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It didn’t look like the house had been burgled. May went straight to the corner of the living room she used as a study, feeling suddenly breathless with apprehension.
Her laptop was still there. It hadn’t been stolen. But it was open on the table. She’d left it packed away.
Hesitantly, May approached. She pressed a key and the screen lit up.
She frowned incredulously. There was a video icon in the middle of the screen that hadn’t been there before. Goosebumps prickled her spine as she stared down at it. What was this? What was going on?
Feeling sick with nerves, she pressed Play.
And gasped.
She found herself watching an old, grainy recording. There was her parents’ house. It had been taken from the street outside.
May bit her lip.
There were voices coming from inside the house. An argument. She recognized her own voice, raised in anger.
“No!” May sank down onto the chair. Her legs couldn’t hold her another moment. This was awful.
It was a recording of the last argument she’d had with Lauren. That terrible fight, after which her eighteen-year-old sister had stormed out of the house, never to be seen again.
There Lauren was. Heading out the front door, looking angry and upset. She clearly hadn’t seen whoever was filming. They had been hidden away.
And there was May, marching out after her, yelling a few more insults that she’d forgotten to add when they were inside.
Someone had been watching. Filming. While this happened.
May felt horror fill her at this realization.
And then the screen went blank and a message popped up.
“I’m watching you. I always have been, and I still am. I know what you’re trying to do. Back off now. Stop asking questions. This is your last warning. Don’t make me act on it.”
May buried her head in her hands. Her heart was hammering and she now felt sick with dread.
Kerry had been right when she’d told May that if she went looking for answers, she might run up against people who wanted this secret kept.
Someone had found out she was looking back into Lauren’s disappearance. Someone knew more than they should. And that someone was now trying to stop her, using anonymous threats that filled her with dread.
Kerry had warned her that this might happen, and May knew too well that in this small and idyllic community, evil could lurk undiscovered for many years.
May couldn’t bear to watch that video again. Couldn’t bear to think of this person coming into her private space, setting it up, taunting her with this terrible knowledge, trying to scare her into giving up on the quest for the truth.
She slammed the laptop shut, feeling as if she were living in a nightmare.
But through the trauma and confusion she was feeling, she realized that she had dug down to an unexpected core of steel.
She was not going to let this go. This diabolical threat would not prevent her from learning what had happened. She was going to chase this person down with everything she had.
May raised her tear-stained face.
“You just showed me you exist,” she whispered. “And now, I will find you!”
