She watched Rachel stretch now and glance at the overfull bag of dead flowers. Hicks would never be out here like this, Eliza knew. Neither would Josiah, for all his talk about doing what was right for the community.
No, it was always Eliza and Rachel. This was their duty, cleaning up for the Church when no one else thought of it.
Next, they would go to visit the older members of the Church, change soiled sheets, wash bedsores, paint toenails that had yellowed with age. Eliza always called dibs on the last one because she was not nearly as righteous in her servitude as Rachel, and that at least she could handle.
Finally, they would stop at the McDonald’s just on the outskirts of town and get small vanilla ice cream cones, a splurge they never told Josiah about.
They’d listen to approximately three songs on the Christian radio station as they’d sit in the truck and not talk. There was something soothing about the ritual. Even now. Even when Eliza was on the edge of a breakdown, Molly missing, possibly dead, a plan in place that was barreling toward its destination without much control on her part, suspicion burrowing into every thought about every person around her.
Another car pulled into the parking lot just as Rachel threw the trash bag into the bed of the truck. She shucked off her gloves and rested her palm on the nape of Eliza’s neck. Eliza fought the shiver that slinked along her skin at the contact, fought the urge to shrug the touch off.
Instead she watched Peggy Anderson climb out of her own passenger seat, tip her head toward them in a civil, if chilly, greeting, and then start off down the rows.
“Why’s she so obsessed with this place? With us?” Eliza asked, mostly just to see what Rachel would say. Eliza knew why Peggy was obsessed, why Hicks was. Why they all were, really. Even for those who had gotten out, the Church wasn’t something you left behind.
Rachel sighed long and deep and then nudged Eliza into moving around toward the passenger seat.
“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you?” Rachel quoted. It was Josiah’s go-to passage whenever Peggy—or Hicks or anyone outside the Church really—was mentioned. “Even sinners love those who love them.”
Eliza huddled further into her jacket, her eyes on Peggy’s slow-moving progress toward Cora’s grave.
“I pursue my enemies and catch them,” Eliza countered, her voice velvet-lined steel. Because she knew verse, too. “I strike them down, and they cannot rise.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
LUCY THORNE
Saturday, 2:00 p.m.
“You’re up,” Lucy said as she walked into Zoey Grant’s broom closet of an office.
Zoey had been watching the door, cheeks pale, eyes unfocused, but when Lucy sat down in the chair across from her, she snapped to attention. “What?”
“The ruse is up,” Lucy said. “Hicks has a clear conflict of interest, and he’s off the case.”
Zoey chewed on her bottom lip. “He didn’t tell you he was Eliza’s uncle.”
There was a question lurking beneath that flat statement, as if Zoey had hoped for better but had expected the worst. “No.”
“Shit,” Zoey muttered, scrunching her nose and looking out her office’s small window. “I thought he might not have. With how you were acting.”
Lucy thought about the way Zoey had watched her in the rearview mirror out to the Thomas place. Maybe she really did have an ally here. But Lucy had trusted too quickly with the other member of the Knox Hollow Sheriff’s Department, and she wasn’t eager to make that mistake twice.
“They’re not . . . ,” Zoey started. Stopped. Turned back to Lucy, meeting her gaze straight on. “They’re not close. Rachel Cook, his sister, keeps Eliza and Hicks separated. Hicks doesn’t even really know the girl. But he’s loyal to family, you know?”
“Even when he’s doesn’t see them?” Lucy asked. She’d just been wondering why he’d stayed in the area. Blood ties could sway even the most logical person.
Zoey smiled, but it was faint. “It’s probably not the best time to make this argument, but Hicks is a good guy. He cares, even if they hate him.”
Lucy raised her brows. “Hate?”
Flushing, Zoey shook her head. “No, no. Sorry. They don’t hate him. It’s complicated.”
“But Eliza?”
“She was so young.” Zoey shrugged.
Lucy waited for a beat, but it didn’t seem like Zoey would follow up with anything actually useful.
“Until this investigation is wrapped, you should limit your interactions with him,” Lucy warned.
“I don’t know if I feel comfortable taking over the case,” Zoey said in a rush.
“It’s either you or no one.” Lucy didn’t even try to keep the impatience out of her voice. “Make a decision—now.”
If Lucy cared, she’d tell Zoey that Hicks would rather she be a part of the team than not have anyone involved in the case, but Lucy didn’t care right now. So she glanced at the plain white clock that hung on the side wall and, in her mind, gave Zoey fifteen more seconds.
Something about Lucy must have given away her impatience because it took only three before Zoey made her decision. “How can I help?”
Lucy didn’t smile, didn’t relax into relief. “Tell me about Molly Thomas’s disappearance and Hicks. Go through the parking lot encounter again.”
Zoey sighed, looked away. “I feel like an asshole. Hicks is a good guy.”
“Good guys make bad calls all the damn time, and you know it,” Lucy said, not bothering to equivocate. A woman who looked like Zoey Grant had no misconceptions about “good guys.”
Meeting Lucy’s eyes, Zoey settled back in her chair with an aggrieved sigh. “When Molly approached me . . . she just mentioned Hicks, that’s it. Seemed real scared, like she wasn’t supposed to be saying anything.”
When Lucy stared, Zoey lifted her hands palms out. “Then she ran off before I could ask anything else.”
“And when was this?”
Zoey looked like she had to think about it for a second. “Right around when she disappeared. Not long after the shield law hearing that everyone went out of town for.”
After a couple of beats of silence, Zoey made a sound like an aborted question that stuck in her throat.
Lucy narrowed her eyes, glancing over. “What?”
“Just . . .” Zoey deflated, her chest going concave, her chin dipping. When she looked up, there was something in her expression Lucy couldn’t read. “What does any of this have to do with Noah Dawson?”
“Nothing, probably.” But there was that itch again. Lucy scratched the back of her hand, knowing it would do nothing to alleviate the unpleasant sensation. This was dangerous, taking her focus off Noah, getting distracted. If she went into it with any assumptions, the evidence would bend to support it. That’s how brains worked. Random happenstance fell prey to confirmation bias.
Maybe it had already happened. A dropped phone did not equal a missing girl.
Standing up, Lucy then crossed to the whiteboard that took up one whole side of Zoey’s small office and uncapped one of the markers.
She wrote Eliza’s and Noah’s names on one side, then Molly Thomas’s on the other.
Underneath it all, she wrote the verse.
For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
And then Lucy stepped back, her eyes touching each of the words lightly, landing on them, moving on, coming back. She didn’t know how long she stood there before she finally turned back to Zoey.
“You’ve only been here six months, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you know if any other kids have gone missing?” Lucy asked, though Hicks had made it seem like it was something they wouldn’t be able to know. She wasn’t in the mood to trust Hicks. And the last she’d checked, there was still no email from the coroner.
“We get called out every once in a while, and Hicks sometimes gets in their business to keep an eye on them, but . . .”
“But?
”
“You have to understand.” Zoey leaned forward, her forearms on the desk. “Their way of life is shunning all government intervention.”
“Right.”
Zoey’s fingers started up a random tapping. “All government intervention. No birth certificates, no social security numbers. Nada.”
Sighing, Lucy pulled out her phone, checking to see if by some miracle Jackson had emailed. It came as no shock that he hadn’t.
Without warning, Zoey stood, grabbed her car keys, and stepped around the desk.
“Come on.” Zoey jerked her chin toward the exit. “There’s something you should see.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
LUCY THORNE
Saturday, 2:30 p.m.
The headstones were small, unadorned. Colorful bouquets rested against bland gray, a reminder of life that seemed almost jarring in this horrific cemetery.
It wasn’t the number of people buried in the plot of land but rather the dates carved into rock that had bile creeping up against her esophagus.
She thought about Hicks’s fingers curling into fists, her own mirroring the movement now.
Row after row of babies, children. A couple of older kids, but mostly infants, a few days, a few months into life.
Her boots dragged against the ground as she carefully walked the perimeter, making sure not to step on any of the makeshift graves.
A small hand-painted wooden sign at the entrance swung gently in the wind. PEACEFUL REST CEMETERY, it proclaimed, as if it had the right to determine that.
Black dots popped at the edge of her vision, and Lucy let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding, unlocking her jaw in the process, loosening each muscle that had hardened into something as unyielding as the stone used to mark each of these deaths.
When she blinked and looked around, she found Zoey off to the side, watching her with careful consideration. Lucy followed when Zoey started toward one of the back rows.
They came to a stop in front of two simple markers.
CORA TUCKER. OLIVER TUCKER.
Lucy quickly did the math on Cora. Twenty-six.
Oliver had been three days old.
“Eliza’s mother,” Lucy said softly, mostly to herself. Cora must have married, and Lucy wondered if Eliza had ever put up a fuss at taking Cook as her last name. “Hicks’s sister. Rachel Cook’s sister.”
Zoey rocked a bit on her heels. “Yeah,” she confirmed, even though she must know she didn’t need to.
Connections. So many connections. Which ones were important?
“Yeah,” Zoey said again. “So you know how I said Rachel and Hicks don’t get along anymore?”
“Let me guess,” Lucy said softly, her eyes on the grave. “That had to do with Cora?”
“She would have lived, probably. The baby, too,” Zoey said. “At least that’s what Hicks thinks.”
Lucy nodded. “She didn’t fall under the shield laws because she was an adult. But the baby would have.”
“Hicks thinks someone should have been charged for the deaths.” Zoey was defending him. Lucy wondered if she even realized she was injecting the tone into her words, especially as she’d been so quick to doubt him when she heard Molly had disappeared. “He’s been on a crusade ever since.”
“So the Cooks got Eliza, and Hicks left the Church.” Lucy’s eyes returned to Cora’s headstone. Tucker. “Where was Eliza’s father?”
“What?”
“Eliza’s father.” Why hadn’t she thought to ask before? “Why didn’t he get custody of Eliza when Cora died?”
Zoey didn’t answer. When Lucy looked over, her face was as white as the marble. Then she seemed to shake something off. “I don’t . . . I don’t know.” There was a weighted pause. “But . . .”
Lucy waited, didn’t push.
“Oliver’s father,” Zoey continued after a few beats. “I know Oliver had a different father than Eliza.”
“She was married before?” Lucy asked.
A grimace. “I think it’s a sore subject,” Zoey said slowly. “No one really talks about it. At least not to me.”
Well, they would have to answer Lucy’s question. She added it to the list of things she needed to ask Hicks.
“And Josiah Cook, tell me about him,” Lucy prompted. She wanted a take on the man that wasn’t biased. All she’d been going on was Hicks’s opinion.
“He and Hicks are civil,” Zoey said, answering a question Lucy hadn’t asked. Defending Hicks? Or Josiah? “They make nice in public.”
“And in private?”
Zoey lifted a shoulder. “That doesn’t happen much, does it?”
“You tell me,” Lucy said, letting some of the irritation slip in.
But Zoey just shook her head. “I think he means well. Josiah, that is.”
Did that mean Hicks didn’t? Lucy swallowed the question and waited for Zoey to go on.
“He’s only been an elder for a few years,” Zoey said. She must have caught Lucy’s surprise, because she clarified. “Pastor and elder are two different things.”
“How so?”
“The elders have the final say,” Zoey said. “They’re . . . They’re the decision-makers.”
Lucy shoved her hands in her pockets. “The governing body for a group that hates government.”
“Right,” Zoey drawled out, her brows lifted. “Pastor . . . well, that kind of is like the face of the Church. He preaches, helps the flock, and puts together parties and such. But being pastor doesn’t give anyone a deciding vote.”
The influence, the power, though. That was still evident. At least in how Josiah Cook filled the position. Lucy nodded to get her to continue.
Zoey shoved her hands in her pockets, her shoulders hunching up. “Anyway, the guy who died for Josiah to take his spot was old-school beyond even what you’re seeing these days.”
“And Josiah is . . . more progressive?”
“Sort of. But probably not in the way you’re thinking,” Zoey was quick to correct. “I mean, this is the guy who’s trying to keep the shield laws, right?”
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.
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