The last little bit wobbled, and Lucy wondered if his mind had slipped to Molly midthought. “All right. Please, though, if you can think of anything else that could be helpful . . .”
She held out one of her cards but realized almost immediately that he wasn’t going to take it. Lucy turned instead to the side table, clearing away some of the clutter so that it wouldn’t get lost among the junk. “I’m going to leave this right here, okay?”
Frank nodded, but she doubted he’d even heard her. Sighing, she shrugged a little and then motioned toward the door. Zoey and Hicks followed, though Zoey paused next to Frank, laying a hand on his shoulder, squeezing once before moving on. Hicks was the last one out of the room.
None of them spoke until they were in Zoey’s SUV, headed back toward town.
“What does this mean?” Zoey asked, and Lucy wasn’t sure if she had purposely parroted Frank or if it was all any of them were capable of thinking about. “This can’t possibly be a coincidence, right?”
It could be. It really could be. Stranger things had happened. “I don’t know.”
Zoey glanced into the rearview mirror. “You think Eliza’s best friend going missing has nothing to do with Eliza confessing to killing Noah Dawson?”
The question was laced with thick, obvious sarcasm, but Lucy took it at face value.
“We’re not sure Molly is missing.”
“Yes, we are,” Zoey corrected, jabbing a finger into the air above the steering wheel. “She’s underage, which means she’s a runaway, which means she’s missing. Whether she left voluntarily or not.”
“Fair,” Lucy conceded. Legally, Molly was missing. “But that doesn’t mean Molly is in any way connected to Noah’s death.”
Which was the reason Lucy was in Knox Hollow in the first place. She couldn’t forget that, couldn’t let herself get pulled on wild tangents that might go nowhere. It had been a long time since she’d needed to rein herself in on a case.
Hicks lounged in the passenger seat, ignoring them both, so Lucy pulled out her phone, refreshing her email. As an unread message slid into her inbox, a text from Vaughn flashed across the top of her screen. She clicked over to it.
Urgent. Are you alone?
Lucy angled her body over her phone. Text not call, she responded, her finger trembling ever so slightly as she hit “Send.”
When Vaughn wrote back, Lucy had to blink hard, the words blurring and then rearranging themselves before straightening out once more. And all of a sudden, everything became a lot clearer.
Wyatt Hicks is Eliza Cook’s uncle.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
LUCY THORNE
Saturday, 1:45 p.m.
Lucy waited for the right moment.
It didn’t come in the car, driving back from the Thomases’ place.
She spent the entirety of the ride staring at the back of Hicks’s head, wondering what the hell this all meant.
Eliza’s uncle.
Now that she thought about it, she could find his similarities to Rachel Cook. They shared the height, the coloring, the jawline, the steely expression. Lucy probably would have recognized it sooner had she seen them standing next to each other.
But Hicks hadn’t bothered to tag along to that particular interview.
She tried to sort it out. Hicks, Cora, and Rachel. Siblings who had grown up in the Church. One had died, one was the pastor’s wife, and one was the sheriff fighting against everything he’d been raised to believe.
That all mattered, but what mattered more was what this meant for Lucy’s investigation. Were Eliza and Hicks close? Had the relationship played a part in Eliza’s decision to go to the FBI rather than her own uncle? It was as if she were begging for the harshest sentence possible.
Or . . .
Or was she running away from her own accomplice, scared he was going to turn on her. Scared of what he’d asked her to do.
Lucy desperately tried to remember exactly how Hicks had looked at the crime scene, but he’d been shrouded in mist and rain and shadows. Had there been guilt in the harsh lines of his body?
Did this mean anything?
The right moment to confront him about it didn’t come when Lucy trailed behind Hicks and Zoey into the sheriff’s office. She watched them carefully now, remembering Zoey’s wide eyes when she warned that Hicks was involved in this somehow, a Cassandra whose prophecy came true. The two seemed friendly enough, banter flowing between them with an ease that spoke of something more than just a collegial relationship.
But Zoey had been at the sheriff’s department for only six months. With the ease in which Zoey decided to give Hicks up, Lucy guessed the loyalty hadn’t really taken root.
It wasn’t until Lucy spotted the back exit door that she knew this was her opportunity. It was positioned perfectly, just past Hicks’s office, and, if she was picturing the layout right, it would drop them out in an alleyway that wasn’t shared by any close neighbors.
Her breathing, her heartbeat, her hands, they all steadied, a sniper’s eerie calm before pulling the trigger. Right as Hicks went to turn in to his office, Lucy snagged his elbow, exerting just enough pressure to keep him moving. His surprise and her forward momentum carried them out of the building.
Lucy didn’t waste time. She dropped her hand from his arm and then shoved him, hard, once, twice, until he’d backed up against the wall. She pulled out her phone.
“Explain,” she gritted out, anger a hot flame licking across her skin. Sweat dampened the waistband of her jeans, her shirt’s armpits—her sniper’s cool gone in the face of his answering calm.
“You weren’t going to let me be involved if you knew.” He shrugged without even looking at the texts. He’d known this was coming. He’d been ready for it. “I weighed the options. This was the one that made the most sense.”
There was no regret, no shame in his voice. He was straight matter-of-fact. This was his truth. This was his reality.
And it pissed her off.
“The most sense for you,” Lucy threw back. “God, Hicks. You realize you may have just jeopardized this whole thing?”
For the first time since she’d latched on to his elbow, there was actual emotion in his eyes. It still wasn’t remorse, though. No, this was pure and brutal frustration. Maybe even rage. “This whole what? This”—he waved, and all but spit—“this performance of an investigation.”
Lucy rocked back on her heels. He hadn’t moved beyond that quick gesture, wasn’t in any way threatening her. But his derision, his anger, they pushed against her, forced her to retreat. The stoic cowboy, gone.
“It’s not a performance,” she said. It was a weak defense. This was a performance, in all the ways that it mattered in the eyes of the world, and they both knew it. Eliza Cook had confessed to murder, had known details she wouldn’t have unless she was the killer. The only thing left were the boxes that needed to be checked. On the face of it, that’s what Lucy should be doing.
But after the past two days, how did he not know better? How did he not know her better? She’d thought he could read her. Maybe she’d been wrong about that, too.
“It’s not a performance.” This time it came out stronger, without the waver beneath it.