“Skylar?” he nervously licked his lips. “Did she, like, run away or something?” I searched his expression, looking for signs that he was faking his question, trying to act innocent, but he looked genuine.
“Yes.” Not sure what she might have told them, I decided to keep it simple. “She took off a few days ago. No one has seen her since.”
Riley glanced at Noah, then back at me. “She was working up at the ranch, but I don’t think she showed up today. Least she wasn’t there when I left this morning.”
She’d been working at the ranch? I felt like I’d been punched in the guts with steel gloves.
“When did you last see her?” I said.
Riley was hesitating, like he knew something but was scared to say it.
“It’s really important we find her,” I said.
“Yesterday after work.”
“Do you know where she was going?”
“No, but I think she was sleeping in her car. I told her she could swim at the creek on our place but I don’t know if she went there.”
The creek. Memories flashed—running, falling to the ground, Brian’s body on top of me. Focus on Skylar.
“Did you tell anyone else she was going there?” I held his gaze.
“No.” But he’d looked away. He was lying, I was sure of it.
“And you have no idea where she might be now?” I said, still staring hard at Riley, wondering if he knew what kind of man his father really was.
“No, I told you,” Riley said, but he didn’t sound annoyed, more worried, like maybe he was just figuring out he might’ve been the last person to see Skylar.
A car pulled up in front of the garage.
“I’ve got to help these customers,” Riley said.
“If you think of anything else, please give us a call.” I scrawled my number quickly across the back of a pad of invoices lying on the bench.
“Hope you find her soon,” Riley said as he ran out.
*
As we were walking back to the motel, I said, “We have to tell the police Skylar was working at the ranch—and what the men did to us.”
“They’re going to have questions.”
“We just have to tell them enough so they know Brian and Gavin are dangerous,” I said. I wasn’t sure how I was going to be able to speak about what had happened to us, but I had to somehow find the strength.
“I don’t trust Riley,” Dallas said.
“You think he could be involved?”
“We know his dad’s fucked up, and he was nervous. Something’s weird.”
Could we have it all wrong? Could it be Noah and Riley who did something to Skylar? But why would Riley admit he’d seen her?
“That’s why I want to talk to the police,” I said. “They’ll be able to figure out if he’s lying.”
“There’s a risk they could start looking into our past.”
“They have no reason to at this point, no way of knowing about Dad.” I still had nightmares sometimes, could hear him calling me “Peanut.” I would stay awake for hours, replaying that last night, wondering what would have happened if I’d just injured him, where we’d all be now. And I often worried about what Skylar would think if she ever found out. I told myself that I’d had no choice, but I was haunted by the idea that everything that had happened in Cash Creek was a punishment somehow, that our lives had been broken that day.
“We need to make sure we have our stories straight,” Dallas said. “And whatever we do, we can’t let them know Crystal had a gun.”
*
We walked into the station together. It was an older square building with white wood siding, looked like it had been built in the seventies and smelled of burnt coffee. It wasn’t very big, and only a few police cars were in the parking lot. On the way we’d talked over a few things they might ask, worked on our cover story, but we knew it was the things we weren’t thinking about that might screw us up.
I told the woman behind the counter that we wanted to report some missing people, and an officer came out a couple minutes later. He introduced himself as Sergeant McPhail and led us to a small interview room with a table and a few chairs. He sat on one side, the two of us across from him. He was an older man with snow-white hair, brown eyes with eyebrows that slashed down at an angle, a long nose, and a stern mouth. He reminded me of an eagle, the way his eyes stared intensely at one of us, then flicked to the other. I got the feeling he didn’t miss much, which was good if it meant he could find the girls faster but bad if he sensed we were lying about parts of the story.
“You want to file a missing persons report?” he said, making notes on a pad of paper.
“Yes, my daughter and our sister,” I said. “We live in Vancouver, but they were staying here at the motel.”
“Their names?”
“Skylar and Crystal Caldwell. Skylar is only seventeen.” I curled my hand into a tight fist, digging my nails in hard, focused on the pain.