CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
LUCY THORNE
Saturday, 1:00 p.m.
Hicks was waiting for Lucy, hands on his hips, gaze on the mountains in the distance.
Cowboy hat, cowboy stance, Lucy thought again. Her first impression of him. The ghost of Zoey Grant’s unspoken accusations whispered along oversensitized nerve endings rubbed tender from too many unanswered questions, and Lucy shook it off.
This wasn’t the right time for that speculation.
“You found something,” Hicks said. It wasn’t a question.
“Phone.” Lucy held it up. Hicks’s neutral expression didn’t so much as quiver. His eyes just lingered on the phone while he reached into his pocket to pull out an evidence bag.
Lucy dropped it in and then shoved the latex glove she’d been using to carry it back in her jacket. “Wonder if the DA will think you’re so crazy now.”
“Might be nothing,” Hicks said, sealing off the plastic.
“Might be Molly’s,” Lucy countered. “Let’s show it to Frank.” She shouldn’t be watching Hicks so closely. But the doubts had snuck in right behind the memory of Zoey’s wide eyes.
When Frank Thomas saw the phone, he fell to the floor, his knees striking the boards without mercy, the crack of bone against wood loud in the quiet living room. Zoey Grant looked on from the sofa behind him.
“What does this mean? What does this mean?” Frank’s hands came up to his ears, as if he didn’t want to hear the answer to the question he’d just asked, as if he already knew what it meant. His body curled in on itself, rocking gently in time with his breathing, which was tipping precariously close to shallow. If this was an act, it was an elaborate one.
His eyes flew to hers, the whites of them lined with red, his lashes damp. Desperation flooded the space between them. “What does this mean?”
Lucy debated with herself before dropping into a crouch. “Mr. Thomas, I take it you can confirm that’s Molly’s phone.”
“Yes.” His attention was locked on her face like she was salvation. He must not realize yet that she had nothing to give him, no hope to throw out that wasn’t vague equivocations.
“She may have left it behind, Mr. Thomas.” Only when she said his name again, slow and deliberate, did she hear Eliza’s voice. You keep saying my name like that, you know. “She might have thought it could be tracked. We don’t know what it means yet.” She paused. “Mr. Thomas. Frank.”
Everyone needed a reminder that they were human.
Frank nodded, an almost mindless agreement, latching on to the idea, his cupped hands coming to rest above his heart as if holding the suggestion there, the weak hope, cradling it close to keep it safe. “She might have left it here.”
Lucy glanced up to find Zoey watching Hicks instead of her and Frank.
“Mr. Thomas, is there someone we can call to come stay with you?” Lucy asked, shifting her attention back to the broken man on the floor.
“My wife, she was . . . She’s coming home,” Frank muttered, now not looking at any of them, still rocking, his arms folded up against his chest. “She’ll be here. She’s coming home.”
The last little bit wobbled, and Lucy wondered if his mind had slipped to Molly midthought. “All right. Please, though, if you can think of anything else that could be helpful . . .”
She held out one of her cards but realized almost immediately that he wasn’t going to take it. Lucy turned instead to the side table, clearing away some of the clutter so that it wouldn’t get lost among the junk. “I’m going to leave this right here, okay?”
Frank nodded, but she doubted he’d even heard her. Sighing, she shrugged a little and then motioned toward the door. Zoey and Hicks followed, though Zoey paused next to Frank, laying a hand on his shoulder, squeezing once before moving on. Hicks was the last one out of the room.
None of them spoke until they were in Zoey’s SUV, headed back toward town.
“What does this mean?” Zoey asked, and Lucy wasn’t sure if she had purposely parroted Frank or if it was all any of them were capable of thinking about. “This can’t possibly be a coincidence, right?”
It could be. It really could be. Stranger things had happened. “I don’t know.”
Zoey glanced into the rearview mirror. “You think Eliza’s best friend going missing has nothing to do with Eliza confessing to killing Noah Dawson?”
The question was laced with thick, obvious sarcasm, but Lucy took it at face value.
“We’re not sure Molly is missing.”
“Yes, we are,” Zoey corrected, jabbing a finger into the air above the steering wheel. “She’s underage, which means she’s a runaway, which means she’s missing. Whether she left voluntarily or not.”
“Fair,” Lucy conceded. Legally, Molly was missing. “But that doesn’t mean Molly is in any way connected to Noah’s death.”
Which was the reason Lucy was in Knox Hollow in the first place. She couldn’t forget that, couldn’t let herself get pulled on wild tangents that might go nowhere. It had been a long time since she’d needed to rein herself in on a case.
Hicks lounged in the passenger seat, ignoring them both, so Lucy pulled out her phone, refreshing her email. As an unread message slid into her inbox, a text from Vaughn flashed across the top of her screen. She clicked over to it.
Urgent. Are you alone?
Lucy angled her body over her phone. Text not call, she responded, her finger trembling ever so slightly as she hit “Send.”
When Vaughn wrote back, Lucy had to blink hard, the words blurring and then rearranging themselves before straightening out once more. And all of a sudden, everything became a lot clearer.
Wyatt Hicks is Eliza Cook’s uncle.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
LUCY THORNE
Saturday, 1:45 p.m.
Lucy waited for the right moment.
It didn’t come in the car, driving back from the Thomases’ place.
She spent the entirety of the ride staring at the back of Hicks’s head, wondering what the hell this all meant.
Eliza’s uncle.
Now that she thought about it, she could find his similarities to Rachel Cook. They shared the height, the coloring, the jawline, the steely expression. Lucy probably would have recognized it sooner had she seen them standing next to each other.
But Hicks hadn’t bothered to tag along to that particular interview.
She tried to sort it out. Hicks, Cora, and Rachel. Siblings who had grown up in the Church. One had died, one was the pastor’s wife, and one was the sheriff fighting against everything he’d been raised to believe.
That all mattered, but what mattered more was what this meant for Lucy’s investigation. Were Eliza and Hicks close? Had the relationship played a part in Eliza’s decision to go to the FBI rather than her own uncle? It was as if she were begging for the harshest sentence possible.
Or . . .
Or was she running away from her own accomplice, scared he was going to turn on her. Scared of what he’d asked her to do.
Lucy desperately tried to remember exactly how Hicks had looked at the crime scene, but he’d been shrouded in mist and rain and shadows. Had there been guilt in the harsh lines of his body?
Did this mean anything?
The right moment to confront him about it didn’t come when Lucy trailed behind Hicks and Zoey into the sheriff’s office. She watched them carefully now, remembering Zoey’s wide eyes when she warned that Hicks was involved in this somehow, a Cassandra whose prophecy came true. The two seemed friendly enough, banter flowing between them with an ease that spoke of something more than just a collegial relationship.
But Zoey had been at the sheriff’s department for only six months. With the ease in which Zoey decided to give Hicks up, Lucy guessed the loyalty hadn’t really taken root.
It wasn’t until Lucy spotted the back exit door that she knew this was her opportunity. It was positioned perfectly, just past Hicks’s office, and
, if she was picturing the layout right, it would drop them out in an alleyway that wasn’t shared by any close neighbors.
Her breathing, her heartbeat, her hands, they all steadied, a sniper’s eerie calm before pulling the trigger. Right as Hicks went to turn in to his office, Lucy snagged his elbow, exerting just enough pressure to keep him moving. His surprise and her forward momentum carried them out of the building.
Lucy didn’t waste time. She dropped her hand from his arm and then shoved him, hard, once, twice, until he’d backed up against the wall. She pulled out her phone.
“Explain,” she gritted out, anger a hot flame licking across her skin. Sweat dampened the waistband of her jeans, her shirt’s armpits—her sniper’s cool gone in the face of his answering calm.
“You weren’t going to let me be involved if you knew.” He shrugged without even looking at the texts. He’d known this was coming. He’d been ready for it. “I weighed the options. This was the one that made the most sense.”
There was no regret, no shame in his voice. He was straight matter-of-fact. This was his truth. This was his reality.
And it pissed her off.
“The most sense for you,” Lucy threw back. “God, Hicks. You realize you may have just jeopardized this whole thing?”
For the first time since she’d latched on to his elbow, there was actual emotion in his eyes. It still wasn’t remorse, though. No, this was pure and brutal frustration. Maybe even rage. “This whole what? This”—he waved, and all but spit—“this performance of an investigation.”
Lucy rocked back on her heels. He hadn’t moved beyond that quick gesture, wasn’t in any way threatening her. But his derision, his anger, they pushed against her, forced her to retreat. The stoic cowboy, gone.
“It’s not a performance,” she said. It was a weak defense. This was a performance, in all the ways that it mattered in the eyes of the world, and they both knew it. Eliza Cook had confessed to murder, had known details she wouldn’t have unless she was the killer. The only thing left were the boxes that needed to be checked. On the face of it, that’s what Lucy should be doing.
But after the past two days, how did he not know better? How did he not know her better? She’d thought he could read her. Maybe she’d been wrong about that, too.
“It’s not a performance.” This time it came out stronger, without the waver beneath it.
Something about the way he watched her—wary and irritated and stubborn and most of all silent, silent, so silent—had Lucy’s fingers curling into fists.
She turned, paced, stopped to stare at him, got pissed all over again.
“Were you ever going to tell me?” she asked without looking at him.
He didn’t answer, and that was confirmation enough.
“You knew I’d find out,” she all but accused. It wasn’t a question, didn’t need to be. He would have guessed someone they would talk to would slip enough to make her suspicious.
Why risk it?
Betrayal was a hot, squirming thing beneath her skin, like the maggots that burrowed into corpses. The reaction was irrational. It was nonsensical. But it was there anyway.
Lucy never trusted easily, had learned that lesson the hard way too many times. But Hicks had reminded her of home, with his thick rancher jacket and work-calloused hands, the pickup truck he drove with one elbow propped on the windowsill, his weatherworn face and his laconic drawl. His cowboy hat, his cowboy stance.
So the trust had come, a comfortable, subtle thing that had snuck up on her in only a few hours despite any other warning signs. It came because he was every man she’d grown up with, the boys she’d kissed, every friend she’d left behind for a different life. With the false familiarity ruthlessly ripped away, there was nothing left in front of her but a stranger, a stranger who now was nothing but a mirror reflecting back her own foolish naivete.
That’s where the heat was coming from—resentment, disappointment if she were honest—fueling a simmering flame. And none of it, none of it was useful to the investigation.
She thought about the little moments they’d shared. The stories that he’d told her that had felt genuine. “Rachel’s punishment, when she helped Josiah run on a broken ankle.”
His face went blank like it tended to do when he was hiding something.
“You were punished like that,” Lucy said. God, he could have helped this case so much. But he’d chosen to lie instead. What else wasn’t he telling her?
“We had a complicated childhood,” he said, and she laughed without humor.
“Right, it wouldn’t help to know about that.”
Hicks’s mouth opened, closed. He looked away.
“Tell me now,” Lucy demanded. “Tell me whatever you weren’t going to before. Tell me, and maybe . . .”
You’ll redeem yourself. She didn’t finish because he wouldn’t actually be able to. Even if he spilled his secrets now, he’d still kept them before.
“I don’t know anything, I swear,” he said. It sounded like an absolute lie.
Anger sparked, but she knew even if she raged at him, he wouldn’t break.
So she shut it down, let ice blanket the fire.
“You’re off the case.”
He didn’t shift, didn’t blink. There was no surprise in his brows or the expressive lines by his eyes, his mouth. “Don’t make that mistake.”
Two minutes ago, she would have huffed out an irritated, disbelieving breath. An hour ago, she would have crossed her arms, settled in to be persuaded. Now, she met his eyes, held his gaze for one second, two, three. A long stare that didn’t break.
Then she turned and walked away without another word.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
ELIZA COOK
One week earlier
Josiah served many roles for the Church. He was the voice, the face, the persuader. But Rachel was the backbone.
They’d met when they were kids, though Josiah hadn’t started officially courting Rachel until she’d turned fifteen to his seventeen. They’d been young, but everyone who’d ever talked about them said it was love.
Growing up, Eliza had been grateful for their partnership, the one that looked so flawless to the world but in reality took hard work and patience and faith.
Josiah led because he always had. He was charismatic in a way that sunflowers are, open and honest and lovable for the very fact that they exist. Eliza watched him sometimes, trying to understand his ability to draw people in, to captivate, to entrance.
She would never be like that. And neither would Rachel.
Eliza knew she should feel closer to Rachel, not only because they were related by blood, but because they were so alike. Odd, protective, too harsh for most people, loyal to the core to those they loved.
But there was always something standing in the way between them. Eliza thought it might have been Cora’s ghost, but Rachel didn’t believe in ghosts.
Her aunt had been nurturing in her own rigid, awkward way, not really sure what to do with a grieving six-year-old girl when all she’d ever had were sturdy boys. But Eliza had been used to the warmth of her mother’s arms, and Rachel had nothing to offer but ice. Which was unfortunate because Eliza had shared the affinity toward running cold.
So maybe they’d never really become the family Eliza had hoped for once upon a time, but both Josiah and Rachel had treated her well, had clothed and fed her. She realized that might be a low bar, but also that she had enough experience with the world to know not everyone cleared it.
Eliza watched Rachel now as she bent over the graves in the cemetery, her shiny black trash bag bulging with the dead flowers the congregation left for their loved ones.
It was their Monday-morning ritual, driving out to the cemetery just after dawn so that they wouldn’t be seen. Leaving the flowers that were still fresh, collecting the ones that were rotting like the flesh beneath the ground. Rachel’s back was bent so that she was just a shadow against the sun rising over the mountains in
the distance.
Doing the dirty work no one else even thought of. That was Rachel.
Hicks had always said she was impossible to deal with, that if she was angry with you she’d sooner drive a knife in between your rib cage than try to listen to reason. But by now after years of watching Rachel in action, Eliza thought maybe circumstances had forced Rachel’s hand. That maybe life had made her get that tough.
It had hurt, realizing what kind of childhood Rachel and Cora and Hicks had endured. Eliza had always remembered her grandmother as ginger and mint and a soft, slightly accented voice reading from the Bible by candlelight, a welcome bosom for Eliza to rest her head upon.
Eliza had first realized the truth when Hicks and Rachel had gotten into one of their screaming matches right after Cora had died. Eliza had still been too young to really understand, but she’d known to listen, known to keep hidden curled up beneath heavy coats in the hallway closet.
Accusations had flown, ones that hadn’t even made sense once Eliza had been old enough to understand what was said. Angry words about Eliza’s father, about Cora’s death, about the baby that had lived only a few days. Those Eliza had deliberately forgotten.
But the moments she remembered clearly were of Rachel saying she’d always taken the brunt of their mother’s wrath, the moments of Hicks saying he had never asked her to. They had cried then, the pair of them, and Eliza hadn’t realized adults could cry.
It was terrible and painful and wretched, and Eliza had covered her ears and wished Cora had never gotten pregnant again.
Hicks and Rachel had fewer verbal brawls these days. When Hicks came around, he was cool and cutting, derisive and unemotional. Sometimes he would offer Eliza a smile, but she knew he didn’t want Rachel to know they talked. He was protecting her. Just like Rachel thought she was, as well.
They were such a pair, Hicks and Rachel. So similar and yet so different. Hicks could be more like Cora, when he wanted to be. He cared, was the thing. He cared so much that he cut himself open because of it and then was confused when he bled all over the place. On the other hand, Rachel was like Eliza. And Eliza thought Hicks might never understand either of them.
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