My fraternal twin.
The oldest photograph on the board was not officially part of the investigation because it occurred years before the investigation began.
Now it was just a faded school picture I’d pinned there myself.
My brother smiled back at me, missing his front tooth, freckles scattered across his nose like somebody had flicked paint at him.
He’d been eight fucking years old.
I had been born first by all of three minutes—the oldest by those precious seconds.
That was all that separated us.
Three minutes.
From the moment of conception, we were always so close, yet so far away.
I reached out and straightened the corner of the photograph, even though it wasn’t crooked.
“I’ll find them,” I muttered. “I will find them all.”
The words came automatically now, like a prayer I recited every night, or maybe my own penance.
My fingers rested against the edge of the picture, and the room around me faded.
The smell of old paper became cut grass, and the hum of the refrigerator became the hum of cicadas.
And suddenly, I wasn’t standing in my office anymore.
I was eight years old, barefoot in the backyard, listening to my brother laugh at the lady who was so nice and always giving us ice cream. She was standing so close to him. Holden always held my hand, but that day she had pulled him from my grip.
I hadn’t known that hearing him laugh that day was the last time I would ever hear it. My phone shattered the silence of my thoughts and memories.
The shrill ringtone ripped me out of the memory before it could drag me any deeper, and I blinked, staring at the screen.
Ryan.
I answered without taking my eyes off my brother’s picture.
“What?”
“Hollis.”
Something in his voice made my stomach tighten.
It wasn’t panic.
It was worse.
Professional.
Flat.
“We’ve got a body.”
Every muscle in my body went rigid.
“Where?”
