There were storm clouds rolling in from the distance, but now it was just cool, crisp. Fall in Idaho, edging toward winter. She remembered dashing out of her car only two days ago to meet Wyatt Hicks, who’d been standing on the ridge like some middle-aged accountant’s dream of a cowboy.
Where did he fit into this? Where did Eliza?
She started pacing as she stared at the little house in front of her, trying to force the strange parts of the case into something that made sense.
Molly Thomas had gone to Zoey Grant weeks ago, trying to warn her about something. Then she’d disappeared.
Three weeks after that was when Eliza said she killed Noah Dawson, before then waiting two full days to go all the way to Seattle to confess to the murder. Asking for Lucy when she did.
Hicks was Eliza’s uncle, and he’d kept that from her.
Meanwhile, they had three bodies in the woods where Noah had been found, one of whom was good friends with Molly Thomas and Eliza Cook.
Noah had bruises on his body that were old. And there had been a lot of them.
That last one stopped her. Surprised her.
She’d mostly forgotten it after meeting Darcy Dawson, who’d painted a realistic portrait of a grieving mother.
Noah also had a Bible verse—a prayer by some interpretations—carved into his skin. A verse that was in a passage about the ends justifying the means.
If the killings weren’t about torture, they were about . . .
Her eyes stayed locked on the house as she struggled to finish the thought.
The bruises.
Her brain had snagged on that, presenting the fact on a nice silver platter as if it meant something.
The bruises. The shield laws.
Lucy dipped back into the truck for a card she’d slotted into her wallet yesterday.
Her cell’s battery was low, but not dead yet, and Lucy carefully punched in the number on the little card she’d pulled from her bag.
“Why didn’t you win?” Lucy asked when Peggy answered.
Peggy didn’t hesitate, didn’t ask who it was, didn’t go for a greeting. “Senator Hodge convinced the rest of the committee that the shield laws were about freedom from the government. Once that happened, we didn’t stand a chance.”
Lucy closed her eyes. She was so close, but not quite there yet. “But did you point out that kids were dying?”
“Of course.” Peggy sighed. “But it’s not abuse, you know? It’s actual illnesses that may or may not have been fixed by doctors and hospitals and whatnot.”
“If it had been abuse, like a parent hit a kid so badly they bled to death, what would happen then?”
“Then Hicks could charge them,” Peggy said slowly. “The shield laws only exist to protect medical-care decisions. Not active abuse. So prayer is a valid form of treatment, whereas beating your kid gets you charged.”
“But they made it about freedom of religion,” Lucy said, leaning back against the truck. That answer, the one that she could see only out of the corner of her eye, started taking solid shape.
“And freedom from government.” A sore spot with folks who lived on modern frontiers—Lucy knew that intimately. It would be easy to manipulate those fears out here.
But not everywhere.
“Other places. Do they have these shield laws?”
“No, only a handful of states left now,” Peggy said. “A few recently knocked them down. We were hoping for that momentum to kind of help us along. Though we knew it was a long shot.”
Lucy straightened. “What made them do it?”
“What?”
“The other states,” Lucy clarified. “What made those states change them? The laws.”
“Oregon and Tennessee,” Peggy said, slow and thoughtful. “Both had two high-profile cases with teenagers who had cancer. The parents actually took them to the doctors, which was their mistake because then the diagnoses were on record.”
“They died?”
“Yeah, but months later,” Peggy said. “The parents got cold feet, and even when the doctors tried to follow up, all they got was radio silence.”
Cold feet. Or someone in their Church had gotten to them.
Peggy continued. “Nothing unusual about that if you follow these kinds of communities, though.”
“Then why . . . ?”
“Did they have an impact?” Peggy guessed. “They both got some press. Coming one right after the other? It looked bad. Real bad.”
“Enough attention to change lawmakers’ votes.”
“Exactly,” Peggy said. “In Tennessee, it wasn’t four months after they’d knocked down an attempt to overturn the law that a new bill was introduced. It didn’t mention the girl specifically, but everyone knew what was going on. That was the only thing that had really changed in those four months. It’s not hard to draw the lines between the dots. The new legislation passed unanimously.”
Lucy’s pulse kicked up. The bruises. “Would that be enough? To convince Senator Hodge?”
“Don’t know about her—don’t think anything would make that stubborn cow budge,” Peggy said. “But the others? There were a few on the fence. Yeah, if we had something like that happen here, it might help us actually have a chance. It’s hard to get any actual records, though. They don’t go to doctors.”
Everything slowed, tilted, and then crystallized.
There had been no older children who had died of something like cancer in the Church despite there being four cases in Knox Hollow in recent years. Statistically, that was almost impossible.
So what if . . . those bruises Noah had weren’t just a little kid being clumsy? There’d been too many of them, the damage lasting and deep—she’d had that thought from the first time she’d seen them. They were the kind that showed up on kids who were sick.
What if . . . What if he’d had cancer? What if he’d been like one of those cases in Oregon or Tennessee? Darcy had already lost a child and had another one who seemed sick. If she would have noticed Noah’s condition, there was a good chance she would have actually taken him to a doctor.
Or she would have tried to. Maybe like those other cases, she would have had one appointment before someone found out, before someone tried to stop her.
Momentum, Peggy had said. Would Noah’s case have been enough to get the shield laws finally overturned? If he’d died, and there had been a record of his diagnosis out there somewhere, would an impossible war actually be won?
This was what had been missing the whole time. The motive. The why.
Why kill someone who’s already dying?
Because Noah’s file needed to say missing and not dead.
It was the last thought Lucy had before something struck the back of her head, and she went down hard, sliding into the abyss as she fell.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
MOLLY THOMAS
Now
Molly had nothing to lose. Or so she reasoned.
She’d been moved, which probably meant that there was no need to keep her hidden and alive anymore.
What did that mean for Eliza?
Molly pushed the thought away. It wasn’t constructive and would do nothing to help her right now.
The drugs that had knocked her out enough to get her to the little shack where she was currently being held were still in her blood, her mind slow and easily distracted.