Silence fell in the cab of her truck, and she felt her stomach drop and embarrassed heat crawl up her chest and neck to flood her cheeks. “I guess it was just me,” she muttered quickly.
“No, Winny, I—” He let out a long sigh, jerking his hand through his hair, rumpling it. “I did,” he admitted quietly. “Fuck, I must’ve played the videos I had of her a thousand times.”
Her fingers were holding the steering wheel in a death grip. She tried to relax her fingers, but it was hard.
After Cass was killed, after Wells was caught, they’d had less than six months before graduating and going off to their separate colleges. They’d never sat down and talked about any of it as teenagers—they hadn’t known how. And by the time they were adults, it was too late. They were supposed to have healed. Done their grieving and moved on.
She had tried. Maybe he had succeeded, until she dragged him back into this. She knew he’d been engaged to another FBI agent at some point. His mom had shown her pictures. His fiancée was a gorgeous woman, petite, but somehow beautifully fierce-looking. She didn’t know what happened there, only that they never made it down the aisle and weren’t together anymore.
But now he was back here, with her. And they had to talk about it, didn’t they? Because she’d involved him in this.
Once again, Abby, you are the author of your own destruction, she thought.
“I think it might be more than that, though,” Abby said. “Grief is one thing. But grief mixed with guilt? That’s another.”
“You think the best friend knows something?” Paul asked.
“You know how girls are at that age,” Abby said. “They have entire secret lives from their parents. Even if they’re close with them, like Keira Rice obviously was. But they don’t keep secrets from their best friends.”
You did. That traitorous thought floated to the surface, and she pushed it down. This wasn’t the time.
“So you’re just going to call her up and ask?” Paul asked.
“Why not?”
“It’s not the worst idea,” he said. His phone rang, and he looked down. “It’s Zooey.” He tapped it on. “Hey, Zo. You’re on speaker with me and Abby.”
“Great!” Zooey said. “I’m calling about the coroner’s report.”
“What about it?” Abby called.
“Well, it’s not complete,” Zooey said. “It looks like the FBI didn’t do their own examination of the . . . of Cass’s . . .” She hesitated. “Of Cass,” she said finally. “They just relied on the county coroner’s report. Problem is, both the copy in the FBI files I brought and the copy that Abby has in her files are missing pages.”
“It’s probably just a clerical error,” Paul said.
“Probably,” Zooey said. “But we should get the original just to be sure. Look, I don’t mean to be an ass, but rural counties like this aren’t exactly bastions of forensic progress. Add in the fact that we’re talking fifteen years ago, which is practically the Dark Ages scientifically, there are things the ME might have missed that I’ll be able to pick up.”
“The original report would be at the sheriff’s department, in the records room,” Abby said to Paul.
“Okay, we’ll dig around until I find it. And then”—he checked the time on his phone—“then, we all need to get ready for dinner. Because you’re both invited to my mom’s. No excuses.”
“Ooh, Mama Harrison, I can’t wait,” Zooey said. “I’ll see you in a bit.”
“Hey, Zo, run some searches for me on the missing girls Code Sibyl pulled up,” Paul said. “I want to know everything they had in common.”
“On it,” Zooey said.
“‘Bye for now.”
He hung up.
“It’s probably best that you go to the sheriff’s station alone,” Abby said.
“Why’s that?”
“Ryan’s a deputy now.”
“Ryan as in your ex-boyfriend from high school Ryan?” Paul asked.
Abby nodded. “When I moved back home to take care of Dad, he seemed to think it would be a good idea to pick things up again. That was about as far from my thinking as you could get. He didn’t take it well.”
“If I remember correctly, Ryan rarely takes anything well,” Paul said.
“You can just drop me off at my place. Zooey and I can meet you at your mom’s.”
“Okay,” he said. “I wouldn’t let him bug you, though.”
Abby shot him a look. “I can take care of myself when it comes to Ryan,” she said. “I just don’t feel like dealing with it today.”
Once upon a time, breaking up with Ryan had been the peak of her teenage heartbreak. In fact, he had been the reason she and Cass had fought the day before Cass was killed.
Her throat tight as she pulled onto the road that led to her place, mind circling around those thousands of calls Jayden had made to Keira’s Skype account. When the trees and the fence and the gate that had the wooden sign her father had carved himself, WINTHROP ACRES, affixed to it came into view, all the tension began to uncoil inside her. Home soothed her in a way little else did.
“I’ll get out here,” she said, when he pulled up to the gate.
“Abby, it’s like half a mile down the road.”
“I know, I need the fresh air.”
He looked at her, searching, and the hair on the back of her arms stood on end under his scrutiny.
“We need to talk,” he said. “About all this.”
Abby bit her lip. She thought about what Zooey had told her, about the bomb, about the PTSD. She thought about the secrets she was still keeping. All the pain she kept hiding.
“I know,” she said. “But not now.”
She got out of the truck, leaving the keys behind for him. And he slid across the bench, taking her place in the driver’s seat, waiting until she opened the gate and disappeared from sight, to drive away.
Chapter 16
Castella Rock, like many tiny rural towns, had a sheriff’s department rather than a police department. When you had so many citizens living in the far-flung reaches of the county, a sheriff served the area better. Plus, the county never had money for both. It was always one or the other.
The sheriff’s department was set in the town square. An old fountain was still spouting merrily, the cherubs’ faces faded from years of water running over them, lending the whole thing a haunted air. The brick building the department operated out of was two stories, with a records room in the attic and a bell tower with a bell that hadn’t rung in nearly fifty years.
Paul opened the glass doors, the brass handles worn from years and years of hands pulling them open. The building was cool and quiet this time of day, and when he walked into the main room, only one deputy was at his desk, his feet propped up as he looked intently at his phone.
Paul cleared his throat and the man started, looking up. When their eyes met, he felt a flash of recognition, followed quickly by disgust.
Ryan Clay. Abby’s ex-boyfriend from high school . . . and his ex-rival on the baseball team. When Cass had been killed, Paul had quit the team, his focus shifting to law enforcement, college, and the FBI, and Ryan was finally number one. It was something that seemed to endlessly please him, because every time after that when he saw the guy, he’d talk loudly about all his wins and his new position as team captain.
Just looking at his face brought a rush of adolescent anger and annoyance to the surface, but Paul pushed it down. Hopefully, Ryan had just been a stupid egotistical kid who had changed. God knows, Paul had done and said some stupid shit as a teenager.
“Harrison,” Ryan drawled, clearly trying to recover after being caught playing Candy Crush or whatever instead of working. “What are you doing here?”
Paul wasn’t petty enough to flash his badge, so instead he just said, “I’m here on business. I need access to the records room.”
Ryan’s eyebrows scrunched together. “I don’t think you’re authorized to do that.”
Clearly, the guy hadn’t changed. “Is Sheriff Alan here?” he asked pointedly.
“Alan’s on a call,” Ryan said. “We’ve been dealing with an arsonist this entire fire season. Looks like we’re finally gonna catch him.”
“And they left you behind to watch the phones?” Paul asked innocently.