I can’t help myself. I shiver slightly because I know he’s right. There’s a thin line in my mind, and it’s been that way for a long time. “I am you,” Vero tells me. But I wonder what she really means. As in, she’s a piece of my subconscious, maybe even the voice of my guilty conscience? Or . . . something else entirely?

I would like to say I don’t believe in ghosts, but I can’t.

“I only ever wanted for you to be happy,” Thomas says now, his hands gripping the wheel. “I fought a good fight for twenty-two years, thinking if we can just keep moving forward, once more time has passed. But I’m wrong, aren’t I, Nicky? You can’t go forward. You have to go back. Given a choice between Vero and me, Vero has won.”

I don’t speak. I can’t tell my husband what he wants to hear, which makes it easier to say nothing at all.

Instead, I study the dark night rushing behind him. I smell smoke. I feel flames. But I don’t reach out my hand to him.

We have both come too far for that.

I feel Vero then. She is standing in the back of my mind. Not speaking, not sipping tea, not even sitting in the dollhouse, but more like a lone figure, waiting in a black void. I can’t see her face; more like I feel her mood.

Somber. Tired. Sad.

She is not coming to me, I realize, because for the first time in twenty-two years, I am coming to her.

She finally opens her mouth. She utters a single word: “Run.”

But we both know it is much too late for that.

Thomas slows the car. For the first time, I see it. A dirt road has appeared on the right. Nearly overgrown, it would be difficult enough to spot during the day, and almost impossible at night. Except, of course, that Thomas already knows that’s it there.

“Run!” Vero whispers again.

But there’s no place to go. I’m trapped in this car now, just as surely as I was trapped in my Audi three nights ago.

As my husband takes the turn, headlights slashing across a tangle of shrubs, tiny car heaving up the first divot.

“All I ever wanted,” Thomas repeats, “was for you to be happy.”

As he forces the four-wheel-drive vehicle up the rutted road.

Returning to the dollhouse.

Thomas’s childhood home.

Chapter 36

THEY STRUCK OUT on the green Subaru. Kevin was able to trace the partial license plate to a vehicle that had been listed as stolen the day before. Being an older model, it didn’t carry such modern-day amenities as GPS for tracking, and they had no hits on sightings of the vehicle.

Two A.M., Wyatt sat back in frustration, scrubbing his face with the palm of his hand. “We’re still reacting. Thomas runs, we give chase. Nicky taunts us with half a puzzle, we batter our brains trying to deduce the missing pieces. Just once, I’d like to be ahead in this game.”

“As in knowing where Nicky and Thomas went?” Tessa asked him.

“Oh, I know where they went. Can’t find it on a map, of course, but I know where they went.”

“The dollhouse.”

“Who’s in the second vehicle?” he barked impatiently. They were still in the back hotel office, surrounded by the security video they’d watched again and again. Wyatt had sent Brittany out of the room, ostensibly because they no longer required her assistance, but mostly because it was never good to appear stuck in front of an adoring member of the public. “What the hell happened way back when, what the hell is going on now and who did we miss? Because if Nicky is with Thomas, and according to my deputy, Marlene Bilek was returned safely home three hours ago, who’s left to follow our favorite two suspects in a separate vehicle?”

They’d tried zooming in on the security footage of the second car, but that vehicle had stuck to the dimly lit edges of the parking lot. They had a recording of a small, dark compact. Not even a blur of the driver’s face, let alone something truly helpful, such as a glimpse of the license plate. “Madame Sade?” Tessa guessed now.

Wyatt nearly growled in frustration. He’d gone almost forty-eight hours without sleep. Combined with a sense of his own stupidity, the night was wearing on him.

He picked up Tessa’s sketch of the woman, held it up. “We take this picture to the press, we gotta tell them why.”

“Police have some questions for her regarding the disappearance of a child thirty years ago,” Tessa provided immediately. “Don’t call her a suspect, but imply she’s a witness. People feel better about ratting out their neighbors when it won’t get them in trouble.”

“Excellent plan for the morning news cycle. Problem is, we need answers now, and press conferences don’t work well at two A.M. Mostly because the target audience is asleep.”

“Maybe you should take a nap,” Tessa informed him.

He nearly growled again. “I want the dollhouse. Thomas, Nicky, our answers. All at the dollhouse.”

“We have that sketch.”

“Fed it to local Realtors this afternoon. No hits. Kevin ran specs through a New Hampshire property tax database, too many hits. Historic homes, even grand old Victorians, are lousy in these hills.”

“What about Marlene’s hubby?” Tessa asked now. “If Marlene’s safe at home, what about him, because I bet he has opinions about a long-lost daughter appearing from the dead.”

“Except Nicky’s not Vero. No threat to him or the new family order.”

Tessa frowned, plopped down in the office chair across from Wyatt.

“Nicky and Thomas are both connected to the dollhouse,” Tessa stated. “We can’t prove it, but that makes the most sense.”

“Agreed.”

“Meaning their relationship didn’t start in New Orleans, but here. Meaning both of them most likely know things about a former brothel that plenty of people wouldn’t want known.”

“Agree times three,” Wyatt assured her. “Unfortunately, it leads us back to the same conundrum. Dollhouse holds the key. Except we can’t find the dollhouse.”

“Track down Nicky-slash-Chelsea’s real identity?” Tessa asked him.

“No hits off her fingerprints as of yet. Assuming Chelsea is a runaway or was sold to Madame Sade, it’s possible her prints aren’t in the system at all, meaning we may never get that answer.”

“Thomas Frank’s real identity?”

“No prints to run. The fire destroyed such evidence from his home. Latent prints attempted to work his car, hotel room, et cetera, but recovered nothing usable. Guy’s either that lucky or that good. You can guess my vote.” Wyatt expelled heavily, wrapped his knuckles against the top of the office desk. “Case is starting to piss me off.”

“Not your fault,” Tessa said mildly. “You started with a single-car accident. Who would’ve guessed it would lead to an old child abduction case and Victorian brothel?”

“November is the saddest month,” he muttered. Then paused. Repeated the phrase out loud: “November is the saddest month. That’s when Nicky escaped. Must’ve been. November. The saddest month. When she had to kill Vero in order to save herself.”

“Okay . . .”

He looked up at Tessa, feeling the first traces of excitement. “That’s a variable. We’re not just looking twenty-two years ago. We’re looking for something that happened in November twenty-two years ago.”

“Would Madame Sade have filed a missing persons report?” Tessa asked. “I mean, if she was pretending they were family, or even needed to keep up pretenses with the neighbors after her teenage ‘daughter’ disappeared . . .”

“I doubt she’d want the police on her property, especially given another girl had just died.” Wyatt paused, reconsidered the matter. “That’s a good question, though. One night in November, two girls from the same home vanish. One dies; one ostensibly runs away.”

“Maybe three kids disappeared,” Tessa prodded. “What about Thomas? Assuming he was part of it, maybe he bolted with Nicky.”