by Stacy Green
He drained his beer and threw the bottle at the trash can. Bring him to justice. After so many playthings, blending in was his specialty.
“What do we do?”
He turned to the chain-smoking woman next to him. “We find her. And we take care of her.”
35
Cage pulled the cap over his head, shielding his eyes from the morning sun. He leaned against the hot metal of the car while the gas slowly pumped.
“You’re sure?”
Bonin nodded. “Don’t say anything to her about it.”
After Annabeth’s dream and “vision,” Cage decided to forgo the hypnotist and stay ahead of the impending media storm. Twenty miles outside of Jasper, Texas, Bonin got word the press had published photos and significant facts about the investigation.
“Whoever did this had access to a lot of details.” Someone had leaked both before and after pictures, along with the information about Annabeth’s TBI and more about her life as Lyric Gaudet. The media had already made the obvious leap: a serial predator had been on the loose for more than a decade.
Cage’s bet was on Sam George tipping off the media. The two of them had never clicked, and the Georges had been through hell. Sam was rightfully pissed off at his daughter not coming home. He’d likely considered leaking the story a chess move instead of a dangerous risk for Annabeth.
“The Girl Who Lived,” Bonin said. “Like she’s got a scar on her forehead and a magic wand. They could have come up with something more original.”
“Don’t bring it up,” Cage said. “I’ve already warned her it’s going to happen. She needs to stay calm.”
“She’s wearing the mourning ring,” Bonin said. “She believes it will keep her safe.”
Cage shoved the nozzle back into the pump. Bonin was a good cop, but he could use a more narrow-minded partner right now. “Surely you don’t think that’s all she needs.”
“I support whatever she needs to feel safe. We can’t risk her taking off again. And after what you described last night, I’d think your mind would be a little more open.”
Her vision, some kind of psychic connection from an old Tarot card. Alexandrine supported the theory. Lyric had learned the Tarot from her mother. At least she’d been more practical about the chances of Lyric still being alive.
“I don’t think so,” Alexandrine had said. “The mind and psychic connection are unexplainable things. It’s more likely that Lyric’s spirit has returned to this card because a part of it is tethered here. Her spirit is telling you to look for the flowers. You see her as her spirit wishes you to.”
Annabeth didn’t argue, but her body language said enough: a vision sent from a living, breathing Lyric was the only option. Cage hadn’t bothered to argue. If she wouldn’t listen to Alexandrine, she wasn’t going to buy his logical explanation of her memory coming back.
Still, after he’d gone back to the hotel and tried to grab another hour of sleep, Annabeth’s blank face and empty eyes haunted him. Whatever had happened to her was neurological and not a vision or communication from a spirit.
But what if it was? He’d listened to footsteps in the empty halls of Ironwood, heard doors slam, and watched things fly off counters. Dani swore she saw a woman in a vintage gown walking through the servants’ quarters. Cage accepted these things without question. Most of the South was haunted. Why couldn’t he consider this?
Annabeth emerged from the gas station carrying a giant soda and a bag of chips. She waved at them, and Bonin nudged Cage. “She also thinks Agent Sexy will keep her safe.”
Cage ignored her and snapped the nozzle back into the pump.
“I was about to starve to death.” Annabeth pulled a Starburst package from her back pocket and grinned. She flapped the candy back and forth. “Want some?”
“No, thanks,” Cage said. “We need to get back on the road.”
“You’re the boss. By the way, did I tell you the whole gun belt thing is really sexy? Like, could you be any hotter?”
Bonin choked a laugh. Cage rolled his eyes to the sweltering sky. “Inappropriate.”
Cage eased the car onto the shoulder of the dusty county road. Annabeth had been hit approximately five-hundred yards from the intersection of State Route 2800 and the county road. “This should be damned near the spot.”
Annabeth stepped out of the car.
“I ran through the woods.”
“You remember?”
“You told me I must have, because of the pine needles in my feet.” She turned in a circle. “There’s trees on both sides.”
“The couple who hit you said you’d come from the west.” Cage said. “The local police searched a full mile radius, but they were operating on the assumption you’d been dumped in the woods nearby. They never made the connection with the pine needles.”
“There’s pine needles in the clearing,” Bonin said. “Scattered everywhere. Wind blows them. She might have been dumped.”
“She had lacerations on her feet,” Cage said, “from the needles, suggesting she stepped on them. Some were deeply imbedded, so it didn’t happen when she stood up and walked to the road.”
Annabeth rubbed her temples and clicked her teeth. “I don’t remember anything about this place. We need to look for the purple flowers. That’s what Lyric said in my vision.”
“Relax,” Cage said. “This is just a starting point. Bonin, you have the map?”
Bonin spread a Texas DOT map across the hood of the car. Every county road was marked, and Cage had already compared it to his Google Earth results. Farms and communities dotted the area he wanted to search. “We’re not looking at people who still live here,” Cage said. “Even if he thought she died, he would have fled. Probably as soon as he found out she escaped.”
“But someone else might be living there now,” Bonin said. “We should start with the properties that have a decent amount of land. The farms with barns.”
Cage agreed. “Let’s just drive around and look first. I don’t want to knock on any doors unless we have to. The less the local police know, the better.”
Annabeth had wandered across the clearing of dried-up grass and hovered near the edge of the woods. She rubbed her temples again. “Why aren’t we looking for the flowers?”
“What is it?” Cage quickly joined her. Her skin had paled, making the spattering of freckles stand out.
Cage touched her shoulder. “Do you remember something?”
She shook her head, but her hands trembled. She rocked back and forth on her heels.
“Annabeth, talk to me,” Cage said. “Take a deep breath. Don’t let your emotions take over.”
“She looks like she’s in shock.” Bonin had joined them.
“Talk to us,” Cage begged. “What is it?”
Annabeth’s head whipped back and forth, her breathing short. “No, no, no.”
“Annabeth, you’re safe.” Cage gently took her quaking hands. Despite the heat, her skin felt like ice. “Look at me.”
She finally made eye contact, her pupils dilated.
“Good,” Cage said. He hated putting her through this. Pandora’s box could explode at any moment, and he and Bonin weren’t equipped to deal with the emotional fallout. “Tell me what you remembered.”
“Not a memory.” Her voice sounded weak as a newborn kitten’s. “Terror. I can’t remember what happened, but I know I was scared out of my mind, waiting for him to find me before a car came by. I can’t see it, but I feel it. Does that make sense?”
Cage nodded. “We’re on the right track. You definitely came from the west.”
“How do you know for sure?” Annabeth asked.
“Because I watched you look at the entire area when we got out of the car. Nothing bothered you until you came over here.”
She nodded. “I feel dizzy.”
“Go back to the car and get a drink,” Bonin said. “There’s water in the cooler in the back.”
Annabeth surprisingly obeyed, moving slow
ly to the car.
Bonin and Cage trailed behind. “I know what you’re going to say,” he said. “But her reaction’s all we have.”
“That’s what worries me.”
They spent the next hour driving the county roads and dirt paths. A few big farms had large barns, but Bonin’s quick public record search showed they’d all been owned by the same people for more than a decade. And this time during the Texas summer, purple wildflowers grew in abundance.
Annabeth wasn’t deterred. “Those aren’t the right flowers. I’ll know when I see them.”
“We’re nearly four miles from where she was hit,” Bonin said. “That’s at least an hour walking. Given her injuries, I doubt she ran very long.”
Cage turned left onto a raggedy, narrow dirt path that cut through the patchy woods. It looked like it hadn’t been used in a while.
“This isn’t on the map,” Bonin said. “No clue where it goes.”
Cage eased ahead. “That’s why I’m taking it.” He glanced in the rearview mirror at Annabeth. She hadn’t reacted to any of the farms or barns they passed. She was laser-focused on the purple flowers. Her mind had probably invented the whole “vision” to give her something to concentrate on.
The long path opened into a large, circular clearing pocketed with weeds. Beyond the clearing were fields of natural grass and heavy thickets of weeds.
Thirty feet from the empty clearing sat a decaying barn.
“Stay in the car.” He left the engine running while he and Bonin crossed the clearing and took a mangled path toward the barn. Weathered from the blistering Texas sun and rotting with age, the barn leaned dangerously to one side. “A good wind would knock this thing down.”
“Be careful,” Bonin said as Cage forced the wide front door to slide open. He covered his face and tried not to gag at the stench of rotted earth and decaying manure.
“Looks like an old horse barn,” Cage said.
They walked toward the two stalls. The door to the larger one had disintegrated off its hinges and lay on the ground.
“I’ve never seen a horse make those marks.” Bonin trained her light on the jagged punctures in the wood.
Fingernail scratches.
“There’s no mention of wood beneath her nails,” Cage said. “But that doesn’t mean this isn’t the right place.”
Across from the stalls, bags of oats and flower seeds rotted, adding to the putrid smell.
“We need to find out who owns this property, who lived here seven years ago. And we need crime scene techs to search for blood and trace,” Cage said.
“After all this time?” Bonin said. “And I doubt Jasper County’s going to cooperate.”
A shrill scream tore through the air. Cage and Bonin bolted outside.
Annabeth wasn’t in the car.
“Cage!” she screamed.
He and Bonin raced through the weeds to the other side of the barn. He breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of Annabeth standing a few feet into the field, unharmed.
She pointed to a large swath of blooming purple coneflowers.
36
“Her snippets of memory won’t be enough.” Bonin glanced at Annabeth, who stood silent, staring at the coneflowers. “You need the Texas Rangers and the FBI, and you need to sweet-talk the Jasper County Sheriff into thinking he’s the one asking for their help. None of that’s going to happen based on flowers.”
Annabeth turned her dark eyes on Bonin. “I’m not making this up. Lyric told me to look for the flowers.”
“I believe you,” Bonin said. “But it’s not enough.”
“If the flowers come from the seeds in the barn, they were planted the previous fall, if not earlier. Annabeth escaped in the spring,” Cage said. “Lyric told you about the flowers as a point of reference because they were blooming.”
His instincts churned as he walked around the flowers. They had multiplied over the years, but the side-by-side rows were too uniform. No one randomly planted a garden like this in the middle of a field, and there was no sign of any other plants or vegetables. This wasn’t some leftover flower garden.
“We have to dig up the flowers.”
They returned at dusk with shovels and flashlights. With no visible address, Bonin had been unable to find out if the land belonged to someone or was state property. Cage figured finding the remains trumped asking nicely.
Annabeth clutched the mourning ring, her skin flushed and sweaty.
“You can wait in the car,” Cage said. “Sit in the A/C.”
“I don’t want to be left alone.” She stared into the patch of trees bordering the open field—the woods she likely sprinted through that fatal night. “Maybe it’s my broken brain messing with me, but this place feels familiar. I keep smelling wet ground—like after a rain. But this place is dry as a popcorn fart.”
It had rained the night Annabeth escaped.
“And Lyric saved my life. If she’s buried here, I should stay.” She held up the large flashlight. “You dig. I’ll shine.”
The setting sun had incited the katydids and cicadas to kick off their nightly song.
“I hate bugs,” Annabeth said as Cage started to dig around the perimeter of the flowers. “The singing ones creep me the hell out.”
“Reminds me of home,” Cage said. “We used to sit out and listen to them for hours when I was kid.”
“My granddaddy cooked up the grasshoppers.” Bonin drove her shovel into the ground opposite him. “Cicadas too. Everyone loved them. I never had the stomach to try.”
Annabeth made a gagging sound. “Old people are weird. Charlotte talked about cooking bugs too. Nasty.”
Cage’s shoulders already throbbed. Sweat soaked his shirt. If it weren’t for Annabeth’s uncontrollable mind, he’d strip off his shirt. But after the claustrophobic atmosphere of New Orleans, the wide-open lands of Texas felt like heaven and reminded him of home. He would miss nights on Ironwood’s restored back sunroom, looking over the grounds that once held so many secrets.
“Shit!” Bonin dropped her shovel, stumbling backwards and landing hard on her butt. “Is that a copperhead? I just scooped it up with the damn shovel by accident.”
“Get back.” Cage snatched the light from Annabeth and trained it on the tangled pit of flowers.
Red-brown cross bands, copper-colored head, and a vibrating yellow-tipped tale. Cage’s insides turned cold.
“What’s that awful smell?” Annabeth pinched her nose.
“Copperheads give off a musky scent when they’re pissed off,” Cage said. “They’re venomous and mean.”
This time of night, the snake’s food coma made him less threatening—unless someone pissed him off by accidentally shoveling up his hiding spot. A man needed to steer clear of a threatened copperhead—“turn and haul ass” as Cage’s father always said when he told the story of a friend getting bit on the toe by a baby copperhead. The boy was too far from the hospital, and by the time he received treatment, his toe had swollen to bursting.
The nearest hospital was almost thirty minutes away.
“Their bites usually aren’t fatal,” Cage said. “But I’d rather not test that theory.”
This snake was less than two feet from him. Its strike distance was probably eight inches, maybe ten. Figure three feet to be safe. The shovel was four feet long, plus the length of the blade. Should be fine.
“Annabeth, keep the light on it and stay still. You too,” he said to Bonin.
“Don’t kill it!” Annabeth said.
“I’m not planning to.”
He blinked against the sweat stinging his eyes. His heart hammered in his ears as he edged forward. The copperhead’s tail vibrated faster.
Cage slipped the shovel blade underneath the angry snake. He saw a brief glimpse of fangs before the snake struck, its venomous bite coming within inches of Cage’s hand. He threw the shovel as hard as he could. It landed with a thud several feet away.
Annabeth trained the flashlight on t
he shovel as the snake hissed and lurched, slowly uncoiling and slithering away.
“Christ,” Bonin said. “I thought it was going to nail you.”
“Me too.” Cage took the light from Annabeth and retrieved his shovel. Hands still unsteady, he carefully checked the flower patch for more snakes.
“Looks clear,” he said. “Just be careful.”
They resumed digging, fighting with the dry ground. Annabeth’s light flashed left to right as she patrolled for more snakes.
“How far down do you think we need to go?” Bonin huffed. “I don’t want to shatter a skull and ruin evidence.”
They’d already dug at least three feet and a good distance into the flowerbed. “This is far enough. Let’s switch to spades.”
Bugs swarmed his face. His back ached, and he needed a shower. Bonin looked ready to call it a night. Behind them, Annabeth paced. They dug in silence until something shiny caught Cage’s eye.
“Focus the light here.”
Annabeth knelt beside him and pointed her light at the long, glittering object.
Cage snapped on latex gloves and slowly began sifting through the dirt, easing the gold chain from the earth. A delicate, dirt-crusted heart dangled from the chain.
He gently rubbed off the dirt, the hair on the back of his neck standing up.
A small ‘M’ was engraved on the heart.
“This belonged to Mickie,” Cage said. “She was wearing it when she disappeared.”
37
I can’t sleep.
I wanted to stay with Cage, but he says I need rest. How am I supposed to sleep knowing what’s coming tomorrow?
Maybe Lyric really is dead and Miss Alexandrine is right. Her spirit is leading me. She wants me to find her body and bring her home.
She’s not supposed to go in the family tomb, but maybe if I pray to the ancestors to make an exception since she saved my life, they’ll listen. I’ll worry about it later.
Cage says the identification process will take a while—and he said it may just be Mickie’s body buried out there, but I know he just doesn’t want me to get my hopes up.
