Chapter 2
TWO
TWIGGY
Bryce Savage pumps through my noise-canceling headphones, and I bob my head in time with his beat as my eyes scan line after line of messages.
Most are either unrelated, unhelpful, or just obnoxious, but that’s the trade-off with these online chat rooms. If you know what to look for, gems of information exist.
They’re just hidden.
The main monitor is home to a chat client most people wouldn’t recognize. The other screens pull up news feeds, local forums, cop blogs masquerading as true-crime hobby sites. I log into my handle—one of several I maintain—and the room recognizes me instantly.
@Nightjar. Heard there’s a dead body at the Falls. You hear anything?
I stretch my fingers, rolling my shoulders back. Words scroll fast across the chat, people speculating wildly.
I start collecting: snippets of chatter, references to time stamps, the first vague mentions of “that girl a couple years ago” and “didn’t some psycho stalk her?” My pulse ratchets up with each line.
Probably the boyfriend. It’s always the boyfriend.
I heard she was eviscerated.
I bet it’s her boss. She worked at that club.
She had it coming.
Already, a username I recognize from an old Thurston thread has popped in.
Heard it’s connected. Source is good.
Adrenaline spikes, and I shake out my hands.
Where did you hear that? I type, fingers flying.
The typing dots appear beside their handle. Then disappear. Reappear. Vanish again.
“Come on, come on,” I mutter.
Nothing.
“Shit.”
I rip my headphones off and let them dangle from my neck, the music tinny and too loud in the stillness of my apartment. Whoever that was, they spooked themselves enough to bail mid-sentence.
Could be a troll. Could be someone who lives with someone who knows someone on the search and rescue team. Could be Henry Thurston himself, getting off on stirring shit up.
My stomach twists.
Regardless, it reinforces the theory that’s been tapping at the back of my skull since Jack answered his phone.
Henry never stopped. He just went quiet. Went somewhere else, maybe, or just sat back and watched for a while.
Sighing, I exit the chat room and tab over to a national crime database I hacked into earlier. Earlier, I programmed it to run a search and find any similar crimes in other locations.
I kept the target field isolated to the state of Virginia, choosing to start narrow and gradually broaden if necessary.
I input several parameters, using what I knew of Shiloh’s abduction, the previous area murders, and the new crime.
A blinking cursor alerts me that the search is complete, and I click, revealing neat rows and columns of data.
“Bingo.” Over the last year, seven similar crimes were filed as open cases in the DC metro area, Baltimore, Tennessee, and North Carolina.
Each of the crimes starts with a missing girl, from bartenders to waitresses to hikers and travelers.
The only connective thread was that the women seemed to be somewhat solidly in the 'loner' category, given to hanging out by themselves rather than in groups.
There wasn't a lot of connective tissue with cause of death, either—it ranged from a broken neck to a bullet to the brain to asphyxiation.
It either wasn't one killer, or he wasn't particular. Or maybe he was simply really, really smart and knew that the more random he made things, the more difficult he would make things for those hunting him.
The crimes were scattered enough—geographically and behaviorally—that nothing had sparked an alert. But I’m looking, now, and I see it. “I see you,” I murmur.
Taking several screenshots, I send the information to Jack using an anonymous and several-times re-routed IP address. Jack will know it’s me, but he’ll also have plausible deniability when he sends a request for more help up the ladder.
Henry Thurston is still active. The question is why, when he was flying under the radar in NOVA, did he decide to come back to Lucy Falls?
The whole thing reeks of unfinished business, which is not going to make Gunner and Shiloh feel better.
I sit there for a moment, my hands hovering over the keys.
If I drop his name in the chat, it’s going to light up like a bug zapper in July. The speculation will multiply. The rumors will sprout legs and run.
But that’s how you drag things into the light. You stir the murky water and see what floats.
I take a deep breath and type.
I heard it’s Henry Thurston.
Hitting enter is like pulling the pin on a grenade. Not that I’ve ever done that, of course, but I watched Seal Team Six. And it’s the same.
Notifications explode. A flood of replies pours in—some panicked, some dismissive, some grossly excited. I mute the worst offenders and start sorting the rest into folders. It’s chaos, but chaos has patterns if you know how to look.
And patterns have always been my thing.
I make a few notes, set a couple of scraping bots to pull relevant keywords overnight, and finally close the laptop.
Rising, I stretch and crack my knuckles, the sound loud and obnoxious in the quiet apartment. I pick up the TV remote and then toss it down again, taking a few restless steps toward the kitchen before pausing and turning toward the hall closet, where I keep my winter gear and holiday decorations.
It’s late, but my brain is buzzing too hard to even think about sleep.
I can’t just sit here. I need to do something.
Decorating it is.
My apartment is small—one bedroom, one bath, a living space the size of a generous walk-in closet—but it’s mine. White walls I can’t paint, ancient carpet, a heater that sounds like it’s dying every time it kicks on.
I’ve hacked the thermostat twice to get more consistent heat out of it. My landlord sends me passive aggressive texts about “unauthorized modifications” every few months, and I pretend not to know what he’s talking about.
I have just enough space for the scrawny pre-lit twig of a tree I picked up on clearance at Walmart. It stands in the corner by the window, a pathetic little skeleton, branches too spindly for any ornament heavier than a cotton ball.
“Okay, little guy,” I murmur. “Let’s make you less tragic.”
I pull the single box of ornaments I brought from my parents’ house before I sold it out of the closet and begin hanging the multi-colored glass balls. The colors bounce weakly off the white walls. Red, gold, blue, silver. The effect is…better. Not great.
The tree is still mostly empty. Mostly bare.
It’s like a metaphor for your life, my traitor brain whispers.
My mother’s special ornaments are wrapped in tissue paper that’s turning brittle with age. I peel it back carefully, heart squeezing when I see her handwriting on a torn piece of notebook paper: Tally’s box.
I trace the loops of the T with my thumb. She always called me Tallulah when she was mad or proud, Tally when she was everything else. Nobody calls me either, anymore, not really. A part of me misses it.
The other part of me doesn't want the reminder.
I lift out a tiny blown-glass hummingbird, wings outstretched, body swirled with greens and blues. When I was little, Mom would hold it up to the window and tilt it so the light caught the colors, making the whole living room glow.
She had a thing for hummingbirds and treated this ornament like a crown jewel. It only came out at Christmas. Only went on the tree when I was the one to hang it.
I haven’t been able to look at it for two years, not since metastatic breast cancer took her.
My throat tightens.
“You’re being ridiculous,” I tell myself softly. “It’s a glass bird, not a bomb.”
Even so, my hands shake as I carry it to the tree.
I pick a branch near the bottom where it won’t weigh too much on the fake twigs and hook the little wire over the plastic. The bird swings for a moment, catching the white lights, casting soft color over the wall.
It hurts, in that weird way good memories and grief sometimes fuse. A little slice of my mother’s magic in a room that’s never seen her, or my father, or anyone like them.
“This will be the perfect reminder,” I whisper. “Of her. Not of…”
Not of the way both of them left in winter. Not of the hospital. Not of the hollow space in the pew at the funeral.
I step back and squint at the tree, adjusting the angle of the hummingbird by a millimeter.
There. Almost right.
The thunk from my front door is so unexpected it slices clean through my thoughts.
I go still.
Another sound follows—a low slide, like something hard dragging over metal.
“Brodie?” I call, heart beginning to pound. He’s the only one who would ever drop by this late. Then I glance at the old analog clock on my wall. It’s after eleven. Even he announces himself before midnight.
And he’s already been here.
Silence.
A second later, the doorknob rattles.
Every cell in my body slams into alert.
My hand finds my phone on the end table by muscle memory. I back away from the door even as my brain starts doing what it always does—mapping. Door. Window. Back patio sliders. Kitchen drawers. Distance to the gun in the bedroom safe.
“Who’s there?” I demand, voice shaking despite my best effort.
The answer is a laugh. Low. Amused. So ordinary it’s wrong.
“Knock, knock,” a man’s voice says through the door.
Cold sweeps over me, down my spine, into my fingertips.
I know that voice.
“I’m calling the police.” My thumb is already on Jack’s contact.
“Your voice is shaking, little girl,” he croons. “You’re smart to be scared.”
My heart slams against my ribs hard enough to hurt.
“Go away,” I snap, moving back until my shoulders hit the opposite wall. “The police are already on their way. And I have a gun. And cameras. You’re on all of them.”
I don’t wait for him to answer before I hit Jack’s name. The call connects on the first ring.
“Twiggy?” he barks. Background noise spills through—radio chatter, rumble of a car engine.
“He’s here.” My voice cracks. “Jack, he’s at my door.”