“How long does that take to get?”

“The website said a few weeks.”

“And until then?” Meredith asked meaningfully.

Alex looked at Hope’s coloring book. All that red. “I can keep it in my trunk legally.”

Meredith sucked in her cheeks. “You know a half-truth’s the same as a lie.”

Alex lifted her chin. “You gonna call a cop?”

Meredith rolled her eyes. “You know I’m not. But you will, because you promised Vartanian you would. And you’ll call me right after you call him.”

“Every few hours.” She pushed back from the table and headed to the bedroom.

“I have to leave here at five to make my flight,” Meredith called behind her.

“I’ll be back by then.” She had only seven and a half hours to apply for a concealed-weapons permit and then to talk to anybody who knew Bailey’s habits, her friends. Her enemies. It would have to be enough.

Tuesday, January 30, 11:00 a.m.

“Hello.”

It was just a dream. Wasn’t it?

“Hello.”

Bailey lifted her head a fraction of an inch, reeling when the room twisted around her. It wasn’t a dream. It was a whisper and it came from the other side of the wall. She forced herself to her hands and knees, gagging when the nausea hit her like a brick. But nothing came up, because she’d been given nothing to eat. Or drink.

How long? How long had she been here?

“Hello.” The whisper came through the wall again.

It was real. Bailey crawled to the wall and collapsed on her face, watching as the floor moved, just a little. A teaspoonful. Gritting her teeth, she brushed at the dirt.

And touched something solid. A finger. She sucked in a breath as the finger wiggled and pulled back through the hole, taking some of the dirt from her side with it.

“Hello,” she whispered back. The finger reappeared and she touched it, a sob heaving up from her chest.

“Don’t cry,” he whispered. “He’ll hear you. Who are you?”

“Bailey.”

“Bailey Crighton?”

Bailey stopped breathing. “You know me?”

“I’m Reverend Beardsley.”

Wade’s letter. The letter that had contained the key he’d demanded every time he took her from this cell. Every time he… “Why are you here?”

“Same reason you are, I’d guess.”

“But I never told. I never told him anything. I swear it.” Her voice shook.

“Sshh. Good for you, Bailey. You’re stronger than he thinks. So am I.”

“How did he know about you?”

“I don’t know. I visited your house… yesterday morning. Your cousin was there.”

“Alex?” The sob rose again and she pushed it back. “She came? She really came?”

“She’s looking for you, Bailey. She has Hope. She’s safe.”

“My baby?” The tears did come now, quiet but steady. “You didn’t tell her, did you?” She heard the blame in her own voice, but couldn’t stop it.

He was quiet for a long moment. “No, I didn’t. I couldn’t. I’m sorry.”

She should say I understand. But she wouldn’t lie to a reverend. “Did you tell him?”

“No.” She heard the pain behind the single word.

She hesitated. “What has he done to you?”

She heard him draw a deep breath. “Nothing I can’t take. And you?”

She closed her eyes. “The same. But I don’t know how much longer I can take it.”

“Be strong, Bailey. For Hope.”

Hope needs me. The mantra would have to keep her going a little longer. “Can we get out of here?”

“If I think of a way, I’ll let you know.” Then his finger disappeared and she heard dirt trickling back into the hole as he covered it up from his side.

She did the same, then crawled back to where she’d lain before. Alex has Hope. My baby is safe. That’s all that really mattered. Everything else… Everything else I brought on my own head.

Dutton, Tuesday, January 30, 11:15 a.m.

Wanda Pettijohn looked at Daniel over her half-glasses. “Frank’s not here.”

“Is he out on call, or sick?”

Deputy Randy Mansfield came out of Frank’s office. “Just not here, Danny.” Mansfield ’s voice was even, but the message was clear-it’s none of your business, so don’t ask. Randy slid a thin folder across the counter. “He asked me to give you this.”

Daniel scanned the few papers inside. “This is the Alicia Tremaine file. I expected it to be thicker. Where are the crime scene photos, the interviews, victim photos?”

Randy lifted a shoulder. “That’s all Frank gave me.”

Daniel looked up, eyes narrowed. “There had to have been more than this.”

Randy’s smile dimmed. “If it’s not there, it didn’t exist.”

“No one took a Polaroid of the scene or made a sketch? Where was she found?”

Jaw cocked, Randy pulled the folder around and ran his finger down the page that was the initial police report. “On Five Mile Road.” He looked up. “In a ditch.”

Daniel bit his tongue. “Where on Five Mile Road? What was the nearest intersecting road? Who were the first responders? Where’s the copy of the ME’s report?”

“It was thirteen years ago,” Randy said. “Things were done differently then.”

Wanda came to the counter. “I was here then, Daniel. I can tell you what happened.”

Daniel felt a migraine coming on. “Okay. Fine. What happened, Wanda?”

“It was the first Saturday in April. The Tremaine girl wasn’t in her bed when her mother came to wake her up. She hadn’t been there all night. She was a fast girl, that Alicia. Her mother started calling all around to her friends, but nobody’d seen her.”

“Who discovered the body?”

“The Porter boys. Davy and John. They were out riding their dirt bikes.”

He jotted it in his notebook. “Davy and John were the middle kids of six, as I recall.”

Wanda gave a nod of respect. “You recall correctly. Davy was about eleven and John was thirteen. There are two brothers younger and two more older.”

Davy and John would be twenty-four and twenty-six now. “So what did they do?”

“After he threw up, John rode his bike up to the Monroe farm. Di Monroe called 911.”

“Who was the first policeman on the scene?”

“Nolan Quinn. He’s passed now,” Wanda added soberly.

“He was never the same after finding Alicia,” Randy said quietly, and Daniel made himself remember that this wasn’t just a file for them. It was perhaps the worst crime Dutton had seen up until this weekend. “I joined the force out of school the next year and Nolan was never the same.”

“I can’t imagine anyone could discover something like that and be unaffected,” Daniel murmured, thinking of the Porter boys. “Who did the autopsy, Wanda?”

“Doc Fabares.”

“Who’s also since passed,” Randy said and shrugged. “That whole generation is mostly gone. Or sittin’ on the barbershop bench.”

“But Doc Fabares would have kept records,” Daniel said.

“Somewhere,” Randy said, as if somewhere wasn’t anywhere they’d be likely to find.

“What was found on the body?” Daniel asked.

Wanda frowned. “What do mean? She was naked, wrapped in a blanket.”

“No rings or jewelry?” Or keys? But the keys Daniel would keep to himself.

“None,” Wanda said. “The drifter had robbed her.”

Daniel found the arrest report. “Gary Fulmore.” A mug shot was stapled to the report. Fulmore’s eyes were wild and his face was haggard. “He looks stoned.”

“He was stoned,” Randy said. “That much I remember. He was high on PCP when they found him. Took three men to hold him down so Frank could get the cuffs on him.”

“So Frank arrested him?”

Randy nodded. “Fulmore had wrecked Jacko’s autobody shop, breaking glass and waving a tire iron. They arrested him, then found Alicia’s ring in his pocket.”

“That’s all? No semen or other physical evidence?”

“No, I don’t remember them actually finding any semen in her. That would be in Fabares’s records, most likely. But the way her face was beaten in… only a person hopped up on PCP could’ve done that kind of damage. And he had the tire iron.”