“Saw Eliza there,” Peggy said, and Hicks had to force himself to follow her.
This was Peggy: she didn’t say things without a purpose. Of course she’d seen Eliza there. Josiah and Rachel had made Eliza sit in the front row as they often did at things like that. There had been increased publicity surrounding the hearings since that documentary came out, the one about the girl who had died in Tennessee because of similar laws there. Josiah handled the questions from those who seemed friendly toward the Church, dodged some of the more tenacious reporters, and effortlessly seemed to morph into the character of kindhearted preacher just defending religious freedoms for his people.
Rachel was always there behind him. An outsider watching her placid expression when Josiah dealt with the attention would think she was a meek pastor’s wife, brainwashed to follow her husband blindly. That was far from the true dynamic, though. Just last month when Hicks had received a complaint that someone at the Cooks’ ranch had pulled a gun on an overbold protester, he’d known it hadn’t been Josiah. No, that was Rachel all the way.
Hicks suspected Rachel and Josiah paraded Eliza out in an effort to help humanize them, make them more sympathetic. Look, we took in our orphaned niece and raised her as our own. Hicks guessed Rachel had come up with that as well.
“Eliza’s always there,” Hicks finally said to Peggy, careful despite how much he trusted her. He didn’t know what she was getting at.
Peggy’s eyes swept over his expression. “She looked thin.”
Hicks didn’t react, wouldn’t. Peggy didn’t seem to need him to.
“Heard Molly Thomas went missing,” Peggy continued, her tone too casual to be anything but practiced.
Lead settled heavy in Hicks’s gut, and his eyes drifted toward the stretch of trees in the distance. He didn’t like that her mind had made that jump.
“Reminds me of Alessandra Shaw.” Peggy kept at it, because it was Peggy. She was nothing if not a dog with a bone. “Just disappearing like that.”
Whereas Molly’s name came like a glancing blow, Alessandra’s hit him square in the jaw. His voice was rough even to his own ears when he spoke. “Heard Molly ran off.”
“Like you believe that, Wyatt Earl Hicks.” Peggy sent him a twisted smile that was more grimace than humor. “If you do, I’ve got land up near the border to sell you.”
Going on the defense here would just pique her interest further. Like blood in the water. So he stayed quiet.
Peggy didn’t let it drop, though. He knew she wouldn’t. “Talk to Josiah about it?”
That one was easy at least. He didn’t have to lie. “Yep.”
Josiah had greeted him on his front porch, and if Hicks hadn’t known him, he’d think the man unruffled, disinterested. But he did know the pastor. Too goddamn well.
“‘Missing’ is an interesting word choice, Wyatt,” Josiah said, and Hicks tried to watch his eyes, see if they drifted toward the trees, toward the barn, toward the underground shelter Hicks knew kept secrets beneath their feet.
“Ran away,” Hicks said as if correcting himself, magnanimous with it because neither of them actually believed it to be a concession. “Strange, that. Wonder what on earth she’d want to run away from.”
“Just because she’s running on a different path than the one we might have chosen for her doesn’t mean she’s running in the wrong direction,” Josiah said, donning his pastor voice, the words rounding and becoming heavy, practiced, and serious. It was smart, as far as deflections went. Hicks could admire the tactic. “Doesn’t mean she won’t find her way back.”
Hicks laughed, obnoxious and purposely so. He shook his head and stepped away, knowing that if he didn’t, his fist would end up in Josiah’s face, and he’d have to haul his own butt down to the sheriff’s office.
“Yeah, I don’t think she’ll be coming back from where she ended up.”
It had been petty, that last bit. But he hadn’t been able to resist the parting shot. Hicks only wished he’d stuck around to see Josiah’s reaction.
“He asked me, you know,” Peggy said as they paused beside her truck. “The other day. Asked me if I’d ever loved anything like I loved the Church.”
Both their eyes slid to the rosary that hung from her rearview mirror. She’d never gotten rid of it, that reminder of the life she’d left behind.
Peggy’s story wasn’t much different from Rachel and Josiah’s, except that she’d gotten out and recognized the abuse for what it was. Hicks had asked once when she’d known she would leave. It was when she was thirteen and her infant cousin died three days after Peggy had held him for the first time. Her entire family had said it was because she didn’t believe in God enough. Her mother hadn’t been quite as harsh as Rachel’s when it came to punishment, but she’d lashed Peggy’s back with the very rosary Peggy still used every Sunday at the new church she’d found.
“‘When you love something that much, it makes you forget,’ Josiah said.” Peggy’s voice was distant now, hollow, her own eyes on the woods, and he thought maybe she was feeling the sting of beads against flesh.
Hicks didn’t want to ask. He’d heard enough of the man’s bullshit to last a lifetime. Still . . . “Forget what?”
Peggy shook herself a little, yanked the door open, hauled herself into the driver’s seat. “What it means to be good.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
LUCY THORNE
Friday, 4:30 p.m.
The Dawsons’ place would more aptly be called a cabin than a house. The land around it was wild, it was raw. This was true frontier living. For a disorienting minute, with no other twenty-first-century touchstones in sight, Lucy lost her place in time.
Then Hicks touched her elbow, and Lucy came back to the present.
“Rustic,” she commented. He raised his eyebrows at her as he swept his cowboy hat off.
“Idaho,” he countered with a shrug, and then they were crossing the small distance to the door. It took only a few seconds to open once they’d knocked.
Darcy Dawson was a plump, short woman with long black hair that reached to her lower back. In other circumstances, she’d probably be called pretty, with her smooth skin, round face, and big, brown doe eyes that were framed by thick lashes.
But grief had clearly taken a toll.
Even before any of them spoke, she started crying. “You’d think they’d dry up, wouldn’t you?” Darcy asked as she swiped at the tears with a tissue so wet and ratty that it was near on disintegrating. She shoved it in her jeans; then her eyes swept over Hicks. “Sheriff.”
“Mrs. Dawson.” Both cordial, both polite.
When Darcy waved them inside, Lucy began to introduce herself, but just like everywhere else she went in Knox Hollow, Darcy cut her off. She already knew who Lucy was.
They ended up in a cozy kitchen, low flames simmering in the fireplace at one end, a cast-iron pot on the stove at the other. Darcy moved a stack of textbooks to the floor so that Lucy could sit at the table. Hicks leaned against the wall, just inside the door, and Darcy went to stir the soup, her back to them. If the choice had been a strategic one, it had been smart. Emotions had probably stripped away any well-practiced defenses Darcy might have employed otherwise, leaving her bare and vulnerable to their assessment.