Five days had passed since she'd stood in this same spot observing the firefighters douse the last embers of Reed's truck.She’d spent most of the hours combing through the remaining journals, but he’d taken the important ones.
Most likely, those had been burned to ash, too. Eventually, she would have to visit Martin Cox to apologize for not keeping her promise to protect Sarah’s journals.Not today, though.
Hadley had already come to the conclusion that the individual responsible for Reed’s death was someone familiar with the back roads. Familiar enough to predict they'd be empty at that hour. Someone local.
The distant rumble of an approaching vehicle pulled her from her thoughts. Hadley could make out Elijah’s truck from her peripheral vision. He’d had the old Ford for as long as she could remember, keeping it running long past its expected lifetime. Much like his reputation in this town.
Gravel crunched beneath his tires as he slowed to a stop behind her. The engine cut off, followed by the creak of a door opening. Still, she didn't turn.
“I had a feeling you’d be back here.”
“Get back in your truck, and keep driving.”
His boots scraped against the gravel as he approached anyway. He never had been one to take a hint when it conflicted with what he wanted. She kept her eyes fixed on the map in her hands, her jaw clenched tight enough to send a dull ache through her temples.
“The funeral was nice, don’t you think?”
Hadley focused on her breathing. She'd attended the funeral, and she stood at a distance while they lowered Reed's casket into the ground. She didn’t talk to anyone there, and she wasn’t in the mood to have a conversation now.
“Gus and Sam are opening the Watering Hole tonight,” Elijah continued, undeterred by her silence. “Special hours for a celebration of Reed's life. Thought you might want to know.”
Something inside Hadley snapped like a branch under too much weight. She spun to face him, the map crinkling in her tightening grip.
“Why would I attend a celebration for Reed’s life?” The words escaped before she could stop them. “So half the town can stare at me while the other half whispers about how I'm responsible for Reed's death? How I brought all this on him by coming back? I was at the pub last Thursday, and look how well that visit went.”
“You didn’t exactly help with that, did you?” Elijah said as he slipped his hands into his pockets. He was wearing his funeral suit, probably the same one that he’d worn to every other funeral over the years. “Warren told me that you offered to sacrifice yourself to keep the media off the investigation. Worked, too, so I guess you should get some credit.”
“Don't.” Hadley cut him off with a slashing motion of her hand. “Don't stand there and act like you haven’t manipulated every local in this town to suit your own needs. I went to the prison, Elijah. Mason told me about the tarp.”
A hollow laugh escaped her, the sound brittle in the stillness of the afternoon. She hadn’t wanted to have this confrontation so soon. She wished she didn’t have to have it all.
“You know what's truly pathetic? There was a time I thought of you as a father figure. I believed that you had gone out of your way to protect me back then. And all through my teenage years, I respected you more than anyone in this town.”
“I did protect you, Hadley.”
“That badge you wore meant something to me,” Hadley continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “I didn’t give it much thought at the time, but I’m pretty sure you were the reason why I became a cop in the first place. At least Warren Caldwell has the guts to not pretend to be anything other than what he is. But you? You were supposed to be better than this."
“Better than what, exactly?”
“Better than someone who would alter a statement taken during an abduction. Better than someone who would allow a teenage boy to go to prison for a murder he didn’t commit.” Hadley paused when the wind picked up, sending dead leaves skittering across the ground between them. “Better than someone who'd let young women vanish without a trace.”
The knuckles of her right hand began to ache from her tight grip. She’d creased the map, and she had to force herself to loosen her fingers.
“Go home, Elijah.” Hadley effectively dismissed the man who had once loomed so large in her childhood. The distant call of a crow somewhere in the treeline summed up her despair. “Enjoy your retirement.”
Elijah flushed at her snub, the lines around his mouth cutting deeper as he stepped closer. His boot heel ground against a charred piece of the earth. When he spoke, his voice carried the dignified composure of a man unaccustomed to having his authority questioned, especially by someone he'd once considered family.
“You have no idea what you're talking about,” Elijah said, each word practically their own sentence. “And we’ve already been over this. You didn't see what those disappearances did to this town before Emily Esten. Each time a girl went missing, it tore at the fabric of this community.”
“Yes, we have been over this, and it’s clear to me that you decided a convenient narrative was more important than the truth.”
“You think I didn’t care about those girls? About their families? I spent most nights awake going over every lead, every scrap of evidence. Do you honestly believe," Elijah continued, leaning toward her, “that I would cover for someone preying onyoung women in my town? Is that what you think of me after all these years?”
The question hung in the air between them. Two weeks ago, Hadley would have dismissed such an idea immediately. But now, with Reed dead and eight disappearances somehow connected, certainty had gone by the wayside.
“You amended Mason's statement from that night, Elijah. Why?”
“I never amended your brother's statement,” Elijah countered, a defensive edge creeping into his tone. “That was the prosecutor's doing. He had Mason’s statement, but he conveniently left out the last page. I didn’t even know about that until the trial.”
