“Our guy’s been busy,” Zooey said, and on the far wall, seven girls’ pictures appeared. “Meet the missing girls of I-5. The stretch of highway that goes through here, all the way up to Oregon, is full of transients, runaways, hitchhikers, campers, bicyclists, you name it. It has over a dozen rest stops, at least a hundred gas stations, thousands of acres of national forest and parks, and tons of outdoor attractions. And there are stretches where it’s nothing but deep forest for miles. It’s an active stretch of highway, so there’s a normal amount of criminal activity and accidents. But then, I went back fifteen years. I plugged in Dr. X’s victimology combined with Cass’s differences from the girls.”
She pulled up a map of Northern California on the projector. There were seven red dots along the stretch of highway she’d highlighted. “Every two years, since Cass’s murder, a girl has gone missing on the I–5. Jessica Adams went missing on a camping trip in the Trinities with her parents. The rangers thought she’d gotten lost and must’ve died out there in the woods. Talia Hernandez was on a school trip to Mt. Shasta when she got separated from her group. No one ever saw her again. Ramona Quinn was a runaway from Chico who was last seen at the Castella rest stop by a trucker she’d hitched a ride with. Molly Bailes was working at the ski resort and never showed up for her shift. She commuted to work, on the 5, but no one ever found her car. Kathy Dove was an aspiring photographer who went out to take pictures of some of the old bridges and never came back. Imogen Meade was an experienced equestrian who did trail rides. They found her horse—they never found her. And finally, Keira Rice, she went missing almost two years ago, at a soccer meet in Yreka. She hurt her ankle during the match and her roommate said she went to get ice for it from the machine at their motel. They found the ice bucket at the bottom of the stairs.”
Abby stared at the girl’s faces, chills running through her entire body.
They all looked so much like Cass. She’d even remembered hearing about Keira Rice—she’d lived in the next county over—when she first went missing, and she’d remembered praying that her family would find her.
There was a slamming sound, and Abby startled when she realized Paul had left the room abruptly, the double doors of the study rattling as he closed them behind him.
Zooey’s eyes—already so big and doll-like—widened even more. “Shit,” she said. “I . . . maybe I should have approached that better.”
It took her a second to recover, because she was feeling struck dumb. Seven girls? Were there even more, if they went back further? How long had Cass’s killer been in this area, slowly picking off the young women who suited his sick needs, doing it in such a clever, random way that no one suspected the connection until this girl with pink hair plugged a bunch of lines of code into a database.
Abby’s head was spinning, but she needed to get it together. She needed to get Paul back inside—and back in the game.
“I’ll go talk to him,” Abby said. “Just stay here. There’s drinks and apple pie and a ton of leftover BBQ in the fridge if you’re hungry.”
“I didn’t mean to—” Zooey started, and her mouth drooped, and Abby once again realized how very young she was. She might be brilliant, but she was a baby in some ways, still. And she clearly idolized Paul as a boss.
“Don’t worry,” Abby assured her with a tight smile. “He’s just . . . he cares. A lot.”
“I know,” Zooey said. “He recruited me. I was on a . . . not so good path. He kind of saved me.”
“He has a history of doing that,” Abby said. “Maybe someday we’ll share some stories. I’ll be right back.”
She left Zooey behind in the study, and made her way out of the farmhouse, down the porch steps, and across the field, toward the orchard, knowing he’d seek refuge there.
Chapter 12
Seven girls. And that was likely just the beginning. If Zooey had only gone back fifteen years with her program . . .
Paul clenched his fists, breathing hard as he paced up and down the orchard row, trying to calm himself.
How had he let this happen? That’s all he could think right now. He’d never looked at FBI files on Cass or Dr. X. He’d avoided them, even when his mentor, Frank Edenhurst, had offered to give him access. He’d been selfish. If he hadn’t . . .
Would he have seen what Abby had? Would he have been whole enough? Or would he have denied the truth because it was easier? Because the idea of Cass’s killer walking free . . .
Fifteen years. Fifteen years and at least seven other girls, and it was his fault.
God, the weight was pushing down on his chest again. He pressed his hand over his heart, trying to slow his breathing.
This was his fault. Those girls . . . his mind began to sift through the facts that Zooey had thrown at him, filing impressions and theories in different categories as he sorted through it, picturing the map Zooey had shown them in his mind.
He’d taken girls from five different counties. And some of them were assumed lost instead of kidnapped.
No one would’ve seen the pattern. Especially because their bodies never showed up.
His stomach clenched. He was a realist. He knew the statistics. For every Jaycee Duggard who survived, there were hundreds of girls dead hours, days, weeks, months after they were taken.
There were seven dead girls somewhere. Probably lost in the acres of national forest surrounding them, never to be found. The tangle of mountains that bordered the valley were wild and vast, some places impossible to reach any way but on foot.
“Paul.” Abby’s voice broke through the churning guilt filling him. He turned. She was at the end of the row, her eyes brimming with an emotion he couldn’t quite identify.
Without another word, she walked toward him, taking his head in her hands, resting her forehead against his.
Everything inside him untwined and settled, his eyes closing as her fingers threaded through his hair.
He didn’t know how long they stood there, pressed together. It could’ve been minutes. It felt like hours.
She smelled like honey and lemons, like he remembered, and he couldn’t stop himself from reaching up and cupping her cheek.
The callus on his thumb caught against the softness of her cheekbone, and there it was, stirring to life inside him, the thing that he’d buried, tamped down, and tried so damn hard to ignore throughout the years.
Need. Want. Desire.
She’d tugged at his heart, at his gut, at everything in him, his very soul, for so damn long. And he’d denied it for just as long. He’d run from it as a teenager and as an adult. Every time. He’d loved other women. And he’d never be unfaithful in his mind or his heart.
But Abby . . .
Abby was his childhood. She was the trip across the meadow—867 steps when he was a boy, lessening with each year as he grew taller and taller. She was muddy red hair tangled in his face, freckled hands holding his as his father left to get sober. She was his first kiss at six and sometimes, in the deep night, when he’d jerked awake with the phantom weight of the suicide vest pressing on him, the only thing that soothed him was the thought about her being his last.
It was so damn hard to deny it when she was right here. When he was so close. When he could just lean forward and . . .
“It’s going to be okay,” Abby murmured, and Paul felt a flash of disgust at himself for feeling this way.
She’d made it very clear, a long time ago, that they were just friends. And that anything otherwise would be dishonoring Cass’s memory.
“Yeah,” he said, reluctantly pulling away from her. “It will be. I’m going to take over from here.”
Her eyebrows knit together. “Take over . . .” she echoed.
“You’re a civilian, Abby,” he said. “You could get hurt.”
Her mouth dropped open in an outraged O. “You don’t get to say when I stop being involved here.”
Of course Abby had no qualms about hunting down a serial killer. She probably pulled the rifle her daddy got her when she was sixteen out of the gun safe just for the occasion. She had always been fearless. The girl who jumped off the highest rocks at the swimming hole and told the best ghost stories around the bonfire and who had beaten him to the punch—literally—when Danny Roberts had slept with his sister Faye and then slut-shamed her all over school. Danny’s nose was permanently hooked to the right now, courtesy of Abby.