“I’ll do the talking,” Hawk said, getting out of the car.
My heart raced as we followed him up a short walkway lined with roses to a wood door at the front of the cottage. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d talked to anyone who’d known my parents, and I was only just starting to realize that Bram and I had lost more than just our parents after their murder.
Because once upon a time, there had been other people in our lives, neighbors and friends of our parents and people they worked with.
The work itself was still coming into focus, but I remembered our house filled with people talking animatedly, listening tomusic, typing on computers, stepping into the backyard to smoke because my parents wouldn’t allow it in the house.
What had they been doing? Working on letter-writing campaigns to politicians? Planning protests? Digging into stories like the girls that were being taken from Blackwell Falls even back then?
I wasn’t sure, but we hadn’t been alone,.
So where had all those people gone? Was their absence part of the natural cleaving the happened after someone’s death, the loss of stability and routine and normalcy, and in Bram’s and my case, even our home?
Or was it because of Bram? Because he’d gotten custody of me and become part of Blackwell Falls’ dark side, the antithesis of what my parents had been fighting for?
I didn’t know, but now I was about to talk to someone who’d known them back then — or someone who’d probably talked to them at least — and I felt nervous and self-conscious wearing an identity I hadn’t worn since I was a kid: Braden and Catherine Montgomery’s daughter.
I frowned at Hawk when he banged on the door like a police officer.
Like Bram.
“What?” he whispered.
“Take it easy,” I said.
We froze as shuffling sounded on the other side of the door, but it quieted a moment later.
Anna Reed wasn’t going to answer.
Jagger knocked again, less aggressively than Hawk thank god.
“Ms. Reed?” he called out. “We just want to ask you a few questions about Kensington Trust. About Braden and Catherine Montgomery. No one knows we’re here.”
Nothing from inside. Just the slow drip of rain from the leaves on the trees to the wet ground, the call of birds in the surrounding forest.
I reached into my pocket and removed the napkin I’d found in my parents things, Anna Reed’s name and phone number written in my mother’s handwriting on the back of the Black Stag napkin.
“Anna?” I called out. “It’s Cassie Montgomery. Braden and Catherine were my parents.” I hesitated, then folded the napkin and bent down to push it under the door. “I found this in my parents’ things. I think… I think they wanted me to talk to you.”
My body was flooded with adrenaline that had nowhere to go. I felt sick, my face hot, like I wanted to run.
Which didn’t make sense because I didn’t want to run.
I wanted to find out what Anne Reed knew about my parents.
There was more shuffling from the other side of the door, and I wondered if Anna was picking up the napkin, if my mother’s handwriting was familiar to her after all these years.
“Please,” I said, “I just… I just want to talk. Ineedto talk.”
I was beginning to think we were wasting our time, that we’d have to go back to the States with no more than we’d had when we left.
Then the door cracked open and I found myself staring into a pair of pale gray eyes.
I said her name carefully, half afraid she’d change her mind and slam the door in our faces. “Anna?”
She hesitated, then opened the door wider, her gaze sweeping the area behind us so feverishly that I turned to look, wondering if someone was there.
But there was nothing, just our car next to Anna’s sedan, the rose garden, and the trees dripping last night’s rain.
