She stands up from her desk on the other side of the room. “Emma?”
Sam stands awkwardly by my side as Detective Amato walks over.
“Is everything okay?” she asks.
I shake my head and show her the article on the phone. “Ineed to know more about this case. Did the police ever find out who this person was?”
She takes the phone and tilts her head as she reads. “I’m not sure. I didn’t work on this case.”
“Can you find out?”
She looks between me and the phone and then back at me again. “I don’t think—”
“Please,” I beg. “You said you wanted to help me.”
She peers over her shoulder at the others in the room and sighs. “Okay, take a seat and I’ll see what I can find out.”
“Thank you,” I say.
I sit and fidget with my shaky hands.
“Why does it matter who that person was?” Sam asks. “It was two years ago.”
“It just does,” I say.
I want it to be someone else. It needs to be someone else.
My leg bounces up and down as the minutes tick by. What is only ten minutes to everyone else feels like an eternity to me. The seconds are like needles pressing into my skin one by one.
Breathe, I remind myself.
It’s going to be okay. I’m going to figure out how to undo all of this. I will fix it.
“Emma,” Detective Amato says, approaching us again. This time she has a file in her hand. “Will you follow me?”
I stand, leaving Sam behind to follow Detective Amato into a large conference-like room. She sits and gestures for me to do the same.
“Is that it?” I ask, eyes locked on the file in her hands.
She nods. “It’s considered a cold case. We never identified the body.”
My heart stops.
I know.
Of course, they never identified the body because Mallory wasn’t missing yet. She was alive and well.
I stand, reaching over and snatching the file, scattering all the papers free.
“Emma!”
But there it is. A picture of the body.
A picture of Mallory with pale skin and blue lips. Her dark hair is wet as she lies on the rocks.
“That’s her. That’s my sister,” I say with tears in my eyes.
Detective Amato scrabbles to pick up the papers. “That’s not possible.”
