Now that Lucy had found the potential meeting site, she could see the obvious path back to the house.
This time when Lucy walked, she cleared each quadrant before moving forward. She kept the line controlled, no more than an arm span and a half, and treated it like a real search.
As she neared the house, she came upon a dried-up creek. She’d crossed it without much thought on the way out to the fence, but just as she went to jump the small distance, something shimmered.
Sun on metal.
She stopped, her thighs still bunched, the energy from the aborted leap twisting deep in her muscles, then releasing all at once. Kneeling down, Lucy brushed aside the grass, the dirt.
There, mostly out of sight, was a phone, its screen cracked in a thin, vicious spiderweb of lines.
It could belong to someone other than Molly. The phone was dead, so it offered no hint as to who its owner was.
But something told Lucy that their runaway had just become a missing girl.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
MOLLY THOMAS
Two weeks earlier
The box hadn’t been a coffin.
Molly only truly convinced herself of that once she was taken out of it.
She didn’t remember when that had happened. One moment her hands had been bound behind her back, the wood tight against her sides, her breathing shallow. The next she’d found herself on the floor.
The darkness was the same. Deep. Overwhelming.
But she was sitting up now, her hands tied in front of her. There was room to move.
A basement. Not the normal kind. There were no windows. But she was underground. She could feel it in the pressure of the air. So maybe a bunker? Like the ones built by that old Armageddon prepper Crazy Gus. The ones she and Eliza had explored in the woods near the cemetery.
Those had been stocked full of tin cans and ammo, though. Those were big enough for a person to live, had spared a thought toward comfort.
This one was a slightly bigger coffin.
This one hadn’t been built for survival. This one had been built for death.
Molly’s breathing stuttered, her blood rushing past her eardrums.
No. Do
n’t panic. Don’t panic.
It’s not a coffin. It’s not a coffin.
She scrambled back until her spine touched the cool cement wall.
Blink. Open, closed.
Molly breathed in. The air smelled of her. Her fear, her body, her urine. Nothing else.
With awkward hands, she felt on the floor beside her hip. The ground was smooth, just like the wall. Bunker. She was almost certain now. Tears threatened to spill over then, any hope of being found stamped out with ruthless precision.
Her nearly numb fingers knocked into something, and she skittered away from it, a wild animal braced for a snakebite.
When no fangs sank into vulnerable flesh, Molly inched forward again. The space wasn’t big enough for her to have gone very far in her panic. Slowly, so slowly, she crawled with her fingers over the floor once more until they bumped into . . . plastic.
A water bottle. A plastic water bottle.
Something like a laugh or a sob or a mix of both ruptured the unnatural quiet, and it was quickly absorbed by the hungry cement walls.
Water.
Why would they give her water?
Drugged. Maybe.
At this point she didn’t care. There were three bottles, tipped over on the floor, their labels peeled off, so she could feel the grooves and divots.
She opened one, drank half of it down before she realized her mistake. Her stomach heaved, startled after having been deprived for so long.
The water came back up, along with bile that burned behind it.
Now her coffin smelled of her vomit.
The next attempt was slower, more careful. Rationing out the only thing that seemed to hint at the possibility of survival.
She cried as she put the lid back on with three-fourths of the bottle gone. The tears and snot dripped off her face, crawled along her neck, pooled against the collar of her shirt. She cried until her throat hurt and her muscles ached and her eyes had become sandpaper and there was nothing, nothing, nothing left. No fear. No pain. Not even exhaustion. Nothing.
Only then did Molly let her head fall back until it rested against the wall. Only then did she wonder if this was where Alessandra had been kept.
Her Final Words Page 15
