“Wait,” she said and got up so fast she nearly tripped over the picnic bench. She opened the file on top and thrust a photo envelope into his hand. “That’s her picture. Just look her in the eyes and tell her you don’t care what happened to her. All I ask. Take it.”
He took the envelope and carefully slid it into his jacket pocket.
“Go home. Let your sister rest in peace,” Jeremy said. He started to leave again.
She called out after him. “If that was Ralph Howell’s body in Red Crow, would you walk away?”
He stopped, but only for a second before doing just that.
Chapter Two
Music was magic for Emilie, especially the music of Stevie Nicks. For as long as she could remember, Stevie’s crushed-velvet voice could calm her racing mind even on the roughest days. And since her mother died, there had been a lot of those. But today, it wasn’t working. The music blasted through her earbuds, but her mind spun like a top that never slowed, never stopped.
Finally, Emilie got up, dressed, and walked a few blocks to the old Jesuit Spiritual Center. The property wasn’t huge, but it had a nice view of the river, and almost nobody went there except a few weeks a year when they hosted retreats.
Today, Emilie had crisp October weather and the place to herself. With “Nightbird” playing in her ears, she walked the center’s labyrinth. Like a record skipping, a broken lyric echoed in her mind—walk away, walk away, walk away…
The police had already tried to find her sister, failed, and given up. Jeremy was her only hope, her last hope, and he had said no and walked away.
She reached the labyrinth’s center, then turned on her heel and started to walk it back to the beginning.
The labyrinth wasn’t very big or fancy, only a painted stone circle. At first glance, it appeared as if there were a hundred lines, dozens of paths, twisting and turning and doubling back over and again. But no, there was only one line, one path. Order hidden inside the chaos. That’s why Emilie liked it. Usually. Because though it looked impossibly complex, she always found her way through it.
But she wasn’t going to find her way this time.
Walk away…walk away…walk away…
Why did she care so much? She’d never met her sister, who’d been dead for two decades. Why go to all the trouble?
She knew why. Because the whole thing was like a fairy tale or something. Two sisters who never met raised by two different families, each not knowing the other exists. And one lives in luxury with a loving mother and everything she could ever want handed to her on a silver platter…
And the other sister gets kidnapped by a known sex offender on the way home from school.
Why was Emilie the lucky one? Why was she the princess, not the pauper?
They’d found her sister’s blood in the man’s car. She’d dented the trunk from the inside with her frantic kicking. And she’d lost that fight. Who would fight for Shannon now?
Walk away…
But walking away wasn’t an option. The least Emilie could do was give her sister a place to rest. The least she could do was not leave her in the woods.
“Help me, Shannon,” Emilie prayed softly under her breath as she rounded a turn in the labyrinth, her hot pink Vans looking ridiculously out of place against the solemn old stone beneath her feet. “I’ll keep trying, but if you can send a little help from beyond, I’ll take it because I can’t find you alone.”
With a sigh, she stepped out of the labyrinth and looked up.
Jeremy Cox stood a few feet away on the hillside.
“Jesus.” She popped out her earbuds and stared at him, wild-eyed.
“Wrong guy,” he said. “But I think I saw him over there.” He pointed to a white marble statue of Jesus by the maintenance shed.
“Not funny,” she said. “You said you had a flight.”
“I lied.”
“Oh great. Thought you were some big hero.”
“I am, apparently. I’m also an asshole. They’re not mutually exclusive.”
She stared at him, trying to decide if she was glad to see him, terrified, or both.
“What are you doing here? You scared the shit out of me.”
“If you hadn’t been blasting music directly into your ear canals, you might have heard me calling your name.”
Yes, definitely could be a bit of an asshole.
“My birth mother took drugs when she was pregnant with me. It made me very fussy as a baby, and only music calmed me down enough to sleep. Stevie Nicks—probably because she’s literally the fairy queen of rock—works better than any other music.” She paused for a breath. “Sorry, I didn’t need to tell you that, but the doctors said the drugs probably wired my brain a little differently. To quote my seventh-grade teacher verbatim—‘Emilie has trouble self-censoring.’ ”
“I find that refreshing actually.” He glanced around at the center grounds. “Are you Catholic?”
“I’m nothing. What are you?”
“I’m everything,” he said.
“This is a bizarre conversation. I’m extremely freaked out.”
Understatement. Her heart pounded. She’d never expected to see him again, and suddenly here he was? But under all her fear was hope. He wouldn’t have driven all the way to tiny Milton, Ohio, just to say hi, right?
