“Keep your wits, Thorne,” Vaughn said, in that way of hers that meant she cared but would rather take a bullet before admitting it outright.
“Always do.”
When Lucy shifted to face the front again, she found Zoey watching her in the rearview mirror. In the next minute, they were pulling into the driveway that they’d left only a few hours ago. There was no sign of anyone else having come home.
“Frank Thomas’s wife helps run the Bible school at the church on the weekends,” Hicks said, answering Lucy’s unasked question, and it sat in her chest, the strange feeling of him being able to read her too well. She refreshed her email one last time, knowing the information on him wouldn’t be there but unable to stop the compulsive tic anyway.
She slid her phone into her pocket and followed them out of the SUV.
Frank met them on the dirt path leading up to the house. “Is it Molly? What is it? Did something happen?”
Hicks took the lead, holding his palms up, soothing the distraught man. “Mr. Thomas, we have reason to believe Molly might have been frightened about something before she left. Frightened enough to contact Deputy Grant.”
The gentleness with which Hicks said it seemed to do nothing to actually soften the blow for Frank, who stumbled back.
“What? What does that mean?”
“Would you mind if we checked some of the surrounding property, Mr. Thomas?” Lucy asked. “And let Deputy Grant here have a look around Molly’s bedroom.”
At the mention of Zoey, Frank’s attention swung to her, clung as if she were a lifeline. “Yes. Yes of course. Anything. Is it . . . Does it have to do with Eliza?”
That caught Lucy up, though it probably shouldn’t have. “Why do you ask that?”
“Because you’re back. You came back.”
And for all that he was a nervous, flighty man, his eyes were focused and clear.
“It’s too early to say, Mr. Thomas,” Lucy said, as carefully as possible.
There was a second that she thought he would argue, force the issue. But then: “Can I help?”
He needed to feel like he was doing something, she knew. But she also knew she needed him out of her way. “Hicks and I are going to stay outside. Can you show Deputy Grant where to go?”
Zoey stepped forward with a little nod to Lucy, clearly knowing her role. She patted Frank on the shoulder. “Please, call me Zoey.”
Hicks and Lucy watched them walk off until they were through the door, and then Hicks swiveled toward the large expanse of property, hands on hips, eyes squinted. “How do we do this?”
This was tricky. If Hicks was hiding something about Molly Thomas, this gave him the perfect opportunity to destroy any evidence of foul play before they could find it. If she made those accusations outright, though, this was a bridge burned without a whole lot of reason for lighting the match.
Her eyes went to the fence line. Eliza.
If this were a normal search, they’d walk side by side, about an arm’s length apart with whomever she was working. Anything other than that was pointless as clues could be easily missed otherwise. But this, well, she didn’t know quite what this was. It was informal, at best, maybe a little sloppy at worst. And that was going to work in her favor.
“I’ll take this side, you go that way.”
He hesitated, his gaze lingering on the posts that were barely visible, the ones that separated the Thomas property from the Cooks’ place. It was the obvious location to start; he had to know it.
But he just nodded once, and then shifted, heading away from her, scanning the ground, the cars, the small shed that sat behind the house.
The fence was a good bit away, easy to see because of the flatness of the earth but harder to get to. This part of the property clearly wasn’t used for any purpose, the grass long, not unkempt but allowed to grow at will.
She mostly kept her eyes on the ground, but she doubted she’d see anything important. There was so much land, so many nooks and crannies, bramble and weeds.
What was she even searching for anyway? A sign that an unhappy sixteen-year-old didn’t in fact run away from home like all signs pointed to? What exactly did that look like?
As she got closer to the tangled wire and rough wood of the fence line, there was that itch at her back, and all she could think about was Eliza. How these two were neighbors. How Molly had disappeared only weeks before Eliza had shown up in Seattle.
Why confess to a crime you didn’t commit? They were thick as thieves, those girls.
Lucy yanked at the fingertip of her threadbare gloves with her teeth as she approached one of the posts. The Cooks’ house looked to be about a ten-minute walk or so, close enough to make out a blurred, indistinct shape but far enough away as to not be stumbled upon by restrictive guardians.
These were assumptions, and they shouldn’t be taken as fact. But some of the blurriness that had always hovered at the indistinct edges of the case was sharpening—even if it was into something that she couldn’t quite make out yet.
If the property line was a meeting site for the girls, this wasn’t the actual spot they used. The grass was high, maintained to some extent like the rest of the wild growth where she’d walked. There was no indent in the ground, no evidence that the girls had been there, even infrequently.
There was a well-trodden path that ran horizontal to the fence, stomped-down weeds and dirt, probably made when the Thomases were checking for and fixing any damages. Lucy followed it, staying within its careful boundaries.
She stopped at each post, her hands running over every one of them, searching for signs, her fingers trailing along cool metal wire as she walked the distance between each.
It wasn’t until the fifth marker that she found what she hadn’t fully realized she was looking for.
Instead of grass, dirt spread out in an almost concentric circle, obvious in a way she guessed they’d never thought about. Probably because the girls must have met in the dark, if they’d been sneaking out.
Lucy searched the area, walking the perimeter, ducking through the fence. It might not hold up in court if she found anything on the Cooks’ property, but she wasn’t thinking about court right now.
Not that it mattered, ultimately. There was nothing on the other side.
Finally, she crouched, running her palms over the rough grain of the wood, a splinter slicing into her skin toward the top. She ignored the tiny flare of pain and kept at it.
Her fingers skated over a smooth spot, toward the bottom, and she paused. Notches and grooves. Something carved there, right at the base. Her knees hit the ground hard as she bent forward to get a better angle.
Initials.
AS.
Lucy traced the letters, over and over, the jagged, careless edges worn down beneath a constant and familiar touch. Oil polishing wood. Who was important enough to warrant such devotion?
Her calf twinged at the awkward angle, and she twisted to sit fully on the ground, her back to the post, her hand still touching the carved initials.
They sat like this. Eliza and Molly.
What had they talked about?
Lucy closed her eyes, resting her head against the wood, imagining the answering warmth of a solid body on the other side.
Why confess to a crime you didn’t commit? They were thick as thieves, those girls.
Lucy stood up, pulled out her phone, took pictures of the spot and then of the initials. She made a mental note to ask Vaughn to run a search on those, too. They probably wouldn’t turn up much, but in a small town they could get lucky. Maybe there would even be a match on the list of children who had died while Jackson was coroner. Not that he had sent it to her yet.