“Molly and I started wondering,” Eliza continued. “Everyone kind of did, you know? There were a handful of kids who’d just disappeared. Even Peggy could tell you that.”
“But why did you suspect they were being killed?”
Eliza met her eyes. “If Allie had been alive, she would have written to us.”
“And she was sick, just like the others had been,” Lucy said. “So you connected the dots?”
“I wasn’t certain.” Eliza shrugged. “I watched how my aunt and uncle reacted to news about the cases in other states, how those deaths were enough to influence the lawmakers.”
“That made you guess it was Josiah?”
“He had the most to lose,” Eliza said, and she still believed that. “The fight over the shield laws had come to define him, define his status, and his power. I just thought . . .”
“That he would stop at little to make sure he didn’t lose all that,” Lucy finished for her.
Eliza had had a lot of time to think in the silence that followed her original confession. She’d thought about battles that were worth dying over. Originally, that’s what she’d believed this had been about. Someone in the Church hadn’t wanted to lose, and so the children were casualties in an unforgiving war that viewed them as expendable. It wasn’t the people that mattered, but the beliefs. How many times had Eliza herself thought that?
But now that she could see the bigger picture, Eliza had a sneaking suspicion that it all might actually just be bullshit. This wasn’t some holy war, and it wasn’t even a fight over a way of life. This was one sociopath who had seized an opportunity to justify her own violent tendencies.
The motive mattered in that it never really had. Rachel had constructed one for herself, and they’d scrambled to figure out what it was. Yet in the end, it was meaningless.
A serial killer had claimed her victims. It was as simple as that.
“Why Noah?” Lucy asked, breaking into her thoughts. Eliza braced herself for what she knew was coming. “Why not you?”
“I tried,” Eliza said, the wobble there so clear in the quiet church. “I left my results out in my room.” Eliza’s shoulders hunched. “I thought it was Josiah for a long time. I left my results out.”
“And yet . . .”
“Nothing.” Eliza lifted one shoulder, confused still why Rachel hadn’t snapped and killed her. Maybe it was her own self-preservation or pride. Maybe there was a scrap of humanity that had beat in the heart of the monster. One that hesitated to harm the girl she’d raised as her own daughter.
Eliza didn’t know and never would.
What she said again was “I thought it was Josiah.”
“Then what happened, Eliza?”
At the careful use of her name, Eliza smiled sadly. We all need a reminder we’re human.
“I thought . . . I thought maybe Josiah didn’t want to kill me,” Eliza admitted.
“So how did he find out about Noah?”
“I left his results in the church,” Eliza whispered, guilty for even doing that. “I thought I could force his hand. Molly was . . .” Eliza’s breath caught. “Molly was missing. I couldn’t just not . . .”
Lucy didn’t say anything, and her silence crashed into all of Eliza’s soft places, shredding them.
“I thought . . . I thought, ‘Oh, I’ll track him,’” Eliza admitted, and she realized how careless that had been. “But still nothing happened.”
“Rachel was spooked.”
“Yeah, I think she realized Zoey was helping me by then.” Eliza lifted one shoulder. “I think she realized we knew about Kate.”
Kate, poor Kate. Eliza could hardly remember her. She’d been so young when Kate had worked for the Cooks. A pretty girl, a kind laugh. That was all that had stuck.
But she must have been at the wrong place at the wrong time. Witnessed Rachel in action, stumbled on evidence, something. Rachel had been only a budding killer at the time. What kind of a panicked tailspin must that have thrown her into?
“Kate,” Lucy repeated softly. “She’s why I’m here?”
Eliza glanced over, but there was only quiet curiosity in Lucy’s expression, not the brutal condemnation Eliza had expected.
“I don’t really remember how I found out about Kate,” Eliza admitted.
“Zoey Grant,” Lucy supplied.
“Well, yeah,” Eliza said. “But she was subtle about it at first, you know?” Looking back on it, it had been gradual. Eliza hung around Hicks and the station enough that it hadn’t seemed weird when Zoey had mentioned an old case. Then mentioned it again. Then left the file out for Eliza to find, she now realized.
Eliza had remembered Kate in a vague sort of way. But once Eliza had noticed the pictures, once she’d seen the cuts, she’d known her death was connected to whatever was happening in Knox Hollow.
That verse was painted over the inside door of their church. Eliza had been reading it every day for years. She recognized the letters and numbers instantly.
“You’re saying Zoey Grant slipped you information?”
Nodding, Eliza picked at the hem of her hospital gown. “I don’t think I realized it at the time. We’d just run into each other. And then once at the library . . . I don’t know, she gave me a number to call her at if I ever needed anything.”
“It was different than the station’s number?”
“Yeah, different than her cell even,” Eliza said. “I mean, I knew then. I knew she thought she was manipulating me. I knew she was trying to figure it out. But I was, too. So—”
“You used each other,” Lucy concluded. “Did Hicks know any of this?”
“No.” Eliza’s hand had darted out, as if to latch on to Lucy’s arm. She stopped herself, pulled back, tangled her hands in her own lap. This time, she was more controlled. “No. He didn’t even know we ran into each other ever.”
“What did he know?”
“That I was sick,” Eliza said carefully. She had no desire to get Hicks in any more trouble than he probably was already in. “He knew I was sick. He tried to kill the legislation this time around because if it got out of committee, whoever was killing kids would have more incentive to make sure my cancer wasn’t found. He even went to talk to Senator Hodge about it. To make sure no one had switched their vote.”
“He was trying to protect you.”
Warmth flooded in. “Always.”
“He didn’t know about Noah.” It wasn’t a question. “That he was sick, that you were using him as bait.”
“No.”
Lucy nodded, and some of the tension bled out of Eliza’s body. The last thing in the world she wanted was for Hicks to be caught up in this.
“So when Rachel didn’t take the bait with Noah’s test results . . .” Lucy pressed her voice lighter than it should be. Eliza supposed it was smart that Lucy was being gentle. Eliza might have collapsed under the grief at the first hint of accusation.
The cross blurred beneath Eliza’s tired gaze anyway. “I didn’t make the choice lightly.”
“But you knew what you were doing.”