“What’s it say?” Aaron asks.
I scan the message quickly, ready to lie and say it’s Kelsey if they’re giving me instructions to meet them alone. But it’s Dacia again. From a new number this time, but the same stupid game.
In your patience possess ye your souls.
Then:
By long patience is a prince persuaded
I text back:
Just tell me what you want me to DO!
The response:
Quietly endure, silently suffer and patiently wait
I am to WAIT, though waiting so be hell
And then it ends, just like last night. I try texting back. I try calling the number. Nothing but the out-of-service message.
I fling my phone down on the car seat. The sense of peace and wholeness Molly left behind has vanished. If I could find Dacia Badea, I’d rip her heart out with my bare hands.
“Do you think they know we’re here?” Taylor looks around nervously. “Is that why they called now?”
Aaron shakes his head, but his expression is conflicted. “I think it’s a coincidence. I usually don’t buy coincidence, but I’m not sensing any problems nearby. Well, except . . .”
“Except what?” I ask.
“Except you.” He glances down at my hands and gives me a wry grin. “It was muted because she’s not around and you know you can’t act on it, but the visual was very much like the human sacrifice in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.”
Taylor takes my phone, without so much as asking. “What’s with the word games?”
“My fault. When Dacia told me her boss didn’t like to be kept waiting, I made a smart-ass remark about patience being a virtue. Seems she’s turning the tables on me, combing the internet for every quote on patience she can find.”
She scrolls through the quotes. “Do you think they’re random? Or is there some other meaning here?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure about the last one, but the third quote is definitely Martin Luther King and the first two are from the Bible.”
“Whoa. Look at the walking Wikipedia,” Taylor says.
I ignore the snarky tone of voice and hold out my hand for my phone. “I hosted a history teacher . . . who was also a preacher’s daughter.”
Aaron types something into his phone. “That last one is Shakespeare. Sonnet fifty-eight. I don’t see any automatic connection between the quotes aside from the obvious . . . but are you sure it’s still Dacia? There’s not a single spelling error here, and the ones you showed me from last night were pretty sloppy. From what Molly said, Dacia wasn’t well educated. I guess she could be cutting and pasting from BrainyQuote or whatever, but this looks more like communications are being handled by someone else now. Someone with an ego. I mean . . . by long patience is a prince persuaded?”
I get a sick feeling in my stomach as I remember Molly talking about Graham Cregg. He seemed really full of himself. “Can we go? Let’s get this over with.”
We turn into the driveway. A light is visible toward the end, but as we approach the house, I see that it’s just an overhead streetlight. I get a flash of memory from Molly. There’s no emotion attached to it. I never get a sense of their emotions once they leave. It’s just a sterile memory of her arm being grabbed as Lucas yanked her outside, under this very same streetlight.
A For Sale sign flaps slightly in the wind, with a smaller sign attached to the bottom: Pool and Patio!
No cars are in the driveway, no lights are on inside the house. My first thought is that the place seems smaller, like it takes up less space on the lot than it did in the satellite images we browsed online. But as my eyes move toward the back of the property, I realize that’s not the issue.
The lot looks larger because the guesthouse is gone.
Aaron notices it the instant I do. “Son of a bitch.”
Taylor’s door opens and she hurries toward the backyard.
“Damn it, Tay!” Aaron glances back at me. “You might as well wait here.”
I survey the woods around the car, almost expecting to see Lucas’s face pop up at my window. “No. I’m coming with you.”
When we catch up to her, Taylor is crouched down on the brick patio, peering into the deep end of the empty swimming pool. “That’s why the pool I was sensing didn’t show up on the map. It’s new.”
Slowly, she works her way around the pool in a crab-walk, one hand brushing the inside edge.
“What are you doing?” Aaron asks.
Taylor doesn’t answer, simply keeps moving around the edge until she reaches the middle. Then she swings her legs over the side and starts crawling toward the center of the pool.
“Come on, Taylor. They’ve leveled the place! You’re not going to find any evidence now.”