Chuck limped to the base of the tree. Started looping around. Janet stayed put, one eye still on the exit route behind them.
“Hey, look at this!”
Chuck emerged from the other side of the tree trunk, carrying a bleached-out stick.
Janet frowned. “Isn’t that too short?”
“Yeah, yeah. But just look at it. The silver gray tone, and it’s so smooth.” He ran his hand along its length. “Not a trace of bark and so perfectly weathered. But still hard as a rock. I wonder how long this stick has been here? How many years to achieve this perfect degree of fossilization?”
He was closer to her now, that grin back on his face. Like a dog with a toy, she thought. Which is when she got her first true look at his prize.
“Chuck . . .”
“What?” He came to a halt beside her.
“That’s not a stick.”
He hefted it up. Long, weathered, and smooth, just as he’d described it. With two distinctly round knobs at the end.
Janet did not want to say what she had to say next.
“What?” he demanded again.
“Chuck, that’s a bone. A femur bone, if I had to guess. And given the length and width, not any animal I know of. Which leaves . . .”
Chuck dropped it. And there went Janet’s romantic weekend, as her badass boyfriend began to scream.
* * *
—
THINGS TAKE TIME, LONGER THAN most realize. First the local sheriff’s department had to hike in and secure the scene. Then the state’s forensic anthropologist was summoned to confirm that the remains were indeed human and begin the painstaking task of exhumation.
Sketches were made. Dirt sifted for trace evidence. The search zone widened as it became clear scavengers had been raiding the site and not all pieces of the skeleton remained intact. Smaller bones were recovered farther off. Many more remained missing.
Eventually, the forensic anthropologist and the heavily weathered skeleton journeyed back to Atlanta and the comfort of the lab, where the bones were given their own box and a case ID number. Several experts, not to mention some grad students, stopped by to check it out. Everyone was impressed by the quality of the find. No one had immediate answers.
More weeks passed. Then a couple of months, given the case backlog.
Finally, progress. A local artist reconstructed the face using modeling clay. Photos were taken. Images loaded into a nationwide database—and at last, a possible match. The forensic anthropologist conducted additional studies, cross-referencing age, gender, then the presence of an old childhood injury (broken arm) to the corresponding humerus. Confirmation was made, and finally the skeleton had a name.
Which was when SSA Kimberly Quincy received the call, as her name was flagged in the missing persons case file. According to the forensic anthropologist, the remains of Lilah Abenito, missing fifteen years, had been recovered in the mountains of Georgia. Cause of death, undetermined, but injuries to the hyoid bone were consistent with strangulation.
Kimberly hung up the phone. Absorbing. Thinking. Absorbing some more. She’d been waiting for this call for so many years, it felt faintly impossible. But at long last, Lilah Abenito had been found. Which meant . . . ?
Kimberly took a deep breath in, long breath out. Then she knew exactly what to do.
CHAPTER 2
FLORA
IDATED ONCE. PJN. PRE Jacob Ness. I remember brushing out my sun-streaked hair till it glowed California gold. Then I’d line my lashes in deep purple and go heavy on the mascara to bring out the gray depths of my eyes. A wisp of a dress. Thin spaghetti straps, a hem that barely brushed mid-thigh. Why not? I’d spent my childhood running around the wilds of Maine and I had long, graceful legs to show for it.
In those days, I was a girl on fire. I didn’t just enter a bar, I sauntered: bright, shiny, the life of the party. I was young and arrogant. And stupid. Dear God, so stupid. Even now, eight years later, I wish I could go back and have twenty seconds alone with my younger, stupider self.
But no such luck. So instead, bright, shiny me headed to Florida on spring break. And like tons of pretty college coeds, I donned my wisp of a dress and headed out with my bestest buds, all almost as golden and giggly as me, ready to rock the palm trees. We downed tequila shots. We shimmied across peanut-strewn floors. We spurned good-looking guys for downright sexy ones.
Then . . .
I danced myself away from the protection of the bar lights. Into the shadows of the sparsely populated beach, listening to some song only I could hear in my tequila-soaked head.
And Jacob Ness, who later told me he’d been watching me for hours, snatched me off that beach. Yanked me right out of my life, my pretty girl bluster, my young and glorious ways. He came. I disappeared. And for the next four hundred and seventy-two days, I learned about an entirely different kind of existence. One involving a coffin-sized box and the whims of a vicious predator who’d always wanted his own personal sex slave.
Again, if I could just have twenty seconds alone with younger, stupider me . . . But there are some mistakes you never get to take back. And there are some experiences there is no returning from.
There is what was. And now there is what is.
But I still miss that girl sometimes. Especially on a night like this one.
* * *
—
WE MEET AT THE RESTAURANT. Keith knows better than to ask to pick me up at my apartment. It’s silly, really. The guy is such a computer nerd he can probably hack the DOD. No doubt he has my address. Hell, probably a blueprint of the entire town house, for that matter.
But I need my illusions, and at this phase of our “relationship” he’s willing to give them to me. Tonight’s attempt at dating will take place at a popular rib joint in Boston. The kind of place known for its huge portions and sketchy neighborhood. Hipsters need not apply. Tourists definitely wouldn’t survive. My kind of place.
Last time I agreed to dinner, Keith took me to some establishment that was clearly five-star pretentious with starched white table linens and twenty-nine pieces of silverware. Even wearing my nice hoodie, I didn’t exactly blend in.
Keith did the requisite, “You’re beautiful anywhere you go, in anything you wear.”
I debated how much damage I could inflict with the four available knives, particularly the fish knife, which was a new and interesting implement. Not terribly sharp, but then again, you didn’t need a razor’s edge when targeting eyeballs. For that matter, the butter knife had a heavy silver handle, perfect for bludgeoning. Then there were the crystal glasses that could be smashed into jagged edges, or fine china plates which could be hurled as deadly Frisbees . . .