by Tess Diamond
“He has a history of doing that,” Abby said. “Maybe someday we’ll share some stories. I’ll be right back.”
She left Zooey behind in the study, and made her way out of the farmhouse, down the porch steps, and across the field, toward the orchard, knowing he’d seek refuge there.
Chapter 12
Seven girls. And that was likely just the beginning. If Zooey had only gone back fifteen years with her program . . .
Paul clenched his fists, breathing hard as he paced up and down the orchard row, trying to calm himself.
How had he let this happen? That’s all he could think right now. He’d never looked at FBI files on Cass or Dr. X. He’d avoided them, even when his mentor, Frank Edenhurst, had offered to give him access. He’d been selfish. If he hadn’t . . .
Would he have seen what Abby had? Would he have been whole enough? Or would he have denied the truth because it was easier? Because the idea of Cass’s killer walking free . . .
Fifteen years. Fifteen years and at least seven other girls, and it was his fault.
God, the weight was pushing down on his chest again. He pressed his hand over his heart, trying to slow his breathing.
This was his fault. Those girls . . . his mind began to sift through the facts that Zooey had thrown at him, filing impressions and theories in different categories as he sorted through it, picturing the map Zooey had shown them in his mind.
He’d taken girls from five different counties. And some of them were assumed lost instead of kidnapped.
No one would’ve seen the pattern. Especially because their bodies never showed up.
His stomach clenched. He was a realist. He knew the statistics. For every Jaycee Duggard who survived, there were hundreds of girls dead hours, days, weeks, months after they were taken.
There were seven dead girls somewhere. Probably lost in the acres of national forest surrounding them, never to be found. The tangle of mountains that bordered the valley were wild and vast, some places impossible to reach any way but on foot.
“Paul.” Abby’s voice broke through the churning guilt filling him. He turned. She was at the end of the row, her eyes brimming with an emotion he couldn’t quite identify.
Without another word, she walked toward him, taking his head in her hands, resting her forehead against his.
Everything inside him untwined and settled, his eyes closing as her fingers threaded through his hair.
He didn’t know how long they stood there, pressed together. It could’ve been minutes. It felt like hours.
She smelled like honey and lemons, like he remembered, and he couldn’t stop himself from reaching up and cupping her cheek.
The callus on his thumb caught against the softness of her cheekbone, and there it was, stirring to life inside him, the thing that he’d buried, tamped down, and tried so damn hard to ignore throughout the years.
Need. Want. Desire.
She’d tugged at his heart, at his gut, at everything in him, his very soul, for so damn long. And he’d denied it for just as long. He’d run from it as a teenager and as an adult. Every time. He’d loved other women. And he’d never be unfaithful in his mind or his heart.
But Abby . . .
Abby was his childhood. She was the trip across the meadow—867 steps when he was a boy, lessening with each year as he grew taller and taller. She was muddy red hair tangled in his face, freckled hands holding his as his father left to get sober. She was his first kiss at six and sometimes, in the deep night, when he’d jerked awake with the phantom weight of the suicide vest pressing on him, the only thing that soothed him was the thought about her being his last.
It was so damn hard to deny it when she was right here. When he was so close. When he could just lean forward and . . .
“It’s going to be okay,” Abby murmured, and Paul felt a flash of disgust at himself for feeling this way.
She’d made it very clear, a long time ago, that they were just friends. And that anything otherwise would be dishonoring Cass’s memory.
“Yeah,” he said, reluctantly pulling away from her. “It will be. I’m going to take over from here.”
Her eyebrows knit together. “Take over . . .” she echoed.
“You’re a civilian, Abby,” he said. “You could get hurt.”
Her mouth dropped open in an outraged O. “You don’t get to say when I stop being involved here.”
Of course Abby had no qualms about hunting down a serial killer. She probably pulled the rifle her daddy got her when she was sixteen out of the gun safe just for the occasion. She had always been fearless. The girl who jumped off the highest rocks at the swimming hole and told the best ghost stories around the bonfire and who had beaten him to the punch—literally—when Danny Roberts had slept with his sister Faye and then slut-shamed her all over school. Danny’s nose was permanently hooked to the right now, courtesy of Abby.
“I’m the FBI,” he said. “I kind of do.”
“Bullshit,” she declared. “I know you, Harrison. You work with that famous profiler. The one who specializes in serial killers. Grace Sinclair. I read her novels. If this was something you wanted your entire team on, you would’ve called her in. Instead, you called in your girl genius because she hero-worships you. She’s not gonna blab to your higher-ups about what you’re up to on your vacation. This is off the books—until you’ve got concrete evidence to take to them.”
Paul bit the inside of his cheek, wishing she wasn’t so damn alluring when she was reading him like a book. “You’re a brat,” he said.
Her mouth twisted into a wry smile. “I do what I have to.”
“You know, it’s against the law to blackmail an FBI agent,” he said.
“I’m not blackmailing you,” she scoffed. “It’s not my fault if I’m more clever than you. Now are you gonna come back inside?”
He looked past her shoulder to the farmhouse in the distance, feeling the dread start to build.
Usually, the spur of the hunt, the methodical steps that it took to find a killer, was something that motivated and fueled him. But he had a horrible feeling, one that had been there from the moment he realized that Abby was right . . .
There was more to this story. More to Cass’s murder than they ever thought.
That meant secrets were going to be uncovered. And secrets in a small town ran deep.
“Let’s go,” he said.
Chapter 13
“Oh, good, you’re back.”
Zooey had helped herself to a piece of apple pie from the fridge and perched on the edge of the desk to eat it. “This is delicious,” she told Abby, pointing her fork at the plate.
“Thanks,” Abby said.
“You mad at me, boss?” Zooey asked.
Paul shook his head. “I’m not mad at you, Zo. It’s just a shock. Everything I thought I knew is wrong.”
“I’m sorry,” Zooey said. “Both of you. I know that Cass was special to you. And from what I’ve read, she was a special person all around. It sucks that we’re here. But now that we are, we can figure out what really happened—and maybe prevent another girl from being taken.”
Abby felt a chill down her spine. “Another girl?” she echoed.
“Well, yeah,” Zooey said. “If the seven girls I identified are his victims, then he’s operating on a really predictable two-year schedule. He takes a girl every other fall. We’re a bit overdue, actually. Ramona, Molly, and Imogen were all taken in early September. But Keira, if she is his seventh victim, was taken in late November.”
“It’s November fifth,” Abby said, horrified at the thought that some girl was walking around right now, unknowing a psychopath was closing in on her.
“We’ve got a ticking clock then,” Paul said grimly.
“That’s my thinking,” Zooey said.
Abby had to clench her hands because they were starting to shake. Maybe she didn’t have the stomach for this, but it didn’t matter anymore: She was in it, and she was going to see it
through. For Cass.
“Zooey, how accurate is your Sibyl program?” Abby asked. “Can we be sure all these girls are the unsub’s victims?”
Zooey shook her head. “This is the Code Sibyl’s first outing. Programs like this are always going to have bugs I have to work out. I’m human and I make mistakes. And the records that Sibyl’s scanning through aren’t perfect either. But it gives us a rough place to start to do some good old-fashioned police work. Sibyl’s designed to be an aid, not a complete solution.”
“Speaking of that,” Paul said. “Have you tracked down the girls’ families yet?”
“I’ve sent the address of Keira Rice’s parents to your phone,” Zooey said. “They’re about an hour’s drive from here.”
Paul turned to Abby, and there was a glitter of challenge in his eyes that made sparks go off under her skin. “You up for a little gumshoeing?” he asked, like he hadn’t just demanded she leave the case behind fifteen minutes ago. What was with him?
“I am,” she said.
“I’m gonna step out and make a call,” Paul said. “My mom’s gonna be pissed that I’m ditching lunch with her.”
“Tell Tandy hi,” Abby called after him.
He disappeared out of the study, and Zooey pursed her lips, making a tutting sound like a little old lady. “Wow, you two have tension,” she commented.
Abby could feel her cheeks getting hot. She couldn’t believe she was getting called out by a pint-sized genius with a mythology geek streak. “We’ve been friends a long time,” she said, simply.
“That is not the way a guy looks at you when he’s feeling just friendly,” Zooey said, with an air of precocious wisdom that was so cute Abby couldn’t help but smile. She liked this kid. She had gumption.
“He’s just being a hard-ass,” Abby said. “He likes being in charge.”
“Well, after the whole bomb thing, can you really blame him?” Zooey asked, hopping off the desk. She was halfway across the room when she froze, catching sight of the look on Abby’s face.
“What ‘bomb thing’?” Abby demanded, feeling like someone had thrown ice water in her face.
“Um . . .” Zooey looked over her shoulder, like she was weighing her chances of escape. “There may have been an incident on a kidnapping case. Our kidnapping victim was diabetic, which meant we only had a small window of time to work with. The boss led a team in to get her, but everything went wrong. The kidnapper strapped him into a suicide vest full of C4 and held him hostage with the girl for like, a day. He’s better, though. The PTSD was bad for a while, but he’s drinking a lot less coffee now, which means he’s sleeping more and wow, you look really horrified, I’m making this a whole lot worse, aren’t I?” Zooey’s entire monologue came out as kind of a rush and she had to take a deep breath after she was done.
“I need to sit down,” Abby said. And then she did just that.
“Oh, my God, he’s gonna be so mad,” Zooey muttered to herself. “Look, I’m sorry. The way he looks at you and talked about you, I just figured you two were close and you probably knew the whole deal. My big mouth gets me in trouble all the time. Please, don’t say anything to him about it. The only reason I know about the PTSD is because he doesn’t believe in keeping things from his team. He held a whole meeting about it and everything.”
“Someone strapped C4 to him?” Abby asked dumbly, the details Zooey had given her whirling around in her head like bats around a cave at dusk.
“It kinda goes with the job. Our team, it’s an elite task force,” she explained. “He is the best of the best, Abby. And sometimes, that means putting yourself into some major danger for the greater good. And the boss? He’s all about the greater good.”
“My God,” Abby said. She knew, intellectually, that of course Paul’s job was dangerous. But maybe she’d tricked herself into thinking he spent most of his time behind a desk, giving orders, instead of out in the field, where even the right move could get him killed. The reality now was impossible to deny, and her heart picked up when she realized that he hadn’t left the study earlier because he was angry over Code Sibyl’s reveal of the possible victims.
Had he actually left because his PTSD had been triggered? He had been breathing in that long, slow way when she’d found him in the orchard. Was he trying to gain some kind of control?
She had very little experience with PTSD and her mind was racing. Had she made it worse by touching him? He would’ve moved away if she had, right? Abby’s stomach tightened, feeling like the ground was moving beneath her, unsteady and unpredictable.
“You’re not going to tell him I blabbed, are you?” Zooey asked. She looked so worried Abby shot her a reassuring smile.
“Of course not,” she said. “It does explain some things, but you don’t have to worry. If he wants to tell me, as far as he’s concerned, that’ll be the first time I’m hearing it.”
“Thank you,” Zooey said, letting out a sigh of relief. She set the pie plate down on the edge of the desk. “Hey, do you mind if I ask you something about your evidence boards?”
“Sure.”
“You’ve got a list here, on the X board.” Zooey went over to the second whiteboard, tapping on a sticky note affixed to the far right corner. There was a short list scribbled on it: personals, forums, newspaper ads, dating sites. “What’s this about?”
“I was trying to figure out how Wells and the unsub met,” Abby explained. “How they communicated and traded information. One of my initial theories was that the reason Wells didn’t give up the unsub was because he didn’t know who he was.”
Zooey frowned. “You think they connected online anonymously?”
Abby shrugged. “It was just a theory. One of the assistant coroners who worked with Wells in Oregon mentioned he was always buying stuff off Craigslist, so I was thinking that might be an angle, but I couldn’t ever track anything solid down.”
“Hmm, interesting,” Zooey said. “You have your notes from that assistant coroner who mentioned Craigslist?”
“On the desktop.” Abby nodded at the computer set in the corner. “It’s in the Medford folder. Alfred Cooke.”
“Cool, I’ll look through it, see if anything jumps out at me,” Zooey said.
Paul stuck his head back in the study. “I’m ready, if you are,” he said.
Abby felt a flash of apprehension at the idea of just appearing on Keira Rice’s family’s porch, asking questions. She wasn’t the kind of journalist who liked to ambush her interview subjects. She never found it led to anything productive.
“If the dog scratches at the door, just let him out,” Abby said to Zooey. “He likes to wander around the orchard in the afternoon, if we don’t get back.”
“Call me if you find anything else,” Paul told Zooey. “And if Grace calls . . .”
“I’m helping you with a family matter,” Zooey said. “She’s not gonna call. She and Gavin are on a case Jake O’Conner brought them. Some drug trafficking thing.”
“It’s about time that guy did me a favor,” Paul muttered, and it made Zooey laugh and Abby frown, not getting the joke.
“Let’s take your truck,” Paul said.
“You think a little mud on an old Chevy’s going to make them more inclined to talk to us than pulling up in the BMW?” Abby asked, pulling her keys out and going over to her truck.
“Couldn’t hurt,” Paul said, climbing inside the truck. “Wow, this thing hasn’t changed since the last time I was in it.”
Abby’s old S-10 had been the one she’d learned to drive at twelve—farm girls learned early—and the one her father had given her at sixteen. When she’d moved back home, she’d pulled it out of the back barn and started driving it again.
“Rizzo’s a good ol’ girl,” Abby said, patting the dashboard of her Chevy.
“I’d forgotten how obsessed you were with that movie,” he said, his dimples flashing as she started the car.
“Shut up,” she muttered, trying not to smile herself.
“I wonder . . .” Paul said, and he reached down, tugging at something, and with a laugh, he pulled an ancient pack of American Spirits out from underneath the seat, where they’d been taped. He shook the pack at her. “Been a long time since you cleaned in here, huh, Winny?”
“Oh, my God, how old are those?” she asked.
“If I remember correctly, I stashed them there to avoid my mom finding them in my room when we were like, fifteen? Right after you got your learner’s permit.”
“If my dad had found those, he would’ve grounded me for weeks!” Abby said, half laughing, half outraged on her teenage self’s behalf.
“And if my mom had found them in my room, I would’ve been grounded for years,” Paul shot back.
“Wow, so ready to throw me under the bus,” Abby drawled sarcastically, shaking her head with great exaggeration as she pulled the truck out of the driveway and made her way down the long dirt road that led to the road and highway. She felt warm inside, peaceful and just a spark of happy as they fell into an easy rhythm, like no time had passed. Like nothing had changed.
Like they’d never lost Cass or themselves or each other.
“If your father had found them, I would’ve been the gentleman I am,” Paul said. “Fallen on my sword. Taken the blame. Been the bigger man.”
She rolled her eyes. “Keep telling yourself that, buddy.” She turned onto the highway, heading north, toward the mountains and Trinity County, where the Rices lived.
They fell into a silence for a while as the landscape changed from neat rows of trees for as far as the eye could see and cute little farm stands sprinkled every few miles on the road, to craggy mountains and wild tangles of pine trees scattered across them.
“Do you think she’s right?” Abby asked finally, unable to stop herself. “Zooey, I mean,” she added, when Paul shot her a questioning look. “About another girl going missing soon.”
“We’ll see,” Paul said, in that way that told her the answer was yes and he didn’t want to say it. Maybe he didn’t want to break it to her—or to himself.
