Everything was relative. “Right.”
They both stared down at the graves.
“They used to not even tell anyone outside the Church if someone died,” Zoey said, her voice hushed, contemplative. It was what Hicks had said, too. “Before Josiah.”
But if these changes were so recent, so different from the way things had been for so long . . . “Are you sure that’s actually changed?”
Zoey turned, her eyes wide, searching. “I mean, that’s the thing,” she said, like Lucy had finally gotten it, the reason Zoey had brought her here. “We wouldn’t know. We just can’t know.”
“If there’s no birth certificate . . .”
“There’s not even a record that the person exists,” Zoey finished for her. “Which means, if they die, especially under suspicious circumstances, unless we get wind of it personally, it could probably be hushed up.”
A particularly morbid version of If a tree falls in the forest . . . “But it’s a small town. You guys must know—Hicks must know—if any kids have gone missing.”
“Yeah, maybe if they’re Eliza’s age,” Zoey said. “But a two-year-old? Even a five-year-old? They could be disappeared without even trying.”
“And no one in the Church would raise a fuss?” Lucy couldn’t imagine it. They weren’t a community of sociopaths.
“I’m not saying it does happen, just that it could,” Zoey said. “Isn’t that what you’re asking?”
It was, even without Lucy fully realizing it. Lucy turned toward the forest in the distance. She hadn’t been avoiding the trees, not consciously. But she hadn’t looked at them, either.
Now she did.
She thought about the clean kill. The way the body was left deep in the woods. The verse carved into skin.
“You’re not saying it hasn’t happened, either,” Lucy finally said.
“No,” Zoey whispered from behind her.
Lucy pulled out her phone, dialed Vaughn.
When her boss answered, Lucy didn’t waste any time. “We need a search team for the woods where Noah was found.”
There was a beat, a rare hesitation, Vaughn caught off guard. “All right.” Another pause. “What are you looking for?”
Lucy met Zoey’s eyes. “More victims.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
MOLLY THOMAS
One week earlier
The light, when it came, blinded Molly.
It didn’t come often, the light. Mostly it was dark. Even when the hatch opened, it was usually at night. Stars, maybe, but nothing more. And, always, a silhouette carefully hidden, looming just out of sight.
The light came now, though, harsh against retinas that had grown used to the dark. It was dim, still. Not full-on middle-of-the-day sun, but bright enough to see the bare walls, the empty water bottles, the wrappers from the protein bars that were dropped down every few days.
Molly scrambled to her feet, blinking fast so that the spots popping in her vision would go away.
She threw her head back and screamed. Bloody, full-on screaming. She yelled “fire” over and over and over again as loud as she could, because someone had once told her that people responded to that over “help.” And maybe it would confuse her captor.
Her throat went raw with it, the words slicing into the soft tissue that had become tender from disuse, and her voice broke, but she kept at it.
There was panicked rustling above. Molly had never tried this before, hadn’t thought it would be effective at night. At best, they were close to a hiking path. Daylight was her only chance to be heard.
“Quiet.” The command was a vicious slap because it came in a voice she recognized all too well. Something in her shattered then, not because of who it was but because she was now able to recognize her captor. The weak flame of hope she’d been tending blinked out. Whatever the purpose for keeping her alive this long, it wasn’t because she was going to be let go.
She kept screaming long after the hatch lid swung shut, long after her voice gave out into nothingness.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
LUCY THORNE
Saturday, 5:45 p.m.
The dogs were quiet. The people, too. This was a task none of them wanted.
They marched, silent soldiers, through the woods, boots crushing twigs and leaves beneath their feet. The air had turned sharply cold and damp, the sun from that morning just a memory, the wind slipping through the trees made all the more vicious with annoyance at the obstacles in its way.
Lucy huddled deeper into her thick jacket, as brambles caught at the sleeves. A dog’s bark cut through the stillness of the forest and then was swallowed up almost immediately. She paused, but nothing followed. She kept walking, eyes on the ground.
She wasn’t sure how much she could do without a hound or the technology carried by the agents Vaughn had sent. But there was something about walking the earth, understanding the way it curved and sloped, getting a feel for its natural patterns, and giving in to the pull of one direction over the other.
If she’d been carrying a body through these woods, where would the earth take her? Down toward the stream? Where Noah had been found. Or up, away from the path, as the ground started climbing toward an eventual summit?
The bigger question, the one that she could read on some of the men’s faces, was, Were there any bodies actually to be found?
Lucy didn’t know the answer to that. But she did know that her boots carried her toward the water, always toward the water.
The babble of it was mockingly gentle, no longer swollen from the storm the morning before. They had passed the spot where Noah’s body had been stashed away between the rocks, had continued on, deeper, farther away from civilization. Where would it be safe?
Nothing had pinged on the radars yet; the dogs hadn’t picked up any leads, either. It had been two hours since they’d crossed the tree line.
On the drive out, they’d passed Hicks’s truck parked on the side of the highway, far enough away that Lucy couldn’t say anything about it, close enough that it couldn’t be coincidence that he was there. He’d been in the driver’s seat, slouched down a bit, but not trying to hide, his cowboy hat tipped low so that she got just an impression of him rather than actually seeing his face.
Zoey had made a small sound, distress or something close to it, as they’d passed him. Neither of them had mentioned it, though.
Lucy would have to talk to him. She should have, really, before she’d called in the search team, should have confirmed her suspicions that there might be more victims. It hadn’t felt necessary, though, when she’d replayed each interaction with Hicks. The curled fists, the bee in your bonnet comment, the crusade.
He suspected there were others, as well.
Her foot caught on a root and she stumbled, almost going down to her knee, but catching herself in time. The slick mud of the riverbed gave beneath her weight, anyway. She lost all traction and just managed to keep upright as her boots landed heavy in the shallow edges of the water.
“You okay?” the agent who’d been beside her called over to her.
She took stock. Maybe embarrassed, but uninjured. “I’m good.”
He flashed her a thumbs-up and then continued along his prescribed gridlines, the device in his hands giving off low, steady beeps.