But even as I say the words, my brain is already pulling up a very specific file.
When Shiloh was being stalked, when a depraved watcher started leaving her creepy gifts and sending her messages, things started at the Falls, too. There was a threat spray-painted where tourists liked to take selfies. A missing girl whose last known location was the overlook.
And it turned out that Jason Adams, her brother’s doctor and the stalker-slash-killer who is now thankfully in prison where he belongs, wasn’t the only monster in play. He was only one half of a depraved partnership with his brother, Henry Thurston.
Henry, who managed to slip away, and occasionally shows back up to taunt and remind us that he’s still out there. We never really closed the book on him.
“Shy.” Cotton’s voice is soft. “Sit down. Breathe. We don’t know anything yet.”
Shiloh shakes her head, curls bouncing, eyes wide and already shiny. “It has to be him. It has to be Henry. I knew he’d show back up. I knew it.”
Sam scoots closer, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “We don’t know that, sis.”
“I have a bad feeling,” she whispers. “And all that stuff with Harry a few years ago… and then me…I never thought he’d just…stop. He’s not the kind to give up and go away.”
Gunner catches my gaze across the room. The tension in his features mirrors my own.
I push to my feet, cheeks flushing as everyone looks my way. “Brodie, can you take me home, please?”
Cotton tilts her head. “Already? It’s early. For you, anyway.”
“I need to…check some things.” I tuck a piece of hair behind my ear, fingers trembling just enough that I hope nobody notices. “See if anyone’s talking online yet. If it’s just a fall, there’ll be chatter. If it’s not…”
If it’s not, I’ll see the pattern before anyone else does. That’s my job.
Brodie’s eyes sharpen, comprehension humming in them. “Sure thing.”
We fumble through goodbyes, the lightness from earlier gone. Outside, the air slaps my face with a cold that smells like dead leaves and woodsmoke. I climb into the back of their SUV, hugging my arms around myself as Cotton buckles herself in the front seat.
“I can hear you thinking from here,” Brodie says mildly, catching my gaze in the rearview mirror.
“I need to know if everyone’s freaking out about the same thing we are,” I say. “If anyone’s already saying Henry Thurston’s name. Shiloh and Harry don’t need that on top of everything else. And Jack will want to know.”
“What if it is him?” Cotton asks quietly, looking out her window.
“Then I’ll find out,” I say. My voice comes out steadier than I feel.
If anyone can do it, it’s you, the rational part of my brain tells me.
The irrational part remembers a time when that wasn’t true, a time I wasn’t able to help. A hospital room with too-bright lights and my mother’s hand going cold in mine. And then there was my father’s body in a casket just a couple of years earlier... Both of them leaving me in December, like winter had personalized its cruelty just for me.
I look away from Cotton and focus on the darkness streaking by outside the car. The trees blur into vertical lines, a barcode of bare branches and shadows. My reflection in the window looks small and pale and too young to be thinking about serial killers.
But that’s the thing. The world doesn’t give a shit how young you are when it starts breaking you.
By the time Brodie pulls to a stop in front of my building, a third-floor walk-up in an old riverfront warehouse turned into apartments in downtown Lucy Falls, my pulse has steadied into a determined hum.
Cotton unbuckles her belt and reaches for the door handle. “I’ll walk you up.”
“You don’t have to—”
She levels a look at me. “Yeah, I do.”
Brodie kills the engine. “Let me check everything out first. I don’t know why you insisted on renting here when you could have stayed on the farm with us.”
He doesn’t wait for me to argue, and I don’t bother with a response. It’s an old argument. He wanted me close. I wanted my space. I let him have access to my exterior security camera feeds.
The corridor smells like old paint and the lemon cleaner the landlord uses when he feels guilty about not fixing anything. Brodie takes my keys and does a full sweep of the apartment—lights on, bathroom, bedroom, closet, under the bed. He checks the windows, the cheap deadbolt, the back door.
