Page 137 of The Advocate’s Ultimatum

“When did you stab him?”

Bay looked at Sabre. “First, he said people paid to keep stories quiet. And that we had no idea just how much he knew about us.”

“And that’s when you stabbed him?”

“No. I stabbed him when he said next time he’d come get her himself.”

That was the truth line. Sabre knew it instantly. Vale did too.

“How many times did you stab him?” Vale asked quietly.

“I don’t remember.”

“What did you do afterward?” Sabre asked.

“I thought I heard someone coming, so I left and went to the corner and waited.”

“For who?”

Bay’s eyes lifted to hers. “You.”

“Why me?”

Bay blinked. “Because she said you once tried to take her home. That if we were ever in trouble, you were the only one who would help us.”

Then Bay shut down. Face empty. Body still. Interview over.

Sabre sat a moment longer beneath the fluorescent hum. There was another girl, and she knew Sabre’s name. And somewhere outside those walls, she was still with the man Bay refused to name.

Hannah was alive.

Chapter 51

Friday afternoon

JP’s stops that morning had given him exactly what he was starting to expect. Nothing.

The duplex on Peach Avenue had been sold twice in six years and was now occupied by a retired couple who answered every question with suspicion instead of substance.

The four-unit building off Mollison had a new manager, new paint, and no memory older than fourteen months.

By two-thirty he had heat, dust, and two more addresses crossed off.

He drove to the third one. It sat at the end of a narrow street behind an overgrown hedge and a chain-link gate hanging slightly off-center. A front house faced the road. Two smaller units sat in back, reached by a cracked driveway wide enough for one careful car.

This one felt like a good possibility. The kind of place nobody advertised, and nobody bragged about.

A teenage boy sat on the front steps bouncing a basketball hard enough to annoy neighbors. He looked about seventeen with a stringy build. His earbuds were in, and he wore a shirt advertising a band he probably didn’t listen to.

JP got out and waited until the ball came back to the kid’s hands. “Good afternoon.”

The boy looked him over. “I guess.”

JP showed his card. “Do you live here?”

“My mom manages the place.”

“Then you’re exactly who I was hoping for.”