by HELEN HARDT
“Remember last time I was here, and I told you I’d beat a guy up?”
She nodded. “I remember.”
“An attorney got a deal for me. I have to pay a five-hundred-dollar fine and pay the guy restitution. It avoids any prison time.”
“That’s great news.”
I nodded.
“But I doubt that’s what brought you in here.”
“You are good,” I said sarcastically.
“Well, it didn’t take any of my education or experience to figure that out.” She smiled.
Uneasiness wove a path through my brain. Jagged pieces of the previous evening mucked up my mind. Couldn’t start there. Not yet. “I really don’t know where to begin.”
“I usually tell my patients to start at the beginning, but I’m not sure that will work for you. The last time I asked about your past, you didn’t have the greatest reaction.”
“Yeah, I know. Sorry about that.”
“There’s no reason to be sorry for fainting. But I have to warn you, you will continue to have these kind of physical responses until you work through whatever is gnawing at you inside.”
“What makes you think there’s anything gnawing at me?”
“Talon. I’ve been doing this for ten years. I can tell. In fact, I’m pretty sure a layperson on the street could tell.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” My hackles rose.
“Calm down. I didn’t mean anything by it. But you called me for a reason.”
I clenched the arms of the chair. My fight-or-flight response was kicking in. Adrenaline coursed through me. I wanted either to run or beat something.
“That’s not the answer,” she said.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“No, but you’re thinking. You’re thinking you want to get the hell out of here. I can see it in your body language, in your eyes.”
“So you’re a body-language expert now?”
“Of course I am. I’m a psychologist.”
I relaxed my hold on the chair and willed my heart to stop thundering against my chest. “All right,” I said. “I’m ready.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Jade
“Jade”—Marj’s voice was urgent—“you’ve got to come over here now.”
The phone had rung while I was brushing my teeth, and I could barely talk through the toothpaste.
“What’s wrong?”
“I found some stuff hidden in Jonah’s room.”
“What are you doing in Jonah’s house?”
“I was curious. I’m tired of the guys not telling me anything. I knew Joe was going to be out in the pastures this morning, so I came over, let myself in, and did some digging around.”
Marj… What had she gotten herself into now? “When is he going to be home?”
“Any minute. Or at the end of the day. I don’t know. I don’t rightly care. What’s he going to do? Arrest me for breaking and entering? My brother wouldn’t do that. Especially not after what I found.”
“What did you find?”
“It’s too complex. I don’t want to talk about it over the phone.” Her voice was agitated, disturbed.
“All right, all right.” When Marj got her mind on something, there was no changing it. “I’ll get there soon as I can. I just got out of the shower. I’ll put on some clothes and be right there.”
“You need a ride?”
“No, Talon gave me the Mustang, remember?”
“Right, good. Meet me at Joe’s house.”
“No way. I am not going to sneak through your brother’s house. I sure as hell don’t want to be an accessory to whatever it is you’re doing. I’ll meet you at the big house.” Big house, meaning the main ranch house, of course. I hoped the words weren’t foreshadowing…
She sighed over the phone. “Fine. Just hurry, please.” She clicked the phone off.
An hour later, I arrived at the ranch house. Marj met me at the front door, Roger lapping at her heels. I knelt down and gave the dog some love.
“Since Roger’s following you around, I assume Talon’s not here?”
She shook her head. “He went off an hour or so ago. He texted me to let me know. Little did he know I was riffling through Joe’s bedroom at the time.”
“So what’s the big deal? What did you find?”
“We’re going to need a glass of wine for this.”
“Marj, it’s noon. We don’t need wine. We need lunch.”
“Well, it’s Sunday, so Felicia’s not here. And I can’t wait to talk to you about this. We’ll eat after. And suit yourself, but I’m having a glass of wine.” She walked to the kitchen.
I followed. “Fine. Just water for me, please.”
Marj poured our beverages. “We need to go to my room. I can’t risk having this stuff out in case someone shows up in the house.”
My heart started pounding. What was she getting at?
When we got to Marj’s room, her bed was filled with scattered newspaper articles. She sat down on a empty spot and cleared another spot for me.
“Take a look at these.”
I grabbed an article, and nausea overtook me as I read the words. It was about a little boy who had been abducted and never found. I put it down and picked up another one. This one had been found, strangled to death in a vacant field. Ice shrouded my skin.
“Marj, what is all this about?”
“You tell me. I found an envelope full of these articles hidden in Jonah’s closet.” She shook her head, her face pale, her lips trembling. “All this time I thought Talon was the one with the issues, and now I find out my oldest brother—”
“Don’t finish that sentence.”
“Believe me, I don’t want to.”
“I doubt Jonah has these for any other reason than…” I couldn’t finish the sentence either. Why would he have them?
“I can’t imagine that my brother would ever…”
“See? That’s because he wouldn’t.” I leafed through the papers, checking the dates. “I mean, look at these articles. They’re twenty-five and thirty years old. If Jonah were interested in abducting little kids, he’d be looking at present-day stuff.”
Marj’s features softened, and I could see the relief coursing through her. “Oh, God, Jade. Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Because you were too busy freaking out. Joe is the nicest guy in the world. He would never even think of doing anything like this.”
“Of course he wouldn’t.” Marj’s cheeks flushed their usual rosy pink.
“But there has to be a reason why he has these articles.”
She nodded. “Yeah, there has to be. But why?”
I smiled. “Now that you’re done freaking out and thinking your brother is some kind of pedophile, why don’t we go to the kitchen and you whip us up one of your gourmet lunches? I’m starving. With full bellies, we can come back in here and read through all of these and figure out what’s going on.”
Marj created some amazing beef stroganoff out of leftovers she found in the fridge. She finished her glass of wine and elected not to have another. A half an hour later, our bellies sated, we went back into her room.
We perused the articles and arranged them in chronological order. There were six altogether, all boys abducted between the ages of eight and eleven, except for one girl. Only one of the boys had been found. The other five children had never been found. The articles ranged from thirty years ago to twenty-five years ago. Only one of the boys was from Snow Creek. The rest were from Grand Junction or other towns in the vicinity.
I cleared my throat. “So over a span of what looks like about five years, six kids were abducted, mostly boys. Only one was found—dead, starved, and strangled, showing signs of physical and sexual abuse.”
Marj nodded. “I wish I knew why Jonah was keeping these articles.”
“Do you think he might have known one of the kids? Thirty years ago he was what, about eight?”
Marj’s eyebrow
s shot up. “I bet that’s it. I bet he knew the guy from Snow Creek. But what was the boy’s name?” She searched through the articles. “Luke Walker, nearly twenty-six years ago. Joe would’ve been twelve. But it says this kid was nine when he was taken. That would’ve been Talon’s age.”
My heart jolted. “Do you think Talon knew him?”
“Maybe. That doesn’t explain why Jonah was keeping the articles, though.”
“You know what we have to do, don’t you?”
“What?” she asked.
“We have to ask Jonah.”
“Problem with that on two counts,” Marj said. “Remember how he reacted the last time we went to him demanding answers? And this time, I was snooping through his house, not just snooping through my dad’s old documents in the basement.”
“I know. But this is going to eat at both of us until we know what’s going on.”
“Let’s ask Ryan,” Marj said. “He’s so much more easygoing than Joe, and I know he’ll keep the secret that I was snooping.”
I had almost suggested asking Talon, but that would have been ridiculous. Talon was less than forthcoming about most things, so even if he knew anything about these articles, he would be as tightlipped as Jonah.
“I’ll text him right now,” Marj said, “and see if he can come over.”
I perused another one of the articles, this one about the one girl in the bunch. Raine Stevenson, aged nine. Never found. My blood ran cold.
About fifteen minutes later, a knock sounded on Marj’s door.
“I’m here,” Ryan called.
“Great, come on in,” Marj called back.
Ryan entered, looking like he’d just gotten out of the shower. His dark waves were plastered to his neck. “What’s got you all in an uproar?”
Marj gestured to the bed where we both still sat. “This.”
Ryan walked forward, and his eyes widened into dinner plates as he sat down on the bed and shuffled through the articles. “Shit. Where the hell did you find these?”
“Promise you won’t get mad if I tell you?”
Ryan shook his head. “You can’t ask me to make such a promise.”
“He’s right, Marj,” I said. “If you want to get to the bottom this, you’re going to have to risk angering some people.”
“Fine. I found them in Joe’s bedroom.”
Ryan’s jawline tightened. “And just what were you doing in Joe’s bedroom?”
“I want answers, Ry. I found out a couple days ago that I was born premature, and my mother, whom I never knew, who died before I can remember her, changed my name. And for some reason our mother’s name—her maiden name—got changed on her marriage certificate.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Tell him, Jade.”
I let out a heavy sigh and told him what we had asked Jonah about weeks ago and what I had found in the Colorado records database.
Ryan stood, nodding, his signature smile absent.
“Aren’t you going to say anything?” Marj asked.
“It’s not my story to tell.”
“Oh, for the love of God, is that all you people say?” I threw my hands in the air.
“Look, Jade, this is about…family stuff,” Ryan said.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Marj said. “You’re not kicking Jade out of here. She is family as far as I’m concerned. She’s my best friend in the entire universe, and she’s in love with our brother.”
Ryan visibly gulped, but he didn’t seem surprised by Marj’s revelation. Then he nodded. “Fine. These articles are simply what they are. Some psychos were taking kids twenty-some years ago.”
“Why is this of such interest to Joe?” Marj asked. “Why did he save all of these? I mean God, I found these and I thought he was a pervert or something.”
Ryan shook his head. “No, Joe’s no pervert.”
“I know,” Marj said. “But why did he save all this stuff? Did he know one of the kids?”
Ryan’s corded muscles tensed as he nodded. “Yeah.”
“The kid from Snow Creek? Luke Walker?”
“Yeah. He was a…friend.”
“Of Joe’s?”
Ryan cleared his throat. “Of Talon’s, actually.”
“That makes sense. They would’ve been the same age.”
Ryan nodded again. “He was never found.”
“So why did Joe keep all the articles?”
“Joe was almost thirteen at the time, Talon had just turned ten. When Luke disappeared, the two of them tried to find him. I helped as much as I could, and they let me tag along most of the time. It was…kind of like a game. Junior detectives, you know?”
“What about the police?” Marj asked. “Weren’t they involved?”
Ryan nodded. “Yeah. But whoever took these kids… They left no clues. They were smart. Genius in some ways. The kids were never found alive, if at all, so the police could never get any information about the abductors.”
“You say abductors, plural,” I said. “What makes you think there was more than one?”
Ryan’s face reddened. “I don’t know. I guess I just assumed.”
Ryan was lying. His face had never turned red as long as I had known him. But I wasn’t going to push it. Not just yet.
Marj apparently didn’t share my reasoning. “Why would you assume that?” she asked.
“I don’t know. It just seems implausible that someone could get away with so much and never get caught if there was only one brain behind it.”
That seemed to satisfy Marj. But not me. He was still red. And he was still lying.
“How come you guys never mentioned Luke Walker? I mean, I’m your sister, and I’ve never heard of this until now.”
“I was just a kid myself. He wasn’t really my friend. He was Talon’s. You know Joe’s friend, Bryce Simpson? The mayor’s son? He was Luke’s cousin. Their mothers were sisters. So Joe had an interest. I just tagged along.”
“Talon has never mentioned Luke Walker,” Marj said.
“Talon never mentions anything.”
Well, Ryan had us there.
“So what kind of things did you guys do?” I asked. “I mean, when you were playing detective.”
“We talked to Luke’s parents. But that didn’t work out very well because they were so distraught, understandably. They didn’t have much to say, and it was too painful for them to talk about. So that didn’t last long. We never went back to them after the first time.”
“Did your mom and dad know you were doing this detective work?” I asked.
Ryan nodded. “Yeah, I think they did. Remember, I was a kid myself. Joe would be the one to ask. He was the oldest, and he would have the best memories.”
If Talon had been almost ten, his memories would be as good as Jonah’s. Funny that Ryan didn’t say to ask him.
“So what did you guys do after talking to the Walkers?” I asked.
“I remember going into town to the police station with Jonah and Talon. We asked to see the chief of police, because we wanted to know what was being done to help our friend. They gave us toy badges and sent us on our way.” He rolled his eyes. “Jonah was so pissed. Remember, he was almost thirteen, and he considered himself a man. He demanded to see the chief, and then we were ushered out, and they threatened to call our parents.” He shook his head. “Crazy stuff.”
“Do the Walkers still live here?” I asked.
Ryan shook his head. “They’ve been gone for a while. A couple months after Luke went missing, they sold the property here and moved to Ohio, where Mrs. Walker was from. I don’t know what happened to them after that.”
“Do you remember their names, Ryan?” I asked.
“I was seven, Jade. To me they were Mr. and Mrs. Walker.”
“It’s right here in the article,” Marj said. “Luke Walker, son of Chase and Victoria Walker of Snow Creek. They owned a small ranch north of town.” She bit her lip. “North of town. I think that’s part of the Carlt
on Dairy land now.”
“Yeah, it is. The dairy bought it about a year later. Before the Walkers left, Talon and I used to—” Ryan stopped abruptly, his face going white.
“What?” Marj asked. “What did you and Talon do?”
“I don’t want to talk any more about this.” Ryan walked briskly toward the bed and gathered the articles in a sloppy pile. “This isn’t any of your business. I’m taking these back to Joe’s.”
He walked out without another word.
“What was that about?” I asked.
Marj let out a heavy sigh. “Damned if I know. There’s something that he’s not telling us. And now we don’t even have the articles. How are we going to figure out what they mean?”
I smiled. “We don’t need the articles. Your best friend just happens to be a city attorney and has access to all archives in the state. I can pull up copies of those articles tomorrow at work.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Talon
“When I was about ten years old,” I began, “a kid I knew from school disappeared.”
“Was this kid a friend of yours?” Dr. Carmichael asked.
“Sort of. Not a forever friend or anything. He was a scrawny little kid whose parents ran a ranch north of Snow Creek. A real small-time operation, nothing like what we run. He was small for his age, and he had buckteeth. So of course he was ripe for the bullies at school.”
“Did you bully him?”
I shook my head. “Hell, no. I hate bullies.”
“Then what did you do?”
“I… I didn’t really take him under my wing. He wasn’t the kind of kid I wanted to hang out with. But more than once I kept the bullies from bothering him. Got my ass kicked a couple times for the trouble.”
“So you bullied the bullies.” Dr. Carmichael smiled.
I let out a chuckle. “I guess so. Sort of.”
“So you said he disappeared. What happened?”
“Well, that’s just the thing. Nobody knows. He was never found.”
What a damned lie. I knew exactly what had happened Luke Walker. And the five other kids who went missing during that decade—that horrible decade.
“What do you think made you want to protect Luke? If he wasn’t a friend, why bother?”
