by LENA DIAZ,
Tessa shook his hand, her smile slipping as she realized why Ruth was so anxious to help them. She must have assumed Tessa was using her position as an FBI agent to find her “real” parents. And Charlie had made the same assumption.
Well, isn’t that what they were doing, really? Maybe not for the same reasons Charlie and Ruth thought, but she and Matt were trying to trace her back to wherever she had come from.
Miss Clark reached them then, huffing and puffing as she tried to catch her breath.
“Nice day for a walk, isn’t it, ma’am? Have a good day.” Matt pulled Tessa back up the hill toward the parking lot, leaving the red-faced administrator fuming behind them.
AFTER A QUICK bite at a fast-food restaurant in town, Matt and Tessa headed to the library so they could do some research before it closed. Internet searches had yielded nothing useful about the group home fire, even with the date range Charlie had scribbled on his business card. The fire had happened too long ago, as Matt and Tessa had feared, before the Internet became the huge dumping ground of information that it was today. Searching through old newspaper archives seemed like their best shot. But that would only work if the library had the archives, and if a story was run locally about the transfer of children from another home that had burned down.
Tessa wasn’t holding out much hope, especially after spending hours in front of the microfiche machine looking through old newspapers until her eyes were going bleary. Matt was looking over her shoulder, her second set of eyes in case she scrolled by something and missed it, but neither of them had found anything so far.
With only thirty minutes left until closing, they’d gone through only about half the film when Matt’s pocket computer beeped. He smiled an apology at the librarian, who aimed an aggravated glance at both of them, even though they were the only ones in the library.
He opened up a message window on his tablet, apparently to read his e-mail.
Tessa skimmed faster through the latest newspaper archive. She had to somehow get through all the microfiche before closing. Tonya Garrett’s parents had to be going through their own personal hell with their child missing. Waiting another day to continue searching through the films wasn’t even an option in Tessa’s mind.
The librarian cleared her throat, unsubtly letting her only visitors know their time was up.
Tessa ignored the librarian and furiously spun the wheel on the film reader. She was close. She knew it.
The click-clack of heels on the marble floor came closer and closer.
“Stall her,” Tessa whispered.
“What do you want me to do? Trip her?”
“You’re a gorgeous man. She’s a woman. I’m sure you can think of something.”
He sounded like he was strangling. “Are you trying to pimp me out? She’s got to be at least seventy years old.”
Tessa arched a brow. “You do seem to have a thing for older women.”
His eyes narrowed dangerously, but before he could respond, the librarian reached them.
“The library is closing.” Her shaky, high-pitched voice echoed in the room, much louder than any noise Tessa and Matt had made.
Tessa was tempted to shush the woman just to see what she’d do, but she resisted the juvenile urge and continued to spin the handle on the machine.
“You have to leave, now.” The librarian sounded like an imperious queen.
Tessa watched Matt out of the corner of her eye. He aimed one of his devastating, full-wattage smiles at the older woman and rose from his chair, taking one of her gnarled hands in his.
“Ma’am, I’m so sorry we’ve inconvenienced you. Special Agent James is almost done. I’ll make sure she puts all the film back in the proper containers. In the meantime, is there something I can do to help you get the library prepared for closing? Perhaps you have some chairs that need to be put back in their proper places?”
The librarian’s eyes widened and she blinked like an owl.
Tessa coughed into her hand to keep from laughing.
Her cough turned to a squeak when Matt stepped on her foot.
The librarian aimed an admonishing look at Tessa. Apparently her squeak was unacceptable in these hallowed halls.
“Sorry,” Tessa said.
The librarian yanked her hand out of Matt’s grasp. From the suspicious look she gave him, she didn’t appear to be buying his charm act. “Well, young man, if you really want to help, I suppose you could take out some trash.”
Matt aimed a dark look at Tessa before ushering the older woman toward the front of the room.
“Of course. Anything I can do to help, ma’am,” he said.
Tessa chuckled and turned the wheel through a few more weeks’ worth of newspapers. Yes. On the front page was a picture of the group home, the same picture from her parents’ album. The story beneath it talked about the fire that had destroyed another group home. The name of the destroyed group home, along with its location, was listed toward the bottom of the article: the Murray State Girls’ Home, in Murray, Kentucky.
She printed the article and put the films back into the canisters. Since Matt and the librarian were nowhere around, she decided to wait in the car.
Fifteen minutes later, Matt slid into the driver’s seat and slammed his door shut. The dark look in his eyes promised severe retribution.
“Took you long enough,” Tessa teased. A pungent smell had her wrinkling her nose. “You stink.”
“Tomorrow is trash day.” His jaw was so tight it barely moved as he spoke. “Did you know the library hosts luncheons several days a week for the elderly? And that they throw away a lot of leftovers? Apparently the library stores their garbage from those luncheons behind the building, in the sun, all week, until a volunteer comes by to carry it to the Dumpster. Since I was already here, she decided I could take care of it. Ten bags of rotting garbage. Do you know how bad ten bags of garbage smell?” He plucked at his shirt and a look of disgust twisted his mouth. “I’m going to have to burn this, and get my suit jacket dry-cleaned.”
“Ah, poor, poor baby.” She laughed, but his sharp look had her swallowing her laughter. She grabbed the printout from her purse, hoping to distract him from his misery.
He yanked the paper out of her hands and quickly scanned it. His annoyance seemed to evaporate when he reached the bottom of the article.
“Western Kentucky, huh? Before you sent me off on my garbage run, I got an e-mail from my lab. The test results came back on the particulates we were trying to narrow down to a specific coal-mining region. Henry said that type of coal is only in two regions of the country. South Carolina, and guess where else?”
“I’m thinking . . . hmm . . . Western Kentucky?”
He started the engine. “Call the airport and see what time the next flight leaves that will take us as close to Murray, Kentucky, as we can get. I don’t think we can get a direct flight there. In the meantime we’re stopping at the first motel we see so I can grab a shower.”
Tessa called the airport. “Are you sure there isn’t a later flight?” she asked the person on the other end of the phone. She winced at the answer.
“What?” Matt demanded.
“If we hurry and don’t stop, we just might make the next flight out to Paducah, the closest airport to Murray.”
He glanced down at his smelly shirt and grimaced. “What time’s the next flight available after this one?”
“Tomorrow afternoon.”
He cursed viciously, but then his mouth curved into one of his Cheshire cat grins. “Go ahead and book us on the earlier flight. Just make sure I get a seat next to you. If I have to smell myself the whole way there, so do you.”
MATT’S MISERABLE FLIGHT to Paducah, Kentucky, was nothing compared to the misery of sitting in the passenger seat of a rental car while Tessa drove. She followed every speed limit to the letter of the law, whereas Matt was more inclined to think of speed limits as suggestions, or fuzzy guidelines. The only thing that made the car ride remotely
bearable was that they’d stopped at a rent-by-the-hour motel so he could take a shower and change his clothes.
“Can’t we go just a little faster?” he begged. Again. “It’s going to be dark before we get to the girls’ home at this rate.”
“No, it’s not. And I’m not going to speed. Stop asking.”
“You do realize there’s a pedal in the floor called an accelerator, right?”
She swatted his arm. “Knock it off. You never let me drive and I’m tired of always being the passenger.”
“There’s a reason I never let you drive,” he mumbled.
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing.” He sighed and looked out the window at the passing farmland, with acres and acres of some kind of green plant he couldn’t identify. Although, at the speed they were going, he could see nearly every little vein in every plant leaf. He’d probably be able to draw the plants by memory later and figure out what the stuff was.
Rather than go out of his mind watching the unnamed green plants, he pulled out his pocket computer to research the coal-mining regions in Kentucky that matched the particulate sample from the letter his lab had tested. There were a handful of counties that could have produced the sample, but they were a bit farther north than Calloway County, where they were driving right now, just outside of Murray.
“Help me find the turn off.” Tessa slowed the car even more on the rural two-lane road. “This car’s GPS can’t seem to find the address.”
Matt consulted the GPS on his pocket computer. His maps were more robust. The upcoming turn was clearly marked, even though the car’s system kept saying “Recalculating” in an annoying monotone.
“Half a mile up ahead on the right.”
Tessa carefully made the turn, and the car began to bump and grind over a badly cared for gravel road. Her painfully slow pace only made the ride worse.
A rut bounced the car so hard the springs squeaked in protest, and Matt’s head slammed against the roof. He rubbed the top of his head and secured his computer in the console between the seats.
“I’m guessing you’ve never driven down a gravel road before,” he said.
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Pull over. I can’t take this anymore.”
She rolled her eyes but pulled over anyway.
They switched sides, and he eased the car back onto the road.
Tessa grabbed the armrest when the car almost bottomed out in a pothole. “You’re not doing any better than I was.”
“Patience. You can’t take off like a jackrabbit on gravel without sliding all over the place. But once you get some speed, the ride will smooth out.”
Just as he’d promised, once he got the car moving above the snail’s pace she’d been driving, the ride evened out.
She let go of her death grip on the armrest and gave him a grunt, which he supposed was her grudging way of admitting he was right.
A few minutes later he undid all the good he’d done when they rounded a curve and he saw the water up ahead. He slammed the brakes. The car skidded sideways before jolting to a bone-jarring stop.
Tessa’s eyes widened and she let out an ear-piercing shriek that had Matt wincing. She braced her hands on the dashboard and pushed back, as if she could back the car up by sheer will.
Matt chuckled. “Don’t worry. It may look like the car’s about to fall into the creek, but the wheels are still on the road.” Barely. He shoved his door open.
“Where are you going?” She eyed the water rushing past the hood with barely concealed panic.
“I have to check the bridge before we cross.”
“Bridge? What bridge?”
He pointed through the side window.
She violently shook her head. “That . . . that . . .” She waved her hand at the collection of timbers. “That is not a bridge.”
“Sure it is. Haven’t you ever seen one of these low, wooden bridges before? They’re all over rural areas in the South.”
“No, I don’t remember anything like that.”
“What exactly do you remember?”
She stared at the water and shook her head. “Nothing. Nothing before Savannah.”
She was lying. She wouldn’t look him in the eye, and her voice held no conviction when she denied remembering anything. What wasn’t she telling him?
He scooted out and walked around the front of the car.
Tessa scrambled out after him and grabbed his arm when he was about to step onto the bridge.
“Seriously, Matt. What are you doing? You aren’t actually considering driving across this thing, are you? It’s an antique. There aren’t even any sides or railings. It doesn’t look wide enough for a bicycle, let alone a car.”
“It’s just wide enough. And I promise we won’t cross unless I’m sure it will hold the car’s weight.” He knelt down and looked at the bridge from the side.
Tessa stood with her arms crossed. “How would you have ever seen a bridge like this before?”
“Some friends I met in college live on farms. They had bridges like this all over. You just have to adjust the boards before you cross. This one looks perfectly solid.” He stepped onto the bridge and bent down, pulling the boards left or right as needed to center them over the supports beneath.
“The boards aren’t even nailed down?” Tessa squeaked from somewhere behind him.
“They started out that way, but the nails pop up and the boards move. That’s why you have to check them before you cross.”
From the sounds of the cursing coming from Tessa, he figured she didn’t like that answer.
When he finished adjusting the boards and got back into the car, Tessa wasn’t with him. She stood several feet off the side of the road.
Matt rolled down the passenger window. “What are you waiting for? Get in.”
“If you want to risk your fool neck, go ahead. I’ll walk across it after you. But I’m not driving in a car across that thing.”
It would be dark soon. If they were going to get to the group home and look around, and cross this bridge on the way back before nightfall, they had to get going right now. He didn’t have time to argue with her.
He backed the car up and centered it on the road, aligning the wheels with the bridge. With his window rolled down, he leaned half out of the car and edged forward. Tessa was right. It was a tight fit, so he had to go slowly to make sure he kept the wheels lined up. But two minutes later he was on the other side, and Tessa was yanking the passenger door open.
She jumped inside. “I’m not even going to tell you how close the wheels on the right side came to going off the bridge. You, Matt Buchanan, are a lunatic.”
He laughed and eased the car forward, speeding up until the ride leveled out.
Fifteen minutes later they were at the group home or, rather, where the home had once stood. He parked beside a faded sign that boasted the name MURRAY STATE GIRLS’ HOME.
Their feet crunched over more gravel as they approached the main structure. Charred beams stuck up into the sky on the left side, where the fire must have been, but the smell of smoke had faded years ago, and green vines covered most of the wood lower to the ground.
Tessa stopped just outside the part of the building that had burned. She stared at the building so long that Matt was about to check on her, but then she took a halting step forward and went inside.
He followed, keeping a respectful distance. He didn’t expect to find any documents, or even any people, anywhere near this abandoned place. His whole goal in coming here was to see if it would stir up any memories for Tessa, memories that might help them figure out more about her past. So far, he didn’t know if his strategy was working. But she was combing over every inch of the place, even walking into the parts of the building untouched by fire, standing in the middle of each room, quietly looking around.
The sun was going down and they needed to cross that wooden bridge while he had enough light to safely navigate across it. He was a
bout to tell her they had to leave when she looked up at him.
“Let’s go,” she whispered. “I’ve seen everything I needed to see.”
The tears in her eyes were like a punch in the gut, but before he could reach for her she hurried outside.
Forty minutes later Matt could stand the silence no longer. Tessa’s noncommittal noises in response to his questions had him gritting his teeth in frustration. He pulled the car into the first parking lot he saw on their way into the city of Murray, which ended up being at a fast-food restaurant called Taco John’s.
“Talk to me,” he said. “Why were you upset back there? Did you remember something?”
She didn’t answer for a full minute. “I remember what happened, why I ended up in the group home.” The misery shining from her eyes had his heart stuttering in his chest.
“There was an accident,” she said. “We were in the car, driving down the highway. There was a loud bang. Then we were sliding across the road. The car slammed into a ditch.” Her bottom lip quivered and a single tear slid down her cheek. “She died in my arms.”
“Who died in your arms? Who was in the car with you?”
“Sissie. My sister.”
MATT SHIFTED HIS weight on the hard wooden bench and rested his head against the wall behind him, a wall that was as gray and gloomy as the rest of the Murray, Kentucky, police station. He caught the desk sergeant’s gaze on the other side of the room. The sergeant flipped a page in the magazine he was reading and shrugged, as if to tell Matt he didn’t know how much longer the wait would be.
No surprise there. He’d already been waiting for over three hours.
After Tessa’s flash of memory about the car crash, Matt had called the local police to see if they could provide any details about the group home fire. Detective Stephens had been the lead on that case and was still active on the force. But when Matt asked him to dredge up information on a fire that happened twenty-three years ago, the detective’s demeanor had turned as cold as the case. Only the fact that the FBI was involved had gotten him to agree to help—and then only after grumbling, extensively, about how he’d have to go to an off-site annex to dig up a file that old.