The possum skull is a dull, yellowish-white color, sharp canines extending down its jaw, gaping holes where its eyes used to be. From a distance, it looked like it’d been wrapped in wallpaper, a tiny, repeating, unrecognizable pattern stretched and fitted across every inch of it. Up close, the painted pattern becomes clear.Dandelions.I couldn’t help the smile fromtugging at my lips—the warmth from tugging at my heart—when I’d first realized it. Can’t help it now, either, as I shift my attention from the little skull to the potential locations Chase is holed up in, the addresses that are crossed off the list because the team has already excluded them some way or another.
I sit in the conference room alone, holding down the fort while the others take coffee and cigarette breaks. Since Logan’s death, Alex, Daniel, Lucy, and I—and sometimes Captain Barrett and Micah—have turned this space into our primary workstations. The whiteboard is still up, pictures, threads, and scribbles of different handwriting scrawled across it when one of us had an idea or a thought. Manilla folders lay strewn across the long tables, some closed and some open with their insides spread out. One of the open folders displays pictures of Grayson’s severed body parts and close ups of the ligature marks and teeth punctures from the animal that attacked him.
Perhaps that folder should be closed. It’s sad that we’re all so desensitized to the violence of his death that it doesn’t seem to bother us anymore; though Lucy did wince when she walked by it on her way to her break, so that’s a good thing.
Glancing over at the open folder, I think back to what Alex had said outside Grayson’s widow’s house after we interviewed her.
“Do you think he deserved it?”
At the time, we didn’t know how deep his involvement in the trafficking ring went. Didn’t know he kidnapped women and children, shuffling them into the pits of hell to be drugged, raped, and murdered.
He was just a family man.No, not just a family man,I remind myself. Even without knowing his involvement in the ring, we’d discovered that night he was abusing his wife and children. Maybe planning to kill them. And that cougar…
“Maybe that cougar saved her life.”
The sound of heavy, urgent footsteps begins at the end of the hall outside the conference room. I tear myself from my thoughts after a fleeting acknowledgment thatyeah, Grayson Tyler did deserve it.
The photos of Lily Tyler shuffling her children onto the bus are spread out on another table. I’ve been drawn to them ever since I first saw them. There’s been a distant thread of instinct worming its way into my brain, but I’ve failed to find its rightful path.
Regardless, Grayson deserved to die, and that cougar saved Lily Tyler’s life.
Alex storms through the door in my direction, a single piece of paper pinched between his fingers. “You’re not going to believe this.”
Whatever it is, it’s a welcome distraction. I can’t bring myself to feel regret about this new revelation of thinking that someone deserved to die—it’s Chloe being gone that I need a distraction from. She’s been gone for six hours. And the only thing that brings me relief is the fact that I can track where she goes. Though I haven’t done that yet, because I’m trying to give her a bit of privacy.
Maybe I shouldn’t be doing it at all anymore, or maybe I should at least tell her, but I can’t bring myself to feel regret over that, either. Especially not with Max out on bail and Chase still in the wind.
Alex slaps the piece of paper onto the desk in front of me, and I recognize it as a DNA report. The report is a series of black blotches indicating there’s an overlap of DNA profiles—or not. This one appears to be the latter.
“Max’s DNA,” he says, out of breath, “it’s not a match.”
My vision swims as I stare down at the columns of dark little tick marks. Logically, I know what he’s saying. I’ve been working with Alex long enough to know what his voice sounds like when he’s uncovered something big. To know the exact movement of his facial features when he finds a break in a case: the simultaneous pinch and rise of his brows, the pull of his lips in a satisfied smile. But if Max’s DNA isn’t a match to the DNA foundat the crime scenes, that means something bigger is at play. Something my heart and mind doesn’t feel ready to accept.
So even though I know what he’s insinuating, I still ask, “To what?”
He stabs a finger at the paper and speaks slowly to make sure I grasp what he’s saying. “Max’s DNA is not a match to the crime scenes. Someone planted it there, Mills.”
I try to swallow, but the lump in my throat is growing so large it feels impossible to pass. It feels like I might lose all air if I can’t figure out a way to get it down. “Mills?” Alex’s voice echoes in the room around me, my body swirling. I can distantly feel the movement of my fingers spreading on the table, but all I can actually feel is Chloe’s body against the tree in the woods. The way her hair feels wrapped around my fingers. And all I can hear is Chloe’s voice as she moves around that art room and tends to the children and their paintings.
All I can see are her honey eyes and her full lips spread into a smile that looks sweet as pie and…venomous.
Max’s DNA match ruled Chloe out as a suspect. With it being staged…that knowledge heats my blood to scalding and revives a slew of suspicions,and then some.
At the same time, Lily’s photos filter through my mind again. Something about them begging me to piece it together. Something about the suspicions I had all that time ago.
Alex’s hand squeezes my shoulder, and the touch instantly steadies me.
“Who planted it?” I ask. My voice doesn’t sound like my own. Alex studies me, probably wondering where I went for that hot second.
“I don’t know. Lucy’s the one who discovered it wasn’t a match. She’s been over at the lab hounding the tech to re-run it all day.”
“She finally got her break,” I mutter absently, staring at the report.
“What?” Alex’s gaze shifts between me and the report under my fingertips. He’s trying to decode something I’m not saying when I’m really just trying to prolong the period until I need to truly accept this.
Shaking my head, I clear my throat, attempting to force myself to focus. I stand from the desk and move to the manilla folders, eyes moving over the crime scene photos of Richard, Grayson, and Logan. My gaze snags on the photo of Lily Tyler again, her hands pressed to the backs of her children, urging them onto the bus. The bag hanging from her shoulder, her long-sleeved shirt almost covering her entire hands, as well. Her hair is down around her shoulders and back, but when I squint and lift the picture closer to my face for inspection, I can see it—the faint outline of bruising on her neck, the splotch of purple spreading across her cheekbone.
And then it hits me so fucking hard, I almost lose my balance.
