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“Then what did you find?”

“We recovered a phone from Greg Maddox at the mine.”

The name sends cold through me.

Greg is dead.

He can never lie to another frightened girl.

He can never pretend to love someone while deciding how much money she might bring him.

But what he did remains.

“What was on it?” Sean asks.

“Messages between Greg and Daniel Price.”

I close my eyes.

I knew.

Some part of me has known since Sean told me about the photographs.

Knowing doesn’t make the betrayal hurt less.

“How far back do they go?” I ask.

“Several years.”

My eyes open.

“Before Sage disappeared?”

“Yes.”

Sean grips the back of a chair.

“What were they discussing?”

“Girls in foster care.”

Nobody moves.

Vega continues.

“Names. Ages. Photographs. Placement information. Which girls had family searching for them and which ones didn’t.”

Sage had no one.

Mae was dead.

Addy was gone.

I was searching, but Sage didn’t know that.

To the rest of the world, she was a quiet sixteen-year-old foster child with no family.

Exactly what Greg wanted.