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Take This to Your Grave

Page 131

by Genna Black

“Baryn?” Simon's voice comes from somewhere behind me.

I enlarge the photograph anyway, because some part of me still believes making it bigger might make it belong to someone else.

It doesn't.

My pulse turns violent. “That's Cebastian's car.”

Tamsin's eyes snap from the phone to me. “How definitely?”

“I've been in it.” I hand her phone back to her then immediately take it back because I need to see the picture again. “That's his fucking car.”

Simon turns the laptop toward Tamsin and brings the family photograph back up. “We found this about ten minutes ago. Cebastian grew up here. His father was the chief of police.”

“The chief from Casey's tape,” I add. “The one who covered for Pastor Scofield.”

Tamsin looks between us. “And Serena doesn't know this.”

“No. We found it after she left.”

My mother has gone completely silent behind me. Faun is tucked against her chest with his ears standing straight up, his tiny body unusually still as he watches the four of us.

Tamsin takes her phone back and starts scrolling. “She sent me the picture at—” Her thumb stops. “Two fourteen.”

I look at the clock on the nightstand. “How long after that did she stop responding?”

Tamsin scrolls farther. “This was the last thing she sent me. We were talking about the car. I told her it was weird. She never replied.”

I take the phone again and read the exchange from the beginning.

Tamsin asking whether Serena trespassed again. Serena telling her that isn't the relevant part. Tamsin telling her she cannot be left unsupervised outdoors.

My throat closes.

“Two fourteen,” I repeat.

Tamsin nods. “That's when she sent the photo.”

Which means at two fourteen Serena was conscious, upright, holding her phone, and annoyed enough to argue with Tamsin about whether her previous trespassing was relevant to the conversation. It gives us a point on the timeline. Not enough of one, but something.

I call her again.

No one speaks while it rings.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

Voicemail.

The sound of her recorded voice hits differently now. I hang up before it finishes and immediately call again, as though repetition might somehow change the result.

It doesn't.

Tamsin watches me lower the phone. “Baryn.”

I look back at the photograph on her screen. The thin barrier between concern and outright fucking panic collapses.