and at other times, behaving like they’d never existed at all. The principal told Cade he’d seen Bradley around from time to time, but never with Regina.
The Kents lived on a twenty-acre ranch surrounded by sprawling hills as far as the eye could see. White fencing that appeared to be made of some type of heavy-duty plastic lined the property on all sides. A team of horses stood like statues in the pasture, not moving, but gazing in our direction, curious about who we were and what we were doing there.
The multi-level house sat a few acres behind a long, paved driveway. It was a cabin, but not like any cabin I’d ever seen before. The logs were knotty and dark, and bigger than any I’d ever seen before.
We parked at the end of the drive, walked up to the door, and knocked. All was quiet. Two oversized whiskey barrels were positioned on both sides of the door. Potted plants had been inside of them at one time, but now, only a few shriveled up stems remained. There were cobwebs on everything: the windows, the corners of the door, and even between the wood railings on the wraparound porch.
“There’s no one here,” I said. “I thought Regina never left the house?”
Cade raised his shoulders. “I thought so too.”
“Except for the horses, it doesn’t look like anyone has lived here for a while.”
Cade walked around the house, looking for a possible point of entry, but everything had been sealed up tight.
“That’s a shame,” I said.
“So’s this,” Cade said.
A rock whizzed by my head, creating a grapefruit-sized hole when it crashed through the front window.
Cade grinned.
“Would you look at that? Someone has vandalized this house. We’d better go inside and investigate.”
To make a small hole even bigger, Cade used a stick to break up the hole in the window until it was big enough for him to step through. Then he unlocked and opened the front door.
I’d never been around a member of law enforcement who’d acted like Cade before, so for a minute, I just stood there.
“Was you plannin’ on just standin’ there, or you gonna come in sometime?” Cade patted me on my shoulder. “It’s going to be okay. No one’s here.”
And because no one else lived next to them, there was a good chance we wouldn’t see any visitors anytime soon.
“I’ll take the main level, and you check upstairs,” he said.
The area upstairs was nothing but a couple of bedrooms, a bonus room used as another living room, and a bathroom. The hallway was lined with various photos of wildlife that looked like they’d been taken in the area. In one photo, the Kent girls were sitting on two of the horses. In another, the girls and their parents stood outside a small house surrounded on all sides by masses of mature pine trees. The girls looked happy.
I entered the first bedroom. It was a child’s room decorated in pink and grey and filled with everything but the child. It looked like it had been preserved just the way it had been left the last day she was alive. A shirt and a pair of pants were on the floor, indicating she had changed. A bathroom towel hung behind the door. I didn’t want to touch anything for fear of altering the time-capsule state.
I found the same type of thing in the next room. A dollhouse sat in the corner. Inside, a family of dolls was positioned at the table. Wooden pieces of food were set in front of the man and the woman. The room didn’t seem as mature as the other one. I looked in the closet. The clothes on the hangers were a size-four toddler. Four. The same age Savannah was when she was taken.
I went back into the other room, putting my sweater over my hands so I wouldn’t leave any prints behind. I opened the door to the closet. I pulled out a dress. It was a size six. I looked at some others. There were a few sevens, but the majority of the closet contained size six. The same age as Olivia.
I pressed one of the dresses against my chest and thought about what a coincidence it was that the Kent girls were the same ages when they were alive as Olivia and Savannah when they were abducted. I breathed deeply, but it felt like the air I ingested wasn’t circulating right. I sprinted to the stairwell and looked down.
“Cade?”
He was in the