Nathan’s jaw clenched. Without a word, he turned and stormed from the room. Lee followed.
“What’s going on here?” Lee asked.
Nathan rustled his hand through his hair. “He’s right about those prints.”
“You think Raven actually murdered one of her family members?”
“We asked John about the position of those prints. He confessed he’d been teaching Raven to use the knife. He didn’t say she’d been complicit in the murders.”
“Maybe John was protecting her.”
Nathan rubbed his neck. “Even if what Donnely says is true, I doubt Raven would have faced jail time. Imagine the duress she was under. Did Keelyn ever mention anything like that? Confess to seeing any of it happen?”
“No, but remember, she wasn’t in the house the whole time. She and the other two came out before the killing started.”
Nathan paced. “Raven was only twelve. Would she have had the strength to cause that kind of injury?”
Lee’s heart skipped a few beats. “If I remember correctly, the girl that died was younger than Raven by a couple of years . . . smaller in size.” He turned and watched Gavin through the glass.
Nathan stood next to him at the window. “It gives Raven a stronger motive to want to annihilate all of us. We’d already saved three of her siblings. But we left her alone, and she was forced to do that.”
“So you think Gavin is right?” Lee asked.
“I’m saying it could be a possibility we need to consider.”
“Now you’re thinking like me. I’ve suspected Raven is not an innocent victim. And now Keelyn is alone with a full-fledged killer, and we’re running out of time to find her.”
Chapter 43
KEELYN FELT LIKE SHE WAS being broiled in an oven with the rack positioned at the highest grooves. She threw her covers off and felt the coolness lap at her right side while her left continued to bake in the fire. The chain remained around her ankle. A hypnotic hammer pounding at her temples matched the elevated thrum of her heartbeat. Cigarette smoke invaded her lungs as she inhaled the frigid air. She coughed, her left side racked with pain. As she opened her eyes to the cobwebbed hovel, she was hit with a moment of stark clarity, and her subconscious was able to snap all the connections and seemingly random events into place.
Raven was a smoker. The stench-filled rabbit left for Sophia was orchestrated by Raven. Raven was the one who trapped her in the house and tried to kill her and Sophia. She was probably the one in the vehicle that had sped off.
Then who were the other two in the yard?
“Wake, wake, Sleeping Beauty,” Raven chided, again blowing smoke at her face. Keelyn dispersed the fumes with several quick waves of her hand.
What was meant to be a charmed reference to how her mother used to arouse them in the morning came across as vile teasing. Keelyn eased herself to a sitting position, guarding her left side with a firm hand to act as a counter pressure to the pain. Raven had pulled a moldy, thin mattress onto the floor next to the wood stove for Keelyn where she’d spent the night sleeping. The pain, being chained, and being held at knifepoint had sapped every bit of strength. She pulled up the cuff of her coat. Her watch was gone.
Why would Raven take it?
“How long have I been out?” Keelyn asked.
“It’s late morning. How’s your side feeling?”
Keelyn’s injuries from jumping off the roof had been a subject of conversation on their drive to the house. She lightly touched the staples that closed the cut on her head. There was still a big bump. “Hurts a lot.”
Raven grabbed two pills and a plastic cup filled with water and motioned for Keelyn to open up her palm.
She waved her off. “No thanks.”
“It’s just Tylenol. You can trust me.”
Odd word choice but Raven’s countenance seemed sincere. Keelyn accepted the pills and examined them. Characteristic manufacturer’s markings were evident on the white tablets, and she swallowed them. Her stomach gnawed at the pills as if she hadn’t eaten anything in days.
“Can I have my watch back?”
“Does it have some special meaning? I was going to take your ring but I noticed it wasn’t on your left hand anymore. Want to talk about it?”
A mentally unstable sibling offering advice. Cue the Twilight Zone music.
Sorrow pulled at Keelyn’s spirit. The ache of being separated from the man she loved, both physically and emotionally, hurt her spirit more than the battering her body had taken. She’d take the pain of her bruised body first. “I ended our engagement.”
Raven’s eyes bulged. It was the first time Keelyn noticed true panic nip at her facade. Why would she care about that? It certainly wasn’t for Keelyn’s welfare. Could she use it to her advantage somehow?
“Why?” Raven asked.
Keelyn picked at the shredded wood boards that covered the floor. “He was hiding something from me. When my father committed suicide, I decided I couldn’t be with someone who lied. I could tell there was something he was hiding from me about Conner. He refused to tell me what it was, so I broke things off.”
“Everyone lies.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way. A marriage shouldn’t be that way.”
“What do you think he was keeping from you?” Raven asked.
Keelyn pulled the sleeping bag tighter over her shoulders. “Lee knew Conner had approached me in the diner, posing as Lucent. He even hired someone to find Conner. Never told me it was his brother.”
“It’s because Lee’s responsible for his brother’s current state.”
“How? What happened between them?”
“Conner would never be where he is if it wasn’t for his big brother.” The contempt in her voice as she referred to Lee’s relationship with Conner was clear, but there was something else there—a wistful look in her eyes when Conner’s name played on her lips. She tapped cigarette ash onto the floor. “You’re better off without him, anyway.”
“Did you meet Conner while working for the church?”
Raven snubbed the orange glow into an old wooden cable holder that served as the kitchen table. “Yes.”
“You never answered my question from before. Why did you have so many Bibles?”
“I was going to give them away.”
“You were witnessing to people?”
She remained silent. Keelyn looked closely. It was there, a small quiver in her lower lip. Raven brushed a tear off to the side. This limbic leaking indicated a line of questioning she could pursue to garner the truth. “What was it about the Bible that drew you in?”
Raven pressed her lips together. “It’s just a book of old tales.”
“I don’t believe that. I don’t think you do, either.”
Raven bit into her lip. “It was the pursuit.”
“What pursuit?”
“Of God for us. The Bible is the romance story every girl should read. What every girl aches for.”
Keelyn’s heart sank at her sister’s admission. She’d had that ideal with Lee and shoved it away. Could she get it back? Wasn’t that the hidden desire of all people? To feel singularly pursued to the ends of the earth? The romanticized vision of someone laying down their life for another was woven into the human DNA by God as an imprinted map to find the way back to him. Raven’s earthly examples had betrayed her terribly, yet she was still able to find ultimate hope in an ancient book.
“What changed?” Keelyn asked.
“I realized how silly it all was.”
“Why silly?”
Her voice barely a whisper. “To believe someone would actually do that for me.”
Keelyn’s spirit broke. She’d remembered someone quoting a study to her once that if a girl had a poor relationship with her father, it was harder for her to believe in God. An earthly example was needed to imagine the spiritual Father doing the same. In that absence, it took great imagination to believe it was possible. Some overcame it. Some didn’t.
> Raven was one of those who hadn’t.
“Did you read the whole book?”
“Every word—more than once.”
“What did Conner think when you would talk with him about it?”
Her face softened. A faint smile played on her lips. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of another beginning like the one Conner and I had. Meeting the way we did. He was open to what I had to say.”
“You were a couple?”
Raven slumped back in her chair. “I saw something in Conner I saw in myself. He’d been abandoned by his family, too. His brother kicked him out of his house. Did you know that about your fiancé?”
Keelyn frowned. “Yes, he told me.”
“Ever wonder about that before all of these things happened?”
“I think we were both at fault for agreeing to keep the past buried. But now I know secrets are destructive. Lies are destructive.”
“Then why do we tell so many? White lies? Which lies are good and bad?”
Keelyn drew up her knees. “That’s why I wondered if you read the whole Bible. If you knew about the father of lies.”
“Of course I read about him.”
“Then you should see how you’ve fallen victim to the lies he’s been whispering to you: That God doesn’t exist. That he’s not there for you. That the only way to conquer your depression is to seek revenge on those you hold responsible. What deception has bought you, ultimately, is a prison term.”
Raven closed her eyes and folded her arms over her chest. “Yet you did the same.”
“What?”
Raven locked eyes with Keelyn. “Fell in love with a liar.”
Keelyn’s heart seized. She hoped Raven wasn’t alluding to falling in love with evil and the perceived benefits that ended in destruction. How far had Raven gone? Was Raven the killer Lee painted her as?
Raven rocked slowly in the chair. “Why did you fall in love with Lee? Why did it have to be him out of all the men in all the world?” Raven threw her arms wide and then slammed them onto the table. “The man who failed to save our family? How could you do that!”
The burst of anger shocked Keelyn. It was there, the smoldering resolute determination of a fully bought lie. She fiddled with the clumps of dirt on the wooden floor as she thought about the question. The fire crackled behind her.
“We met at Ruby’s Diner. Do you remember going there with Mom sometimes? Those days she’d take us away from John’s, drive a couple of hours to that place way up north.”
Raven held her silence.
Keelyn sighed and pulled the chain through her fingers. “At first, it was just friendship. We’d both been through this terrible experience. There was something comforting about not having to talk about it, but knowing the other knew.”
“Doesn’t seem like enough.”
“That wasn’t all there was. He’s handsome. Eccentric for a guy. It’s crazy to see him in his SWAT uniform with C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters tucked under his arm. Ever read that book?”
“I know the gist.”
Keelyn let the comment slide. “Above all, he had this presence. An air of confidence. I always felt safe and loved. I knew he’d do anything for me.”
“Except be truthful.”
Keelyn’s stomach turned. “Can you tell me the truth about why we’re here?”
No response.
“Why did you leave those spiders? Infect Sophia with the bacteria? Why did you set fire to my house?”
Raven looked genuinely shocked. “I’m going to claim responsibility for the things that happened to Sophia. I trapped you in her room. I wanted you to be stuck long enough with her so you’d know it was the venom that made her sick, but what fire?”
“You didn’t set my house on fire?”
“I wanted to help someone, not kill you.”
“Help someone? What about Sophia—you nearly killed her! I still don’t know she’s okay.”
“Death by black widow envenomation is rare. Has to be done the right way. And the bacteria is treatable with antibiotics.”
Keelyn’s heart skipped a beat. The right way? What was Raven alluding to?
“How were you trying to help me?”
“Not you, Conner.”
Keelyn dropped her forehead into her knees. None of this made sense. She eased her eyes up, her voiced pleaded. “Raven . . .”
She leaned forward and lit another cigarette. Inhaled deeply and held the cancerous smoke in her lungs for several long seconds. Keelyn waited for her lips to turn blue. She exhaled slowly. “I knew the only way to save Conner was to get him into the hospital. Otherwise, he was going to kill himself on the streets with all those things he was putting into his body.”
“I still—”
“I injected the spider venom into his veins. A good healthy dose. I’d tipped off Drew on where Conner was so he’d find him and take him in.”
“Then Sophia?”
“I needed a way to show the medical team what was making Conner sick so they could give him the antivenom.”
Keelyn’s mouth gaped open. Sophia as a guinea pig? Her hope that Raven had an iota of mothering instinct evaporated.
“How could you do that?”
“It worked, didn’t it?”
The end justifying the means. Another purchased deception with her niece’s life as the currency.
“You were depending a lot on people making connections in an unclear situation. Have you seen what that venom does to people?”
Raven flicked the edge of her cigarette and then lazily rolled the shortened stump between her thumb and index finger. Unruffled. Controlled.
No evidence of disharmony between her thoughts and actions.
Raven smiled. “Absolutely. It’s quite amazing, actually.”
Chapter 44
AFTER DONNELY’S INTERVIEW, Lee spent hours combing through Raven’s personal records to find possible locations of where she could have taken Keelyn. They’d made a list of every store from which there was a receipt and every friend she’d called.
Four hours into the day, their bellies crying to be fed lunch, Lee and Nathan turned into a highway offshoot where a food truck sat. Lee ordered three grease-dripping tacos fully loaded, a Dr. Pepper, and two churros. After devouring each morsel and resisting the urge to lick the greasy wax paper, Lee felt the hunger pangs ease.
Was Keelyn cold and hungry? Guilt-induced bile bubbled in his full stomach and he held his hand out for Nathan’s medicine.
Nathan popped a few Tums as well. “I’m going to regret this in a few hours.”
“Sometimes you act like you’re fifty.”
“I’ll be glad to make it to fifty. Retire from this job and find something less stressful, like skydiving.”
“That’s crazy.”
“This coming from someone who begs to be shot at on a daily basis.”
“That’s what Kevlar is for.”
Nathan took another couple of bites of his burrito. “We’re going to need to start thinking outside the box. Nothing from Raven’s house has led to any new clues as to where Raven might have taken her.”
Lee balled up the remnants of his lunch for the trash. “We might be making it too hard. Raven wants us to find her. In her mind, she can’t just deliver the address. Wants us to sweat it out a little. But ultimately, she’s setting this up as a showdown so it has to be something we’d be able to figure out.”
“But what is that thing?”
“We’ve searched all of Raven’s known whereabouts and her father’s. Raven’s other siblings are minors and those properties didn’t lead anywhere.” Lee arced his trash into a nearby wastebasket. “We need to focus on Gavin.”
“He’s not exactly been a well of forthright information.”
“Let’s make some calls to see if we can find the locations of where he grew up. Maybe we need to look into the company where everything started. Check into Gavin’s real estate.”
“Thought you might sa
y that. I’ve already got a few officers working on Gavin’s holdings.”
“Might as well throw his father into it as well.”
“Right, good idea.”
Lee’s phone chimed. He held a finger up to Nathan. The information nearly knocked him off his chair. He set the phone down with a hard thud and wondered if he shattered the glass.
“What’s that about?” Nathan asked as he folded the wax paper remnants.
“Gavin isn’t Sophia’s father.”
“Interesting. I think he believes he is.”
“Raven led him to believe it.”
“Then who is the father and how will it help us find Keelyn?”
Lee stood from the small orange table. “We should split up. I’ll run you back to your vehicle. You stick with real estate holdings. I need to go to the DNA lab, and I think we better talk with Gavin again if my hunch pans out.”
Nathan stood as well. “Okay. Maybe Vanhise will have something more by then, too. Four hours tops. Is that enough time?”
Lee squared his shoulders. “It’ll have to be. We’re more than sixteen hours down.”
Chapter 45
KEELYN WATCHED AS RAVEN lifted the pot of warmed pork and beans off the top of the wood stove. Cut-up hot dogs had been cooked in the thick mixture. What was the point of her making a meal they’d loved as youngsters? To gain favor with Keelyn? To poison her?
Raven handed Keelyn a bowl of the mixture. She’d placed Keelyn in the rocker a safe distance away from her position at the table. Reading Raven’s body language was akin to reading different sides of the same coin. At times, Raven seemed to reminisce and crave their conversations, and Keelyn wanted to stay in those moments forever. Forget about the pain of Lee’s kept secret. Reacquaint herself with the sister she’d lost to circumstance. Those instances convinced Keelyn that Raven was not the murderess Lee claimed she was.
But at other times, a darkness shadowed her face and flattened her eyes, making Keelyn shudder at the possibility Lee’s cop instinct was dead-on and she was in the presence of a sociopath.
Keelyn brought a spoonful of the stew to her lips. Though it was hot enough to scald her tongue, she took several bites to quell the grumbling of her stomach. The water she drank to cool her mouth did little to stop the burn. She scraped her tongue with her teeth, and the deadened nerves were dull against the pressure.
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