“That’s . . .” Vaughn trailed off. “Odd.”
“Right?” Lucy dug in the pockets of her discarded jeans for her keys. Vaughn knew just as well as Lucy that guilt-driven confessions didn’t look like Eliza’s. They were messy, usually immediately after the fact or years later when it got to be too much. There had been nothing sloppy or emotional about Eliza’s confession. It had been cool. Calculated. Well thought-out.
“And there’s something weird going on here,” Lucy continued. “Both Eliza’s and Noah’s families are part of a, uh, religious cult. They call themselves a Church, but seems a bit more sinister than advertised.”
“The verse,” Vaughn said, not sounding surprised. “That’s how she knew the victim?”
“Yeah, but it’s more than that,” Lucy said, shoving her feet back into boots. “I don’t know, I’m going to go talk to the families now and get more information. But . . .”
“What?” Vaughn prodded.
Lucy sighed, trying to feel out her own instincts, trying to make sure she wasn’t spinning off into tangents. “There might be something bigger going on here.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Church, the verse.” Lucy knew she wasn’t quite making sense yet, but she was still feeling a bit scattered even in her own thoughts. “Did you look it up? R. 3:23?”
“Yes.”
“It seems like a message, right?” Lucy said. “Maybe Eliza to Noah? Maybe Eliza to the Church?”
Maybe a message from someone who didn’t like how this particular Church practiced?
Vaughn was quiet for a minute. “Talk to the families. And when you’re done, call Dr. Ali. He’s watched the interview tapes.”
Dr. Syed Ali. He was the body language consultant whom Vaughn brought in occasionally when they had a tricky interrogation to deconstruct. Lucy always appreciated his advice, but something in the way Vaughn had said it had her hackles up.
“What is it?” she asked. “What aren’t you saying?”
There was a quiet, indrawn breath, the kind that came before bad news. “I think you have doubts that she killed Noah, but he’s fairly certain of her guilt.”
It didn’t come like the blow Vaughn might have been predicting. “Yeah, well, that doesn’t mean she did it alone.”
“A second person?” Vaughn’s voice was threaded with renewed interest.
But Lucy wasn’t ready to test out her theory yet. She needed more information. “Let me call you back in a little while. I’m still figuring this place out.”
Vaughn hummed a soft acknowledgment. Then, after a beat of silence, asked, “You’re okay?”
“Yeah,” Lucy said, though she wasn’t sure what exactly had prompted the question.
She headed into the hallway, locking the door behind her.
“Keep me updated,” Vaughn directed, all clipped professionalism once again.
“Of course.” She was about to hang up when she got to the loose step. As she skipped it, she got Vaughn’s attention before the woman could disconnect. “Hey, can you have someone run a search on Molly Thomas. She’s sixteen, lived in Knox Hollow.”
There was typing on the other end. “Who is she?”
“I don’t know,” Lucy said, her eyes sliding back to the step. Two teenage girls, one missing and one sitting in FBI custody for murder. Was it just coincidence? “But I think we should find out.”
CHAPTER TEN
MOLLY THOMAS
Three weeks earlier
It was hard for Molly to walk beside Eliza as if nothing had happened.
They were at the grocery store to pick up Italian dressing and macaroni for Mrs. Cook, who always made pasta salad for the Church’s socials.
Eliza was quiet now, but that wasn’t unusual. It didn’t mean that she could sense Molly’s guilt, even though it felt like it was pouring out of her in waves, the rotten smell of it nearly unbearable.
Why had she gone to try to talk to the pretty deputy? She hadn’t even meant to. It had been morning, and one minute she’d been eating her eggs at the breakfast table and the next she’d been watching the deputy buy coffee while talking to Hicks on the phone.
Molly had hovered in the back of the shop, blinking fast when she’d realized where her feet had taken her.
The deputy spotted her before she’d been able to duck out, before she’d been able to pretend she’d never been hovering like an anxious bird, ready to spill everyone’s secrets to . . . Deputy Zoey Grant. That was the woman’s name.
Zoey had nodded toward the back exit, toward the alley behind the shop. Molly had been thankful. Darcy Dawson had been there; so had another lady from the Church. If either of them had seen her meeting with Zoey, they would have asked questions. At best, they would have told her parents. At worst, Josiah. People told Pastor Cook everything.
So Molly had scuttled out, praying that neither Darcy nor the other woman had even noticed her, and met Zoey around the back.
She’d had to swallow against bile—she’d been so nervous—her mind caught on a constant repeat of she couldn’t do this, couldn’t do this, couldn’t . . .
And she hadn’t, Molly reminded herself. Not really. She’d watched Zoey through her own tears, murmured Hicks’s name, something about someone dying, and then bolted the second Zoey’s eyebrows had collapsed down, anger and confusion and mistrust in her once-friendly eyes.
It had still been damning enough, though. Even approaching the woman. Mentioning Hicks. Molly knew she would have to warn Eliza, and she wanted to be sick all over again.
Maybe Molly would be forgiven for panicking, for talking to Zoey, but she wouldn’t be forgiven for bringing Hicks in. Never for that.
“The fence? Tonight?” Eliza murmured, stopping to pluck a bag of granola off the shelf as if she were actually considering buying it.
“Y-y-yes,” Molly managed to get out. She could tell Eliza then, when the comfort of darkness would mute the sharp edges of anger into something more bearable.
“I might be late,” Eliza warned, still watching Molly. Because she was, Eliza didn’t notice the boy rounding the corner of the aisle, and he had been moving too fast to stop himself.
Eliza and he collided. Not hard enough to go down, but enough for Molly to reach out as if she could do anything to help.
A woman had followed the boy and stood on the opposite side of the human crash, a mirror image of Molly.
To Molly’s ever-increasing horror, she realized the pair was Darcy Dawson and her son Noah. Had she seen Molly? In the coffee shop the other day? Would she mention it? Molly’s fingers curled into her own palms until she thought they might draw blood.
It was only when Eliza glanced at Molly quickly that she realized how terribly obvious she was being. She needed to calm down. No one had seen her talk to the deputy, no one. Certainly not Darcy Dawson.
“Mrs. Dawson, hello,” Eliza said, her voice as wispy and gentle as always, her hands resting on Noah’s narrow shoulders. Molly noticed how Darcy’s eyes dropped to them, froze there, her mouth pinched.
Eliza didn’t back away, as Molly probably would have had she been the one on the receiving end of such a half-panicked, half-angry look.