made sure to take one last good hard look at him. Her stained hands fastened around the keys, tight enough to cut through the skin on her palm. She cocked her head, analyzing the way the blood pooled around Thing Two’s skull.
And then she smiled.
It was the perfect summer day.
The sun was still shining.
Kids were still playing.
Fathers had stopped mowing their lawns; they were mostly positioned in front of the TV, third beer in hand, a sports game on TV. Others were in backyards, cleaning grills for parties. Some were playing catch with their children in the front yard.
That was what Henry Rollins was doing with his daughter. His son Andy, wasn’t interested in sports. He liked to read vampire books. His wife told him it was nothing to worry about, so he tried not to worry. Tried to support him and not show how weird he thought it was. He thought he did it well. He loved his kids, and only wanted the best for them. He didn’t want them to be bullied or turn out to be serial killers.
Hannah had a good arm and a passion for sports. His wife told him that did not make her gay. That disappointed him. He would much rather his little girl be gay. Men were pigs.
He heard the sound of the front door across the street burst open, and his eyes immediately lifted. Pig was a good description of the men who lived there. That was why he never let Hannah out there on her own. Why he made sure she was with a group of friends if she wanted to ride her bike. The guys across the street gave him the creeps. He didn’t like the look of them.
But it wasn’t one of the pigs.
He squinted at the form of a woman covered in blood and wearing pajamas emerging from the door. And then there was another behind her. The last sprinted out before collapsing on the yellow grass.
“Dad!” Hannah yelled, her eyes on the scene too.
“Get inside now,” he said. “Call 911.”
Then he raced across the street.
His green baseball mitt landed on the lawn.
He wouldn’t be able to pick it up again without thinking of this day. Those women. Those broken girls.
Three
Maddox was tired.
He also had a thumping in his skull thanks to the Jameson he drank the night before. He wasn’t proud of the amount of liquor and beer bottles in his recycling bin every week, but he didn’t really care much about what people thought of him either. He never drank on duty, and he never made a mistake on the job. So, what of it if he caught a little buzz after a hard day’s work? He had earned it.
He often told himself things like that throughout the years. That his drinking was simply a way to blow off steam. That it was the only thing that could help him sleep. But he knew deep down he drank because of her. Because she had left him with a feeling unlike any he’d ever had before in his sixteen years of life, and then, without warning, she was gone. Vanished into thin air.
The Clark County Sheriff’s Department never really did open an investigation on Orion’s disappearance. As the largest county in the state of Missouri and situated smack dab in the middle of meth country, Clark County didn’t have time to waste on teenage runaways. They looked at her home life, at the previous runaway attempts, at the mental institution stay when Orion was twelve, and they determined she most likely ran away again. The police never looked for her, her parents never looked for her, and her memory was left to wither away to nothing.
Detective Maddox Novak, one of only two detectives working out of the Clark County Sheriff’s Office, couldn’t accept that. He never believed she would up and leave, not without saying something, at least. She would’ve contacted him. Even before their kiss, even before he confessed his feelings, he had grown up with her. He wanted to believe she cared for him like he did her. Maybe that’s why he ended up joining the department.
When the call came in from the sheriff on his weekend off, he was thankful, if he was being honest with himself. He grew to despise days off. Much like the alcohol, work became a way for him to forget, to busy himself numb. His sister had taken the early shift on the Saturday that would flip his whole