Years ago, knowing that Mary Elizabeth was dead hadn’t eased the pain of her loss.
But perhaps seeing justice done did create what they called closure. Her aunt had known that her daughter’s suffering was over. That her killer was locked away. Actually, he wasn’t locked away anymore. He’d been killed in a prison brawl.
Her aunt had told her that the killer’s death shouldn’t have made anything better for her. But it had. Christian or not, she’d said, it had brought her some resolution. She hoped he’d suffered.
And now...
Now Lara was missing, after leaving a cryptic message.
Maybe she’d gone into deep hiding. But if she had, she’d done it for a reason. And the only way to find Lara was to find out what that reason could be.
Meg sat up, considering the possibilities, trying to sort out where Lara could be. Probably not in Richmond, or at least not at her aunt’s house. But Lara had a small house in Harpers Ferry, left to her by her parents when they’d passed away. She and Lara had often visited during their college years, both in love with hiking and tubing on the river. They hadn’t been in quite a while; she didn’t think Lara had been out there recently, but she’d hired a service to handle maintenance and security, and she even rented it out now and then.
Maybe she was there. It was a direction to pursue, at any rate.
After a minute, Meg rose and walked into the bathroom. Time to get ready for bed.
She liked to shower first thing in the morning. It seemed to start the day right, really wake her up. But since she’d begun training, she’d discovered she needed a night shower, too—in order to be able to sleep.
Tonight, the odor of the morgue seemed to linger on her. She didn’t just want a shower to sleep, she needed one.
She took a long shower, with very hot water and lots of soap and shampoo.
Wrapped in a towel, she got out her toothbrush and toothpaste. The mirror was heavily fogged, and she wiped it with the edge of her big beach towel.
She looked thin, she noted. Thin and haggard. Well, nothing she could do about that right now.
She studiously brushed her teeth, glanced in the mirror again—and froze.
The mirror was misty once more and yet she could see her own face. And another. Behind her.
Lara’s face.
Lara’s mouth worked; her eyes seemed filled with pain. No audible words came to her lips, and seconds later she began to fade away. And yet Meg thought she knew what Lara had tried to say.
Not help me, but find me. Find my remains.
Meg whirled around just in time to see the last vestige of her friend disappear into the soft swirl of fog left by her very hot shower.
*
“I met Margaret when she was a child,” Adam was saying to Matt. “The Krewe didn’t exist back then, but local law enforcement in West Virginia called me in. They knew I could find the right people to help us discover the truth. I was also friends with an agent working kidnapping cases for the FBI.” He sat behind his desk, a cup of coffee in front of him, his hands folded on the desk. He raised them as he said, “There was hope that it was a ransom case, that the missing girl would come home. But her little cousin knew. She told me, although she wouldn’t tell anyone else, that she saw Mary Elizabeth sitting at the foot of her bed. She was gone, Meg told me, and she could be found in the cemetery. It changed the case. We found the body before the ransom drop, and because of the forensic evidence at the scene, her killer was easily caught. So I’ve kept tabs on Meg. I was going to wait until she’d graduated and taken a position at the academy and then introduce her to Jackson and the Krewe, but...well, life intrudes and changes everything. Life—and death.”
Matt nodded, well aware of the truth of his words.
He looked out the window onto the beautiful old street. He loved their location in Alexandria, and he was glad the Krewe had left the modern building where they’d once had their offices. There was something about looking out at the old row houses that seemed good for the soul; history had marched through these streets. The houses had been there when the nation struggled for freedom. They’d continued to serve as homes during the bloody conflict of the Civil War. Alexandria was so close to Washington, DC—yet it had been part of the Confederate state of Virginia.
Of course, he loved the Capitol, too. He was no romantic when it came to war, but the history of his nation’s struggle was both powerful and heartbreaking to him. He was fascinated by the life of Abraham Lincoln. He was equally interested in the lives of men like Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee.