Sheriff Reid cleared his throat, then sucked a long breath of air between his teeth. “Before I take this conversation any further, I need you two to be completely honest with me.” He paused for a moment to lock both of their eyes in his. “Have either of you been drinking today?”
“I’m only sixteen!” Lilah blustered, her eyes widening in indignation.
“Drugs? Hallucinogens? Sniffing glues or solvents of any kind?”
Stanley bristled. “Oh, come on, Dave—”
The sheriff held up a hand. “I just had to be sure.” He laced his fingers in front of his chin, watching the two of them warily. “Now, Miss Quinn, I don’t mean to sound skeptical, but you have to understand how difficult it is for me to believe that you’re actually some sort of Time Traveler—”
“No, no – I don’t travel through time, I just sort of bend it. Around me.”
Sheriff Reid gave her an incredulous blink.
“You’re just gonna have to show him, Li,” Stanley sighed. “Just keep it… small, would you?”
Lilah nodded. She focused her attention on the sleeping bloodhound in the corner of the sheriff’s office, whose gray, whiskered snout had wrinkles on top of wrinkles. The dog cocked its head as though it had just heard the telltale sound of a dog treat being unwrapped, then gave a small yip. Reid himself gave a high-pitched yelp as his ninety-pound lump of fur and wrinkles suddenly shrank to the size of a toy poodle.
“What the hell—” Dave started, jumping to his feet.
“Ruff!” the puppy barked, its tail wagging playfully as he chomped on a loose piece of string dangling from the sheriff’s pant leg.
“It’s okay,” Stanley reassured his wild-eyed friend. “Just watch.”
“Come here, Bandit,” Lilah said, patting her lap. The little ball of wrinkles scampered past the sheriff’s boots and underneath his desk, then jumped onto her lap. The moment she wrapped her arms around him, he surged back into a ninety-pound dog, nearly knocking her off the chair. She laughed as he gave her cheek a big, wet kiss, then gently helped him back to the floor. He waited for one last scratch between the ears, then loped back to his bed, where he curled up and settled in for another nap.
After dropping to the floor to make sure Bandit was, in fact, alright, Sheriff Reid scrambled to his desk and snatched up the phone, his wide-brimmed hat nearly falling off his head. “Pam, get me O’Toole on the line. Let him know we’re going to have to pool resources again this morning. We’re reopening the Mayweather case… Why?” he barked into the phone. “Because we just got our first lead in sixteen years, that’s why!”
After slamming the handset back on its cradle, he snapped on his police duty belt, grabbed his beige Sheriff’s jacket from the hook, and straightened his hat. Then he bolted for the door.
“What are you two waiting for?” he hollered from halfway out. “We’ve got ourselves a case to crack!”
“Can my friend Jace come too?” Lilah called after him.
“I don’t care if the Queen of England comes, so long as she knows how to use a shovel!”
Chapter 27
Reid’s Newest Detective
Lilah didn’t dare approach the thicket of huckleberry bushes as a dozen uniformed men, including her father, began unearthing the frozen, compacted soil that was interlaced with dried roots and wriggling earthworms. Instead, she crouched beneath a nearby fir tree, its feathery branches providing a temporary safe haven from the unsettling scene. As brave as she had tried to be when she was speaking to the frightened girl that had once been her mother, both courage and adrenaline were gone now, leaving nothing but fear and heartache in their absence. She never had the chance to get to know either her adopted mother or her biological one, and while her mission to find Willow had been a brief one, it had instilled in her a fleeting sense of hope – hope that she would eventually find the woman who gave birth to her.
Now, as several of the men began shouting and gesturing – for there were indeed human remains precisely where Lilah had said they would be – her last glimmer of hope was replaced by grief. It wasn’t that she doubted that Willow’s bones would be found there; but somewhere deep down, she couldn’t help but pray that she had been wrong.
Jace was the first to jog over to her, using the back of his hand to wipe fresh dirt and sweat from his brow.
“You were right,” he said. “Not that I ever doubted you, but… I’m so sorry.”
Lilah gave him a tight smile. “Thanks.”
“They’re going to start combing the surrounding forest to try and find… well, anything else. And the forensics team is being called in to gather DNA evidence.” He knelt to put a hand on her shoulder. “Are you okay?”
“As okay as can be expected, I guess. It’s a lot to process. But, um… would you stay here with me?”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he replied, settling down beside her. “What’s going through your mind right now?”
“I’m just thinking about everything that’s happened,” Lilah replied. “And what happens next.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well… Sheriff Reid offered me a job.”
Jace looked surprised. “He did?”
“Yeah. Do you, uh, want to take a walk?” she asked, eyeing the men with shovels. Even though the sky was blue and free of clouds, and sunlight was pouring in between the branches above, there was a growing chill in the air. An officer had begun to wrap yellow tape around the surrounding area while the two county sheriffs huddled together, directing various aspects of the exhumation. Stanley was standing off to the side, speaking into a walkie-talkie.
“Absolutely.” Jace stood to his feet and extended a hand to Lilah, which she took gratefully. Her legs were trembling. They walked in silence for a short while, until the sound of shovels clanking against frozen earth was far behind them.
Lilah shoved her hands in her pockets, glad to be moving her legs. “I rode with Sheriff Reid on the way here. He told me that he has an entire file drawer of cold cases. Crimes with no leads and no hope of being cracked… not without my help, according to him. He said that I could work as many or as few hours as I wanted, and he’d move whatever funds he had to in order to get me on the payroll.”
Jace let out a low whistle. “That’s a hell of an offer. But I thought you wanted to keep your superpowers a secret?”
She shrugged. “He promised that it would stay between him and me… Well, and my dad, of course.”
“So, you said yes, right?”
“I told him I’d think about it.”
“Really?” he blinked in surprise. “What’s holding you back?”
“I don’t know. It’s a little frightening, you know? Dealing with the remnants of all those poor people. On top of that, it just seems… wrong somehow.”
She had stopped walking, and Jace followed suit. “Wrong?” he asked. “How so?”
Lilah knelt down to pick up a pinecone, peeling the layers of bark away as she spoke. “After a lot of tears, Willow eventually understood what I was trying to tell her – that she had died, and I was talking to her from the future. She probably only believed me because she had those experiences with me as a baby. But… I don’t know. If I help the sheriff, there will be others like her, but they’ll be strangers. Strangers who are long-dead. Strangers who will be lost and confused and frightened. It seems almost cruel to disturb them, you know? To tell them something so awful and still not be able to help them.”