CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Jenna pulled into the driveway, killed the engine, and checked her reflection in the rearview mirror—dark circles beneath her eyes, hair hastily combed. Sleep had been scarce since finding Piper, and last night’s dream visitation had left her more exhausted than restored.
As made her way up the path to the front door, Jenna felt the slight weight of the brooch in her pocket. She hesitated at the door, then decided that rather than ringing the bell she should let herself into the quiet house with her own key. She opened the door then called out softly, “Mom? Piper?”
“In the kitchen,” her mother replied, her voice sounding strained.
She found Mom standing by the stove, looking concerned. On the table sat two plates of barely touched food—blueberry pancakes with real maple syrup. The scene of abandoned breakfasts spoke of interrupted plans, of expectations unmet.
“What’s wrong Mom?” Jenna asked.
“It’s Piper. She’s... retreated this morning. Won’t eat, barely speaks.” She gestured toward the table. “I made her favorite—at least, what used to be her favorite. She took one bite and then just... shut down. Went back upstairs to her room.”
“Did something happen? Did she say anything?”
“Nothing specific. Just that she felt strange, like something was wrong.” Mom’s eyes, the same green as Jenna’s and Piper’s, clouded with worry. “But I think she’s afraid…of something.”
Jenna wondered if she should have called first, warned her mother about Wendell’s message: “Piper is sensitive … to darkness … feels it like a physical presence.”
“I had a dream last night,” she said softly. “About Wendell Gillis.”
Mom’s eyebrows rose. “Another visitation? From Piper’s farmer friend?”
“Yes. He warned me about Piper’s unusual sensitivities. But he also told me something important that might help.” She patted her pocket. “I have something to show her. It’s that brooch I found a while back. Wendell says it’s connected to Piper’s past.”
Mom studied her face for a long moment, then nodded. “She’s in your old room.” She wiped her hands on a dishtowel, a gesture so ordinary it made the strangeness of their situation all the more apparent. “I’ll come with you. She might need both of us.”
They climbed the stairs together. The door to their childhood bedroom stood partially open. Jenna knocked gently, then pushed it wider.
“Piper? It’s me, Jenna. Mom’s here too. Can we come in?”
The room beyond was dim, curtains drawn against the morning sun. Piper sat cross-legged on her bed, her gaze was fixed on the wall, though Jenna doubted she was actually seeing the faded posters and photographs that still hung there.
“Hey,” Jenna said softly, moving to sit on the edge of the bed.” Mom says you’re not feeling well this morning.”
“Something’s coming,” Piper said. “I can feel it—like static before a storm. But I can’t... I can’t put it into words.”
“A bad feeling?” Jenna prompted, watching her sister’s face carefully.
“Dread,” Piper clarified, the word falling heavily between them.
“Like standing on the edge of a cliff in fog, knowing there’s a drop but not being able to see how far.
” She finally turned to look at Jenna, her eyes hollow with exhaustion.
“It’s been building since before dawn. The voices—they’re not clear, just.. . whispers. Warnings, maybe.”
Jenna glanced back at their mother, who remained standing in the doorway. Mom nodded slightly, giving permission for whatever Jenna had planned. Slowly, carefully, she withdrew the brooch from her pocket, keeping it concealed in her closed palm.
“Piper, I want to show you something. Something that might help you remember.” Jenna revealed the tarnished metal and opal stone nestled in her palm. “Do you recognize this?”
For a moment, Piper’s expression didn’t change. Then her eyes widened, focusing on the brooch with sudden intensity. Her breath caught, and she reached out, but not quite touching it.
“Where did you find it?” she whispered, her voice thick with emotion.
“In a well. In Whispering Pines Forest.”
Piper’s finally reached out to the brooch, tracing its outline as if confirming its reality.
“I put it there,” she said, wonder breaking through the dread in her voice.
“The well. I remember—I was running. Always running. The voices told me to leave it there, that it would find its way to someone who needed to find me.”
Mom stepped further into the room, drawn by the change in Piper’s demeanor. “You remember this brooch?”
“Yes. No. It’s coming back in pieces.” Piper took the brooch from Jenna’s palm. “Patricia gave it to me. Said it would protect me.”
“Patricia?” Jenna repeated, her pulse quickening. Was her sister talking about a girl who had come to her in a dream—a girl who had disappeared years ago, and was surely long dead?
“Yes, Patricia Gaines,” Piper replied, her gaze remained fixed on the opal. “At the Lost and Found Collective. She had been there longer than anyone else. She saw something in me—something familiar, she said. The day I left, she pressed this into my hand. Told me to keep it close.”
The memories seemed to be flowing now, gaining momentum like a stream after a long drought. Piper’s face was more animated than Jenna had seen since their reunion, color returning to her cheeks.
“I remember more now,” Piper continued, her voice stronger.
“The day I left home. Twenty years ago. I was sixteen, and the voices had been getting worse for months. Telling me terrible things—that I was dangerous, that I would hurt you, hurt Mom and Dad.” Her eyes filled with tears.
“They said I had to go, had to disappear. That I should change my name, become someone else entirely. Emma Kirby. They gave me that name.”
“Oh, Piper,” Mom murmured, moving to sit on the other side of the bed, creating a protective circle around her daughter.
“I believed them,” Piper said, the tears spilling over now.
“I was so scared, so confused. And eventually... eventually I forgot I was ever Piper Graves. The voices made sure of that. They kept me isolated, kept me running whenever I started to form connections. Years passed—homeless shelters, streets, odd jobs that never lasted.”
“Until you found the Lost and Found Collective?”
“Yes. I was... I don’t know, maybe twenty-six by then?
” Piper’s gaze grew distant, remembering.
“I saw a flyer on a bulletin board at a bus station. ‘Lost your way? Find yourself again.’ There was an address, a phone number. I called, and a man named Eliot Lansing answered. He said I could stay as long as I needed, no questions asked.”
“What was it like there?” Mom asked, her voice gentle.
“Peaceful. A working farm—vegetables, some chickens and goats. People living and working together. Everyone had their story, their reasons for being there. No one pushed for details. Patricia was different from the others. Quieter. Watchful. She sought me out the second day, said she’d been waiting for someone like me. ”
“Someone with your ability,” Jenna said.
Piper nodded. “She understood what it was like—the voices, the knowing things you shouldn’t know.
She’d been experiencing it since she was a child.
That’s why she ended up at the collective.
” A shadow crossed her face. “But even there, the voices found me. After a week, they started again—warnings, threats. Told me I would bring harm to these people who had shown me kindness.”
“So you left,” Jenna concluded.
“Yes. But Patricia saw me packing. She gave me this brooch—said it was special, that it would guide me to where I needed to be. I wore it for years.” Piper’s expression darkened. “Until the Harvesters found me.”
A chill ran through Jenna at the mention of the human traffickers who had preyed on vulnerable people throughout the Midwest. She had encountered their handiwork during a recent case.
“You were their captive,” she said, the realization sickening her.
“For months. About five or six years ago.” Piper swallowed hard, her grip on the brooch tightening. “Me and four others. They kept moving us around, sometimes at night. They were... collecting people. People without connections, who wouldn’t be missed.”
Mom made a small, wounded sound. “But we missed you. Every day.”
“I didn’t know who I was anymore,” Piper said, turning to her mother with eyes full of regret. “Emma Kirby had been real to me for so long by then.”
“How did you escape?” Jenna asked, steering the conversation back to the facts, trying to piece together the fragments of her sister’s lost years.
“There was a woman—Jill. Another captive. She figured out how to unlock the door when they moved us to a new location. We ran in different directions. I had the brooch with me, hidden in my shoe. But as I ran through Whispering Pines Forest, the voices told me to drop it in the well—that it would find its way to someone who could help me.” A small, wondering smile touched her lips. “And it found you.”
“After you escaped,” Jenna prompted, “you eventually found Wendell Gillis.”
“Yes, though not right away. I wandered for months, afraid the Harvesters would find me again. Then one day about four or five years ago, I felt... pulled. Like an invisible thread was guiding me. I followed it to Wendell’s farm.
” Her expression softened at the memory.
“He took one look at me and said, ‘I’ve been expecting you.’ He knew, somehow.
He understood the voices, the visions. For the first time in years, I wasn’t alone in what I experienced. ”
The pieces were falling into place now—the twenty-year puzzle of Piper’s disappearance forming a coherent, if heartbreaking, picture. Jenna felt a complex mix of emotions: grief for all her sister had endured, relief at finally understanding, anger at the forces that had kept them apart.
Suddenly, Piper stiffened, the brooch falling to the bedspread. Her eyes went distant, unfocused, her breathing shallow and quick.
“Piper?” Jenna touched her arm, alarmed by the abrupt change. “What is it?”
“Green,” Piper whispered, the word escaping on a breath that seemed dragged from her lungs. “Green is for envy.”
Ice ran through Jenna’s veins. It was the same pattern. First “Red is for rage” preceding Derek Sullivan’s murder, and now these words.
“Piper, what do you see? What are you feeling?” she asked urgently.
But Piper seemed trapped in the vision, her eyes staring at something beyond the walls of their childhood bedroom. “Green yarn,” she murmured. “Wrapped around and around. Like a web. A woman. She’s gone now.”
Before Jenna could press further, her phone rang in her pocket—Jake’s distinctive ringtone. She pulled it out and answered, her eyes never leaving her sister’s face.
“Jake,” she said, already knowing what he would say.
“Jenna,” his voice was grim, professional. “I’m sorry to disturb you so early, but we’ve got another one. Amanda Hartford. Found in her apartment this morning by a friend. Same MO as Sullivan.”
“Green is for envy,” Jenna said, echoing her sister’s words.
A startled pause on the other end. “Yes, exactly. How did you—”
“Piper,” Jenna said simply. “Where are you now?”
“On my way to where it happened.”
“Pick me up at my mother’s house.”
“I’ll do that.”
The call ended, and Jenna’s eyes met her sister’s.
“What does this mean?” Piper whispered. “It’s happening again, isn’t it? The darkness I’ve been running from all these years. It’s found me.”
Jenna squeezed Piper’s hand.
“You don’t need to run away from anything,” she said. “And you’re not alone in having these kinds of experiences.”
“Jenna has them too,” Mom said.
“That’s right,” Jenna said. “Mine are different from yours—not as strong, I don’t think. But they help me in my work. They help me stop murderers. They help me save lives. And you can do that too. You can help me.”
Piper’s eyes widened; she didn’t seem to know what to say.
“I’ll explain it to you, dear,” Mom said to Piper. “Your sister has to go.”
“We’ll face this thing together,” Jenna promised her sister. “Whatever this darkness is, whatever’s happening in Trentville, you’re not alone anymore.”
Jenna picked up the brooch from where it had fallen on the bedspread, turning it over in her palm. The opal caught the light, reflecting prisms of color—blue, green, a flash of red. Colors that suddenly seemed as ominous as they were beautiful, as if predicting more deaths to come.