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It was a very small pile.
Was this all that was left of Lana?
The strength she’d felt all morning vanished and she crumbled, sinking to her knees as she heaved, sobbing.
She leaned forward on the box, her tears sliding off her cheeks, hitting the cardboard.
Zoe’s head hung between her arms and when she opened her eyes, she realized the box wasn’t empty. One small book sat at the bottom and she wondered how she’d missed it, and why Lana had it, because she’d never been a follower of Jesus—at least as far as Zoe had known.
Zoe inhaled a shuddering breath as she picked up the small Bible, dusting the navy-blue cover.
How odd that she hadn’t seen this when she would’ve sworn she’d emptied the box.
She flicked through it, noting only one passage had been underlined.
Romans 8:37
CHAPTER14
MITCH
Mitch pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut as his temple throbbed.
He opened his desk drawer and found a bottle of ibuprofen. He popped a couple pills and swallowed, followed by a mouthful of water.
He looked at the reports on his desk but there was something he had to do first. “Tom, let’s go for a drive,” Mitch said as he passed the officer’s desk.
Tom slid into the passenger seat as Mitch climbed into his car, turned the key in the ignition, and lowered his foot on the accelerator. He drove to Zoe’s property and turned down the road he’d seen the black truck coming up.
“What are we looking for?” Tom asked.
“A road that leads to Graham Laube’s shed. There must be something better than the path I drove last night.”
He glanced at Tom, who was chewing on his cheek, looking thoughtful, but didn’t comment.
“There it is!” Tom said as Mitch saw it with his own eyes. He blinked, almost not believing what he was seeing. The dirt road they were on veered to the left and he’d missed that in the dark. Graham Laube’s shed stood in the distance, another dirt road crossing perpendicular to the road Mitch was driving. Why hadn’t he noticed it last night in the dark? He’d lived here all his life and had no idea a road dividing these properties had been added. This communal road didn’t show on the county map, making him even more certain the person he’d seen last night was the man they were looking for.
Mitch radioed the station. “Did the license plate trace come in?”
“I just picked up the phone to call you,” an officer said. “Mitch, it belongs to a Brandon Ross.”
Mitch stilled and pulled the car to a stop. That was the name Zoe had given him—Lana’s boss’s son.
Mitch typed the name into Facebook. There were multiple men named Brandon Ross, but none of the photographs matched the person he’d seen last night.
He needed to talk to Zoe.
“Thanks. Can you please get me contact details for Brandon Ross?” he asked.
“Sure, but one more thing. The manufacturer called about the surgical table. There’s no way to trace who bought it or when it was bought. Apparently you can order them from a catalogue but they don’t have serial numbers. So, that’s a dead end, unfortunately.”
Mitch chewed on his cheek and refrained from swearing.
“Thanks for letting me know,” Mitch said. That might be a dead end, but he still had one lead. He turned his car around, heading for Zoe’s house.
CHAPTER15
ZOE
