Darcy’s eyes glaze over. She scans the parking lot and spots where Nina stood in the picture.
“You last saw Nina a half-hour ago?”
Margaret sniffs and checks her watch.
“Yes.”
Impossible. Nina Steyer couldn’t disappear that quickly, even running at a full sprint. Darcy examines the roads leading away from the diner with the GPS map overlaid in her mind. The county route runs straight into the horizon toward Millport. A handful of dead end roads branch off the route, but the closest is two miles away. Across from Maury’s, the bisecting road leads to the center of town. Darcy’s eyes stop on a residential road a half-mile away. Paint-chipped houses and trailers dot each side of the street, and beyond the road, the terrain climbs into forestland.
“Margaret, where does that road lead?”
“Harrison Street? Nowhere, really. It’s a dead end.”
“But if I were to park at the end of Harrison and walk up that incline, where would I end up?”
Margaret rubs her chin.
“I guess you’d hit the state park trail after two or three miles. You wouldn’t go that way, though, not with access points to the trail at the far end of town.”
“That’s the trail that ends at the falls?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The falls…where the dogs lost Jennifer’s scent. Sickness bubbles through her stomach. There’s a voice inside Darcy’s head, an insidious voice that says she’ll never see Jennifer again. Darcy battles to suppress the voice, but it grows louder by the minute.
“You did well,” Darcy says. “Should Nina come again—”
“I promise I’ll call you.”
“Anytime, day or night.”
Darcy thanks Margaret and climbs into her car. Margaret’s head hangs over the car door, the wind throwing the waitress’s hair across her face.
“I’ll pray for your daughter, Agent Gellar.”
Tipton confers with Deputy Grasser outside the sheriff’s office when Darcy returns. With Nina’s picture loaded, Darcy holds her phone in front of the sheriff.
“We had another Nina sighting at the diner, and this time the waitress took a clear photograph. That’s Nina. There’s no denying it anymore.”
Tipton squints at the picture and presses his lips together.
“I suppose it could be her. People change a lot over ten years. Hard to say.”
Darcy unfolds the poster of a younger Nina and covers the hair in both pictures.
“Focus on the eyes, the face. If this doesn’t convince you, nothing will.”
Tipton’s tongue presses against his cheek.
“What would you have me do, Ms. Gellar? I’ve got two missing girls, one of them your own daughter. There’s no time to chase ghosts.”
“The waitress told me Nina tried to break inside a vehicle. Could be she wanted to get out of the cold, but I don’t think so. Twice she tried to hitch rides at the diner. I think she meant to steal the vehicle.”
“For what purpose?”
“Wherever Nina has been the last ten years, she’s ready to leave.”
“So why not go back to Millport? To her mother?”
“I can’t place myself in her shoes or get inside her head. What if she escaped from the man who took Sandy and Jennifer? She can tell us where to find the girls.”
“Deputy, can you give us a minute?”
Grasser glances between Tipton and Darcy and gives a quick nod. Tipton waits until the hallway empties.
“Look, Ms. Gellar. I barely have the manpower to search for two abducted girls. As much as I’d like to help, I can’t let a cold case get in our way. This theory you have that Nina knows where Sandy and Jennifer are is just that. A theory. You know the old saying. If you chase two rabbits, you will lose them both. Help me in any way you can to find Jennifer and Sandy, but I don’t have time to chase a woman who resembles a girl who died a decade ago.”
Darcy’s mouth hangs open as Tipton strides into his office and slams the door. This is the second time Tipton acted emotionally over the Nina Steyer case. No sooner does the sheriff enter his office than his phone rings. As she scans the hallway for the FBI team, Tipton’s door flies open.
“Grasser!” Tipton shouts down the hall as his deputy emerges around the corner. “Get me those FBI agents.”
“What’s happening sheriff?”
Tipton’s eyes hold alarm and pity as he brushes past her without comment. She starts after him and freezes. Only two possibilities explain the sheriff’s reaction. Either the kidnapper took another girl.
Or someone found a body.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“Keep breathing, Darcy. We don’t know it’s her.”
Hensel sits ramrod straight beside Darcy in the rental’s backseat. He’s trying to calm her down, but his body language is wrong. He fears what they’ll find in the farmer’s field outside of Scarlet River.
The farmer found the body in his field, a stone’s throw from the road. He estimated the dead girl’s age at fourteen or fifteen. They’re less than a minute from the body now. Darcy bites her lip and closes her eyes.
Pressing the accelerator to keep up with Tipton’s cruiser, Agent Fisher checks his mirror for Filmore’s cruiser. Reinhold rides shotgun beside Filmore. The crime scene investigators are en route.
The silo rises above the earth like an unmoving tornado, boards missing from the barn’s roof and walls. A man in dusty blue jeans and a Carhartt jacket waves the caravan down as they pull into the dirt driveway fronting the barn. Tipton and Grasser climb out first. Fisher shuts off the engine, and the silence inside the car rings in Darcy’s ears. Her heart pounds, body rigid as Hensel makes a show of checking his pockets. He’s giving her time, allowing her to breathe and melt the ice off her bones. When Fisher glances over his shoulder, he avoids looking at Darcy.
“Okay, I think I’m ready,” says Darcy.
As she walks between Hensel and Fisher, the field seems to drift toward Darcy. It’s as if she stands on a conveyor belt. Walking beside Tipton, the farmer points into the field. Darcy can’t recognize the body yet. From here, it’s a pale bulk glowing under the hazy light. Faceless, nameless, unclaimed by the benevolent god who allowed this sin.
“Farmer saw a hand sticking out from under the dirt and dug her out,” Hensel says while he walks, focusing on the facts to disassociate himself from the potential the dead girl is Jennifer. “The flesh wasn’t rotted, so he thought the girl might be alive.”
Tipton holds up his hand to stop the farmer from advancing. The sun-parched man watches Darcy and the others pass as if viewing a funeral procession. Footsteps hurry behind. Darcy looks over her shoulder at Reinhold and Deputy Filmore, the profiler carrying a camera. Reinhold appears as if she wants to talk to Darcy, then she pulls her eyes toward the young girl’s torso.
Tipton kneels beside the girl. She’s naked and staring up at the sky. Purple bruises the size of silver dollars cover her body, and ligature marks circle her neck. Someone beat and strangled the girl.
Darcy’s breath catches at the spill of dark hair fanned against the brown earth. Hensel reaches for Darcy, but she’s already on her knees beside the girl’s head.
It’s not Jennifer. She’s sick with guilt for feeling relieved, but that doesn’t stop her from muttering a prayer of thanks. Tipton meets Hensel’s eyes, and the agent shakes his head to indicate this isn’t Darcy’s daughter. The sheriff removes his hat and looks up at the sky, then down at the girl. His haunted eyes are unmistakable. He sees the bodies of girls ten years dead and wonders why this nightmare came back to claim him again.