Veck returned the photograph to the shelf. As he went to sit back down next to Heron, he frowned. The man was staring at the victim’s mother with the intensity of a film camera, like he was reading and recording every twitch of her eye and purse of her mouth as she spoke.
As Veck’s radar started pinging like crazy, it was unclear whether it was about the missing girl or her sad, lovely mother or this massive man who looked like he could start a fire with that hard, burning stare of his.
“If I can interject,” Veck said, “did she have any boyfriends?”
From the corner of his eye, he saw Heron’s hands tighten on his thighs, cranking down tight.
“No. She had friends that were boys, of course, and a prom date here and there . . . nothing serious, though. At least, not that she told me—and she was generally open about her life.”
Those hands released abruptly.
“Do you have anything you want to ask,” Veck said to the agent.
There was a long stretch of silence. Just before it got truly awkward, the man said in a deep, low voice, “Mrs. Barten, I’m going to bring her home to you. One way or another, I will get her back for you.”
Veck recoiled, thinking, Shit, don’t go there, buddy. “Ah, what he means is—”
“It’s all right.” Mrs. Barten clasped the base of her throat. “I’m not fooling myself. I know that she’s . . . not with us anymore. A mother feels the cold in the heart. We just want to know what happened and . . . have a chance to lay her to rest properly.”
“You will have her back. I swear it.”
Now Mrs. Barten choked up—and why wouldn’t she. The guy was like a warrior with the vengeance routine, more avenger than agent.
“Thank you . . . all of you.”
Veck discreetly checked his watch. “If you’ll excuse me and my partner, we’re going to head over to the supermarket. The manager said he was leaving early today.”
“Oh, yes, of course.”
Agent Heron helped Mrs. Barten up by taking her hand. “Would you mind if I take a look at her bedroom?”
“Sure—I’ll lead you right up.” She turned to Veck and Reilly. “If you need to go now, you can always come back.”
“Thank you,” Reilly said. “We’ll do that.”
“And we’ll see ourselves out the door,” Veck murmured.
As Agent Heron and the victim’s mother hit the stairs, Veck paused in the front hall and watched them ascend together. A window on the landing above cast illumination on them, the shaft of sunlight hitting them both square on the face and acting as a beacon for their—
Wait a minute.
Veck glanced over into the living room . . . where the golden rays were pouring in from the west.
Impossible. You couldn’t get that effect from opposite directions, front and rear of the house.
“What is it?” Reilly said softly.
Veck swung his eyes back to the staircase. Heron and Mrs. Barten were nowhere to be seen, and the light on the landing was gone now, too, the window showing nothing more than the budded branches of the maple tree behind the house and the clear blue sky above it.
“I’m going up there,” he told his new partner. “Just for a minute.”
CHAPTER 8
As Jim followed behind Sissy’s mother, he was out-of-body overwhelmed. In a dim corner of his mind, he knew he had to keep tabs on Veck, but this opportunity was not going to smoothly present itself again anytime soon.
Turning the corner at the head of the stairs, the volume of the house was cranked up to Slipknot levels. Everything from the subtle creak of the carpeted floor beneath his boots to the soft talk down below in the foyer to his own breath in the back of his throat, it all seemed to scream in his ears.
Abruptly, Veck appeared behind them and made some kind of an I’m-only-here-for-a-minute comment. Jim nodded at the guy—and promptly forgot he was even there.
“Sissy’s room is this way.”
The three of them went to the right, and when Mrs. Barten hesitated at the closed door, Jim raised his hand to put it on her shoulder . . . and then couldn’t quite make the contact.
“Would you like us to go in alone?” he asked.
Mrs. Barten opened her mouth. But then just nodded. “I haven’t been in there since . . . that night. It’s the way she left it.”
At that moment, the phone rang, and there was visible relief in Sissy’s mom’s face. “I’ll just go get that. Feel free to open the drawers and the closet, but if you have to take something, will you let me know what it is?”
“Absolutely,” Veck answered.
As she hurried across the landing and disappeared into what he assumed was the master bedroom, Jim cracked the door.
Oh . . . the scent.
Slipping inside, he closed his eyes and tried not to feel like a letch as he breathed in deep. Perfume. Body lotion. Dryer sheets.
It was . . . extraordinary.
And he did not belong in this room. He was an adult male who had done things that shouldn’t even be passing thoughts in a room like this—and the representations of those evil deeds were in the ink that covered his back. Plus he had weapons on him. And then there was that shit he’d pulled with the demon the night before.
He felt like a stain.
As Veck did his own recon, Jim opened his lids, and went over to the built-in desk by the front window. The flat stretch and shelving were painted white, but the chair was a blue to match the gingham drapes and the striped wallpaper. Carpet was an area rug with braided fringe. Bedspread was a quilt made from different strips of blue and white fabric. Handmade. Had to be.
The books that were lined up were orderly and girlie. She liked Jane Austen, but there was also a whole shelf of Gossip Girls—probably left over from when she was thirteen. Couple of 4-H ribbons, red and blue. Track trophies.
On the desk there was an Apple laptop along with two textbooks, one on calculus and the other on . . . advanced trigonometry?
Huh. His Sissy might well be smarter than he was.
There was also a magazine. Cosmopolitan—from this month.
Okaaaay, the cover with the word ORGASM in seventy-four-point hot-pink print didn’t exactly jibe with the rest of this land of innocence and schoolwork . . . but then, she’d been growing up, hadn’t she.
Pivoting, he all but ran into the foot of the twin bed.
Shit, now he knew why her mother didn’t come in here. That blue quilt was pulled back and the pillows still dented as if Sissy had just been napping.
“I’m going to take off,” Veck said. Which made Jim wonder how long they’d been in the room.
“See you soon,” Jim said with distraction.
“Roger that.”
When he was left to his own devices, Jim’s hand shook as he reached out to touch the sheets. Brushing what had touched her skin, he thought about Devina and what that demon had done to this girl . . . and her family.
Adrian and Eddie were wrong. If they wanted him focused on the war, this was exactly where he needed to be. This was motivation to win if he’d ever seen it: Sissy was never going to lie in this bed again. She was not going to finish whatever article she’d been reading. And no more crunching numbers. Ever. But he could at least find her a better place to wait for her parents’ and her sister’s passings so they could all be reunited for eternity.
And then he could make Devina pay a thousand times over.
On the bedside table, there was a white alarm clock, another magazine—In Touch this time—and the remote to her little white television. He had the feeling that even though she was in college, she came back on a lot of weekends, and a peek into the closet confirmed this. Given the number of blouses and pants and skirts and dresses, it didn’t look like the thing had been mined for favorites, but instead was on the ready. Plenty of shoes on the floor.