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“Takes one to know one, darlin’.” My lips pulled into a hard smile and gestured with my chin to her pin board.
“I am not crazy.” She got up into my face.
“Yeah?” My hand waved over toward her board.
The lid of her right eye twitched.
My laugh was nothing more than a chuckle as I walked up and plucked a photo out of the collage.
“Get out!”
I ignored the edge of hysteria. “I will. When you tell me the truth. About the knife. About what she did to me.” The solid lump of ice that weighed down my abdomen chose that second to radiate its menace.
“I don’t know anything.”
“Says the girl who likes stories.” With an easy casualness, I flicked the card. “Make one up for me.”
“What?” She shook her head.
“Come on, you’re so good at making them up—just like this fake postcard.” I was deliberately throwing her off-balance; it was common to do it during interrogation.
“They’re not fake.”
I cocked a brow. “Thisis not a professional photograph.” Because I could see she didn’t believe me, I stepped closer, pointing at the image. “There are several problems with the quality. I think whoever sent this made it look like a company made it, duplicated that logo and name on the back. This is probably some tree on the side of the road or somebody’s backyard. That field could be anywhere, though I’ve no clue why anyone would bother doing this.” I dropped the card onto the coffee table.
Zara swooped to pick it up, brow furrowing as she stared at it. She made a noise that sounded like a hiss, as if all the air was being let out of a tire, color draining from her previously flushed cheeks.
“Get out.” She was back on edge—something about that card.
“If I go now, I’m coming back. Youaregoing to help me.”
“Get. Out.”
It wasn’t exactly ayes.
But it wasn’t ano.
CHAPTER11
Zara
I waiteduntil the perfume of Valor Lacroix had left the air—the sound of his receding footsteps long gone before the tightness eased in my chest. It was another five minutes before I could look down at the card again.
Dammit. Why hadn’t I seen it?
All it took was Val’s words to change my perception.
That tree in the background had four limbs, but what caught my attention was that one was snapped off low. Real or imagined, but I could’ve sworn the tree looked like the one I used to swing on over the creek. Maybe bigger, a little more grown. But familiar. Now that I was looking at it, it was so familiar.
A breadcrumb.
All this time I’d had breadcrumbs. I’d been so focused on running I’d never thought of chasing.
Until today.
Desperation or bravado. Now that I had the Cucitrice, I didn’t know.
I laughed, the sound a little too high. I didn’t know a lot of things, like how I’d just got off on being molested in my bedroom.
