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“It’s too late to change it now,”shesaid, her voice so very weak. “What’s done is done. It’s not like you didn’t fully grasp my intentions.”
“I didn’t think ...,” Bart O’Sullivan stammered. “My God, what have we done?”
Finley inched closer still. Her father shifted away from where he’d been standing just far enough for Finley to see something—no,someone—beyond the bars.
The reality was far harder to accept—even when she saw it with her own eyes—than the idea that had formed in her head.
A blast of outrage throttled through Finley, and before she could stop herself, she’d stepped fully into the room. “What the hell is going on down here?”
The two wheeled around to face her.
Her father’s face froze in a mask of horror. Her neighbor simply looked pale and weak, desperate. Her long gray hair hung around her shoulders in thick strings. All the things that Finley felt certain sheshould have noticed before suddenly drilled into her brain. The color of her eyes ... the tilt of her nose and shape of her jaw.
Louise Cagle.
“Finley, you shouldn’t be here.”
This from her father. Finley snapped to attention, almost laughed. “I shouldn’t be here? What areyoudoing here?” She pushed past him. Stared at the prisoner.
The person ... male. Blond hair. Blue eyes. He stood in the middle of the cell and stared at her without fear or any other discernible emotion.
Jesus Christ ... it really was him ...Ian Johnson.
Finley moved closer to the bars that held him prisoner. How in the hell had this woman ... her damned neighbor, managed this?
“You explain it,” Cagle said. “I need to sit down.”
Still assimilating what to say next, Finley glanced back at the woman. She made her way to a bench that lined the wall opposite the cell. Above the bench were doors to what appeared to be built-in cabinets.
Finley pointed a finger at her. “You ... you should still be in the hospital. They called me. You have to go back.”
This, of course, seemed utterly irrelevant considering the situation she’d walked into, but the words had burst out of Finley all the same.
Louise Cagle just turned her head, hair falling over her face like a veil to shield her from view.
Finley wanted to yell at someone. She wanted to demand answers. Her emotions wouldn’t land in one place. She waffled from furious to worried to ... she didn’t know what. She stared at the prisoner again, assessed his overall condition. Confusion tugged at her brow. He wasn’t as thin as she would have expected, and his skin wasn’t nearly as pale as it should have been if he’d been held prisoner all these years. He wore a reasonably new-looking flannel shirt and jeans. Name-brand sneakers.
Wait ... wait. This wasn’t right. She turned to her father, and the fury kicked in again. “Talk. Now,” she ordered.
He scrubbed a hand over his face. “First, you should know”—he gestured to her neighbor—“this is not who you think she is.”
Finley waited, her eyes shooting daggers at him. She knew what he was going to say, but she wanted to hear the words from his mouth. Wanted him to have to admit whatever the hell it was he knew and however the hell he was involved.
“This is Louise Cagle.”
“I figured that part out,” she snapped. Her head swiveled toward the woman on the bench. “It would’ve helped if I’d known—I don’t know, say, four days ago.”
Again, her words seemed vastly unimportant, all things considered, and yet she’d said them. This was so far over the top she wasn’t sure there was any seeing past it ... no excusing it ... and damned sure no making it right.
A new wave of fury swept through Finley, shifting her attention back to her father. “I have lived across the street from this woman for nearly two years. You have been to my house hundreds of times. You couldn’t tell me this?”
“He didn’t know.” This from Cagle.
Finley stared at her. Cagle’s sad face from all those news interviews after her daughter’s murder transposed itself over this older woman’s. It was her ... no question.
Lucy’s mother.
Finley’s attention pivoted back to her father. “But you saw her at least once in her yard when you came to visit me,” she argued, addressing her father.
