isn’t my friend. He wasn’t when he snagged the most attractive girl in junior high and won’t be when he finally discovers where she’s been hiding these past few months.
The restlessness keeping my stomach empty the past fourteen years ramps up when my cell phone suddenly buzzes in my pocket. With Smith in my ear, Clover on high alert a couple of blocks over, and Rocco acting as my driver, there’s only one other person who has my private number—my father.
Since he’s the last person I want to speak to, I slide my phone out of my pocket and hit the ‘end call’ button without peering at the screen. “Have my father’s calls sent straight to my voicemail. I’ve got eyes on him. I don’t want him in my ear as well.”
Smith hums out a panicked murmur before he discloses he has footage of my father nowhere near a phone.
“Live feed?”
He gags. “From the pendant on the whore you sent over to keep him occupied this afternoon. Trust me, none of his fingers are able to dial right now.”
While fighting the urge not to slit Rocco’s throat over his chuckle about my disgruntled expression, I swipe my thumb across the screen of my phone and hit my phone app. The area code reveals my caller is in the New York region, but the number isn’t familiar.
I’m about to ask Smith to commence a trace when a text message pops up on my screen.
Unknown number: Please tell me she wasn’t found on the Shroud ranch. I can’t stand the thought of her being buried so close to home and not knowing. I thought I’d sense her presence. We were close like that.
Against Smith’s recommendation not to engage until he completes a trace, I type out a reply.
Dimitri: Who is this?
“Someone wanting to cover her tracks since she’s bouncing her signal off multiple towers,” Smith growls down my earpiece just as my caller’s text pops up.
Unknown Number: It’s India. I thought you had my number stored. Was she there, Dimi? Did you finally find her?
“What is she talking about?” I ask anyone listening, the twisting of my stomach too perverse to ignore.
Smith breathes out a curse word a mere second before Ellie’s voice comes down the line. “I’m sending you a link. It isn’t pretty.”
Mine and Rocco’s phone buzzes in sync. My eyes don’t know which section of the article to absorb first. The fact multiple bodies were found on a ranch only a hundred miles from Hopeton, that they were buried beside enough hospital supplies to fill an antenatal ward with or the headline that the body of a toddler was found in the wall of the residence.
“How old was she?”
When nothing but silence resonates out of my earpiece for the next several seconds, my panic shifts to fury. “How fucking old was she!” I scream like my lungs don’t need air to function. I thought the knot in my stomach centered around Roxanne. I had no fucking clue my focus should have been on Fien.
It should have always been on Fien.
If I had protected her mother as I’m endeavoring to protect Roxanne, I wouldn’t be here, fiddling my thumbs while maniacs run my town to the ground.
Perhaps I am as bad as my father.
Maybe this is my penance for the wrongs I’ve done.
My self-reflection is held back for another time when Smith discloses, “The corpse was mummified. She had been in the wall for a while.”
His tone is both sorrowed and angry, but it does little to ease my agitation. “That wasn’t what I asked. You know you can alter the age of a corpse. You’re aware you can manipulate it to fool forensic scientists. She could be Fien. She could be my daughter.”
The pain clawing my chest gets a moment of reprieve when Rocco says, “She isn’t Fien, Dimi.” He swivels in his seat to face me before handing me a printout of the report Ellie just forwarded. The Tank isn’t just a muscle car. She’s a command station on wheels. “Not only do the dates on the newspaper clippings surrounding the little girl’s corpse disclose this, so does your gut. You’d know if Fien was gone, D, because you live for her. You’ve not done a single thing the past two years that wouldn’t benefit her in some way.” His grin gets smug along with his comment. “Except Roxie, but she doesn’t count because she improved your chances of getting your daughter back instead of reducing it.”
Before I