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“Just checking in. I need to ask you for something but I can’t tell you why—not yet, at least. Can you please go into your backyard, stand about center of the house, and take a photo of the view?”
A pause followed. “Sure,” she eventually said. “Do you want me to do it now?”
“Please,” Mitch said, standing and walking toward the whiteboard. He wrote the names of potential suspects and the victims and then put Zoe and Graham’s properties in the middle.
He heard Zoe moving through the house and the latch of a door.
How was everyone connected?
The names on the whiteboard shifted in his mind, like a mind game of musical chairs.
When his phone vibrated against his ear, he’d almost forgotten he was on the phone.
He looked at the photo then raced back to his computer, holding his photo up to the computer screen.
There was no doubting it. That view matched Zoe’s perfectly—so perfectly Mitch was sure Thomas had been standing almost where Zoe was.
What were you doing, Thomas?
CHAPTER18
ZOE
She stood for a moment, taking in the view. It was the entire reason she’d purchased this house: the view was like a scene from a National Geographic movie.
She rubbed her arms, suddenly aware of the change in temperature. As soon as the sun fell, Redwater got cold, and she was still getting used to it.
She turned to go inside, but decided against it. She’d rather be cold and watch the sunset. She wrapped her arms around her waist as she leaned against the house. She pushed away all her worries and just concentrated on the sun, her eyes following it as it faded into the horizon.
She sank down on the grass, pulling her knees to her chest.
Zoe thought of the Bible she’d found amongst Lana’s things, and the single passage that had been highlighted. Out of the entire Bible, just one verse:
Romans 8:37 – Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us.
Zoe knew the verses that preceded and followed it. She’d grown up in the church and had studied the Bible for many years. She knew what the verse meant. In short:I am a victim of suffering, but through Christ, suffering will be conquered.
She squeezed her eyes shut. She felt the verse in her bones. She’d been a victim for so long, but she’d turned away from Christ instead of toward him. She’d spent the last years drowning in grief, desperately trying to keep her head high to get enough oxygen to make it through another day.
It was only the last few days that she’d even remotely felt like an overcomer and had begun taking back control of her life.
She opened her eyes, looking to the night sky and the blanket of stars above her.
She wondered if Lana was up there, looking down at her. If she was, that meant heaven existed, and then God surely existed too. She wanted to believe her family was in heaven and she’d see them again one day.
The longer she looked at the stars, the more she refused to believe they might never be reunited.
Why had Lana highlighted that passage? What had been going on in her life that led her to those words?
At first Zoe thought the Bible had somehow ended up in the box by accident—that it wasn’t Lana’s Bible.
But several doodles on the opening pages suggested otherwise, because Lana had always doodled on everything. She’d never been on the phone without doodling on a pad of paper. And all of her nursing assignments were always covered in doodles.
The night had fully settled in, but Zoe still didn’t move. She couldn’t draw her eyes away from the stars.
Eventually she must’ve fallen asleep, because the next thing she knew Mitch was in front of her.
“Zoe! Zoe!” he repeated her name, frantic.
