Pale blonde. Blue eyes. Late twenties. Bookkeeper. Five foot six. Left ankle/lower-leg floral tattoo. Right shoulder anchor-and-compass tattoo.
The mugshot loaded below the identifiers.
I’d looked at that face for days. I’d compared it to the woman in my truck, the woman on the motel bed, the woman who’d laughed in the dark like she knew exactly which nerve to touch.
The photo still matched.
Mostly.
It was the same pale hair. Same eyes. Same shape of mouth. Same face in all the places paperwork cared about.
The woman in the photo didn’t carry herself like the woman who’d tried to run through underbrush and then dared me to take off the cuffs.
The woman in the photo looked scared.
The woman I’d brought to Pine Shadow had looked scared too, once or twice, but she’d turned it into something sharp before I could reach it.
I scrolled lower.
The known-associates section sat under an old address and a phone number that had been disconnected.
Jade Kemp — sister.
The packet gave me no photo, no warning, and no note that the two women shared a face. It gave me no useful identifiers except a line that said sister and a last known city outside the county.
I stopped scrolling on the name.
Jade.
I went back to the tattoo section. Left leg. Right shoulder. Nothing behind the right ear. The intake notes didn’t mention a tiny black ink drop. The body identifiers didn’t mention any mark there.
I could still feel it under my thumb.
A drop. Black ink. Hidden by pale hair until her head turned on my pillow.
Occupational hazard, she’d said.
Crystal Kemp was a bookkeeper.
Jade Kemp was a sister with no photo.
It wasn’t enough, and it wasn’t proof yet.
But it was enough to change where I looked next.
Rudy pulled in fifteen minutes later in an old white recovery rig with a winch on the front, a dent in the passenger door, and a pine-tree air freshener swinging from the mirror. He was built narrow and wiry, with a sun-lined face, a red ball cap, and the calm expression of a man who had seen bad ideas in every weather pattern Idaho offered.
He lowered the passenger window. “You look like you lost a fight with a motel.”
“I lost a truck.”
“That’s what Annette said.” He leaned over and shoved the door open. “She also said I wasn’t supposed to ask about the woman.”
“Annette is wise.”
“Annette scares me. Get in.”
I got in.
