Page 8 of The Vanished

“I think I’ve seen enough,” Quinn told Rhys. “Dr. Harrison, if you would get the ring the woman was found wearing?”

“The ring is still on her finger.”

“Did anyone examine it?” Rhys asked.

“It’s covered in slime.”

Quinn helped herself to a pair of latex gloves from a box on the counter and pushed aside the vinyl of the body bag to reveal the woman’s left hand. Bog bodies didn’t swell like the remains of drowning victims, so she had no difficulty sliding the ring off the finger. Quinn noted that the woman’s nails were also stained dark brown, which wasn’t unexpected since the nailbed was porous. She checked the other hand. None of the nails were broken, so, if the deceased had been murdered, she didn’t appear to have fought for her life. Quinn pulled off her left glove and used it to wrap the ring before putting it in her bag. She would clean it once she got home. She pulled off the other glove and tossed it in the rubbish bin.

Dr. Harrison zipped up the bag and led them to the reception area, where he handed Rhys several forms to fill out.

“Shall we ring Dinah Wilson and ask if we can come round?” Rhys asked once they finally stepped outside.

“Let’s leave it for now,” Quinn said, and climbed into the car. “I’d like to hear what Colin has to say first. There’s no sense upsetting an elderly woman if this has nothing to do with her.”

“Point taken,” Rhys agreed, and got behind the wheel. “Let’s go home.”

FIVE

Quinn got back just as the kids came home from school, so closeting herself with the ring was out of the question. The children wanted to know where she’d been and talked over each other as they told her about their own days and argued about what they wanted for dinner. Rufus barked excitedly, as he always did when the children got home, and Gabe wasn’t able to put in a word edgewise, so he took the dog for a walk instead.

“Tell me,” Gabe invited her once he had come back, the children had gone upstairs to do their homework, and he and Quinn were left alone in the kitchen. He’d made tea, and they settled companionably at the kitchen table with their mugs.

“It was strange,” Quinn admitted. “I’ve unearthed countless remains over the years, but they had all been skeletonized, and I felt no connection to them until I saw them in my visions and learned something about their lives. This was different.” She paused as she recalled what she had experienced at the mortuary and tried to put it into words. “I got to see this woman’s face. Up close. And it stayed with me all the way home. She was so young, and lovely. And my heart broke for her,” she said, her voice quavering.

There had been a time when any archaeological discovery had felt like a triumph—a small victory against the relentless march of time and an opportunity to learn, to teach, and to add a paragraph to the ongoing story of mankind. But she had been young then, and naïve. Now she was a mother, and every missing child on the news, every story of neglect or cruelty, struck her to the core.

When she had looked at the young woman in the mortuary, she hadn’t only mourned the life that had been lost and all the experiences that would never come to pass. She had thought of the parents who might have spent years searching for their daughter, and of the man who had slipped a ring onto her finger. This woman was not merely a fascinating find; she had been loved, had lived a life, albeit a short one, and must have left behind a terrible void. And Quinn was the only one who might be able to give her identity back to her.

“Was Dr. Harrison willing to speculate on the cause of death?” Gabe asked.

“Not without performing a postmortem. But he did not discover any wounds that might have been fatal.”

“There are other ways a person could be murdered. Or maybe she killed herself,” Gabe offered.

“Maybe, but I have never heard of anyone throwing themselves down a well. The house overlooks the Irish Sea. Surely if she’d wanted to drown herself, she could have walked into the sea.” Which would have given her the option to change her mind, Quinn thought. The woman would not have been able to climb out of the well. But perhaps that had been the point, whether it had been suicide or murder.

“No sense speculating until we know how she died.”

Quinn nodded. “We’ll have to wait until Colin examines the remains.”

“You will be able to see how she died,” Gabe reminded her gently.

“Yes, but I still need the scientific data to back up my findings. Viewers will be expecting that, now more than ever.”

“Because you will need to win their trust back,” Gabe finished for her.

“Yes. If I tell them the woman’s story, there will be those who will say that I made it all up. I must offer them irrefutable proof.”

“And you will. Colin will provide you with the forensic evidence needed to convince even the most implacable naysayers.”

“That’s what I’m hoping for. I don’t have the emotional bandwidth to deal with any more vicious attacks on my character. But I know it will never be smooth sailing, no matter how much evidence I provide.”

“You know better than most what people are like. There will always be those who refuse to accept proof and will choose to believe they’re getting duped. It comes with the territory.”

“I know,” Quinn said. “I must have been mad to agree to this.”

Gabe smiled at her, and his gaze was warm with affection but also alight with wonder. “Would you like to spend some time with the ring?”