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“Oh, honey. That’s terrible.” Kylie put her glass carefully down on the side table, so she could give all of her attention to Sierra.
Sierra clenched her hands together tightly as she continued, “My baby daughter was also killed in that accident.”
Kylie’s face blanched. “Holy shit, Sierra.”
Sierra held up her hand to stop Kylie saying any more. She needed to get this out now, or she might run out of courage. She kept talking, letting the words tumble out in a torrent, while Kylie stared at her with a look caught between horror and heartbreak. Sierra told her how she and Jake couldn’t survive. How Jake blamed her for the accident. How she blamed herself for the accident. And that’s why she’d moved to the island. Then she told her about Reed. About meeting him on the ferry. About staying the night with him. And about his revelation this morning.
When her words finally ran out, Kylie gathered her up in her arms and she wept into her friend’s shoulder. Later, once her torrent of tears had run dry, Kylie persuaded her to stay the night. Sierra gratefully accepted. There was no way she wanted to go home to her cold, empty house tonight. Not with her heart so raw and exposed. And not with Reed’s words of warning still ringing in her ears.
After a not-so-quick phone call to Debbie to ask her to feed her cats—for the second night in a row—Sierra lay down on the couch under a soft blanket and stared out the front window of Kylie’s house at the stars appearing in the sky. Debbie had been shocked when Sierra told her about the chickens, and she was still terribly worried about Sierra, wanting to know who would do such a terrible thing. Debbie informed her that Sam had wanted to bury her girls for her, so she wouldn’t have to see their poor little dead bodies. But Sierra told her that Reed would send someone out just as soon as they could, because after her crash, it was now considered a crime scene. It took a lot of persuasion and calm discussion to finally get Debbie off the phone. But it left Sierra with a warm feeling in the pit of her stomach. Her neighbors cared deeply for her, and she was lucky to have them. There was no way Sierra was ever going to believe Reed’s theory that everyone around her was a suspect as her stalker. At least, not where Sam was concerned. He was a good man. She knew it right down to her bones.
Her crying fit with Kylie had left her feeling drained and empty. But also strangely peaceful. As if a tsunami had washed through her. That was twice now in two days she’d cried her heart out.
Now it was the middle of the night, and as Sierra lay on the couch her mind was clear for the first time that day. Unable to sleep, she started to go over the past few days, trying to make sense of all that’d happened. The break-in. Her chickens. Her car, which’d been tampered with. Reed had confirmed her suspicions. Who would want to hurt her? Was it her stalker?
She thought about running into Blake last night at the supermarket, and the spooky feeling he left her with. Could it be Blake? No, he couldn’t be her stalker, those letters had started twelve years ago, when she’d published the exposé. She hadn’t even known him then. But could he have done the other things? Killed her chickens and sabotaged her car in a fit of spite? A spurned lover? He had admitted half the reason he’d accepted the job in KI was because of her. Blake was hot-tempered and impetuous, but surely he wasn’t capable of murder. Was he?
Her thoughts flittered to Evan, and running into him as she careened out of the shop. He’d seemed genuinely worried about her. He’d even spilled his groceries, he was in that much of a hurry to give her a lift in his car. But then Reed had appeared, and she’d been so relieved to see him. A vague memory tugged at the corners of her mind. Of bending down and retrieving some of Evan’s fallen items, of him yelling at her to leave them alone. What had she picked up again?
Sierra sat up in a hurry, her hand flying up to cover her mouth.
Shit.
It was all coming back to her now. At the time, she hadn’t thought much about it, with Reed calling her name and Evan yelling at her.
The things she’d picked up and handed back to Evan. One was a packet of caramel candies. The other was a light blue cap. Like a baseball cap. But it was small, way too small to fit on Evan’s head. It was meant for a child.
A child’s hat.
And a packet of caramels.
The same brand they’d found at the alleged abduction site.
A shiver ran all the way through Sierra’s body.
Was it a link?
Normal people were allowed to buy candies and hats. Right?
The thing was, Evan didn’t have any kids.
Were they for a friend’s kid?
And then there was the information she’d gleaned from the detective the other day, the small detail not many people knew about. The small detail that’d been discounted because there wasn’t enough evidence to link it to anything. The small detail she’d wanted to tell Reed last night, but hadn’t gotten around to it. That a caramel wrapper had been found near where the first girl had been taken in the Adelaide case. Was it relevant to Evan? Could they match it to him somehow?
She knew Evan was unmarried, with no children, through their talks at the news agency. Evan liked to talk, a lot. Sierra used to think he was probably lonely. The very first time she’d gone into his shop, just after he took it over eighteen months ago, he’d struck up a conversation with her, had seemed genuinely interested. And he’d seemed harmless enough. He was always fascinated in her and what she had to say. The least she could do was return the favor. She often quietly thought to herself he might even be gay. With his neat and tidy appearance, his clothes always clean and squared away.
But now that she was looking at him in a different light, she began to wonder if he was that attentive to all his customers. Or was it just her? She shuddered.
Her immediate thought was perhaps she should call Reed and let him know. Then she remembered who he was, what he’d done and she discarded that idea. If she was going to call anyone, then it would have to be the Sarge.
Surely this was crazy? She couldn’t go tattling on someone to the cops just because of a crazy hunch. Could she? Then she’d become just like every other scared and near-hysterical member of the island community. Ready to rat out a friend at the slightest provocation. There was no way Evan had anything to do with the abduction of a child, she was sure of it.
Just as sure that Tom Hubbard hadn’t liked kiddie porn? She should leave this be. The police had a man in custody already. They knew what they were doing. Most likely they had the right guy, and it was only a matter of time before the truth came out. Before Tom confessed to abducting that little girl.
But then why were her guts churning like she’d swallowed a colony of ants? Sierra couldn’t sit anymore, her legs were trembling, so she wrapped the blanket around her shoulders and got up and walked over to the window to stare out at the street. It just didn’t feel right. How could Tom have lived for so long in the island community without raising any red flags? If he was the pedophile responsible for taking Jessica, then this would be his first offense, because there was no way he could’ve gotten away with something like this before. Not in this close-knit island community.
But Evan, on the other hand. Well, he’d only moved to the island less than two years ago. No one really knew anything about his past. Where he came from, what he did before he bought the newsstand. The more she thought about it, the more questions she had about Evan.
