CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Elena tightened her grip on Piper’s arm. She turned the disoriented woman into Brenda’s living room quickly, before she could glimpse the unconscious woman who lay at the far end of the hallway. Her carefully constructed plan was unraveling.
“Here, sit down,” Elena said, her voice steadier than she felt as she directed the intruder to Brenda’s floral armchair. Piper slumped into the seat, her eyes unfocused, lips moving in silent conversation with voices only she could hear.
For a long moment, Elena just stood staring at her.
The resemblance to Jenna was startling. But this wasn’t the sheriff.
This was her newly returned twin, the woman whose reappearance had captivated Trentville for a week.
What was the sheriff’s twin doing here at this hour, at this house?
And why was she wearing a scarf that Sophie had made?
Then Elena realized that the sirens she’d heard wailing had come to a stop next door—not here. What were the police doing at her own house? Had they figured out …
She glanced back at Piper, who sat rocking slightly, her movements almost imperceptible. The woman looked ill, disconnected from reality.
Perhaps she could make good use of this unexpected visitor. Pretend Elena could say she’d come to check on Brenda after receiving a disturbed phone call, only to find her injured and Piper here in a confused state. Play the concerned community leader, the helpful neighbor.
How difficult would it be to cast suspicion in that direction? To suggest that perhaps Piper had never been a victim at all, but had returned to Trentville with darker purpose?
“I’ll get your water,” she told Piper. “Just stay right here and rest for a moment.”
*
Jenna pulled up behind one of the patrol cars parked haphazardly in front of Elena Bowers’ home. The steady throb of red and blue lights washed across the neighborhood in rhythmic waves. Lights had flickered on in neighboring homes, curious faces appearing at windows.
She killed the engine and stepped out into the crisp night air, scanning the street as she approached the small front yard.
Jake emerged from the shadows at the side of the house, his familiar stride and broad shoulders a reassuring sight.
“We’ve tried knocking,” he said without preamble. “Called her phone too. No response.”
“Her car’s here,” Jenna noted, glancing at the blue sedan parked in the driveway.
“Yeah. Engine’s cold. Been here a while.” Jake gestured toward the house.
Jenna struggle with her next course of action. Probable cause was a stretch, based on nothing more than a dream she’d just had and her sister’s disappearance. But she had to make the most of it.
She gestured to two officers standing by one of the patrol cars.
“We’re going in,” she announced. “Probable cause—suspect in two homicides. Standard search protocol—we don’t know if she’s here or if there might be someone else inside.
” She hesitated, then added, “My twin sister Piper is missing. I don’t know if she’s here, but watch for her. ”
She saw that her team was eager to go. “Two of you watch the back,” she instructed the officers. “Jake and I will go through the front with the rest.”
As Jake and another officer made quick work of the front door, Jenna drew her service weapon. If Elena was the killer … if Piper had somehow gotten caught in the middle of this—there were too many ifs, too many possibilities, each darker than the last.
*
Piper could barely focus on the woman standing before her, the room tilting and spinning as if the house itself were caught in a violent storm. The voices had become a hundred whispers overlapping into a roar of desperate warnings—danger, death, yarn, stop her.
Somewhere beneath the clamor, Piper’s own thoughts struggled to surface, trying to make sense of how she’d come to be sitting in a stranger’s living room in the middle of the night.
“Are you feeling any better?” the woman asked, her voice coated with artificial concern.
“The voices,” Piper managed, forcing each word past the pressure in her throat.
“What voices, Piper? What are they saying?”
“Killer. Killer. She has the yarn. White is for self-righteousness.”
The woman moved closer, her hand extending toward Piper’s shoulder. “You’re not well. Let me help you—”
Something inside Piper snapped. A surge of clarity burned through the fog, igniting a spark of resistance.
“STOP IT!” she shouted, the words tearing from her throat with such force that the woman before her flinched back. “STOP IT NOW!”
The world froze. The voices vanished as if sliced away by a knife, leaving behind a ringing silence. In that moment of quiet, Piper’s mind cleared, edges sharpening into focus for the first time since she’d left her mother’s house.
She looked up at the woman who stood before her, but now Piper saw what lay beneath the mask of concern: cold calculation, barely contained panic, the flat gaze of someone who had taken human life and could do so again.
“I know what you’ve done,” Piper said, her voice steadier now. “I can see it on you.”
The woman’s expression hardened into something predatory. “You don’t know anything,” she said. “You’re confused. Delusional. No one will believe anything you say.”
A low groan drifted from somewhere deeper in the house—weak, pained, but unmistakably human. Both women’s heads turned toward the sound.
“Someone else is here,” Piper said, pushing herself upright from the chair. Her legs trembled beneath her, but held. “Someone you’ve hurt.”
“Sit down,” the woman commanded, her gentle tone abandoned. “That’s none of your concern.”
“It is my concern,” Piper countered, taking a step forward. “I was brought here to stop you.”
The woman moved with unexpected speed, positioning herself between Piper and the hallway. “You weren’t ‘brought’ anywhere,” she hissed. “You wandered here in some psychotic episode. If you try to leave this room, I’ll be forced to restrain you for your own safety.”
“Move,” Piper said simply.
The woman lunged then, hands outstretched toward Piper’s throat. But Piper had a physical strength born of daily farm labor. Her hand shot out, catching the woman’s wrist and twisting sharply.
Using the woman’s own momentum, Piper pulled her off balance, then planted her palm firmly against the woman’s sternum, shoving with all the strength she’d built over years of lifting and carrying.
The woman’s feet left the ground for an instant before she crashed onto the hardwood floor, the impact forcing air from her lungs in an audible whoosh.
Piper didn’t wait for her to recover. She stepped over the fallen woman and moved swiftly toward the direction of the groan, finding herself in a hallway leading toward the back of the house.
Halfway down the hall, an older woman with silver hair lay on the floor. A trickle of dried blood snaked from her temple down the side of her face. The woman’s eyelids fluttered.
Behind Piper, the sound of movement indicated the younger woman was regaining her feet
“What should I do?” Piper asked aloud, the question directed not at either woman but at the voices that had guided her here.
Then, a single voice—clear, calm, somehow familiar though she couldn’t place it—spoke from the void.
“Go to the kitchen window. Hurry!”
*
Jenna moved into Elena Bowers’ empty house with her service weapon drawn. Nothing seemed out of place except the glaring absence of the woman herself.
“Sheriff,” Officer Martinez called from a back room. “You need to see this.”
Jenna found him standing in what appeared to be a craft room, walls lined with shelves containing neatly organized supplies. Her flashlight illuminated a bulletin board on the far wall, covered with photographs, newspaper clippings, and handwritten notes.
Derek Sullivan’s sneering face stared out from one image, Amanda Hartford’s bitter smile from another. Red yarn pinned beside Derek, green beside Amanda. And there, in the center, a photograph of Brenda Drummond with a length of pristine white yarn beneath it.
“She’s done this,” Jenna murmured. “All of it.”
Then something outside the room’s window caught her eye. A light in the house next door, a movement in that window. A nosy neighbor? Is that where Brenda lives?
Jenna peered more closely. Then the figure was jerked away, out of sight.
“That was Piper!” Jenna’s voice cracked with fear and urgency. She was already moving, running out through the back door and toward that light. She found herself at the back of the neighboring house and tried the door. Unlocked.
By that time, Jake was beside her.
“Piper’s inside. I think she’s in trouble.”
Jenna entered first, weapon drawn. Elena Bowers had Piper pinned with her face against a wall, a thin cord held around Piper’s throat.
“Elena!” Jenna shouted, her voice carrying the full authority of her position. “Release her and step back! Now!”
Elena’s head jerked toward the sound, her eyes widening at the sight of Jenna and the deputy beside her. For one terrible moment, Jenna thought she might tighten the cord anyway, might complete the murder even as justice closed in around her.
Piper didn’t wait for Elena’s decision. She drove an elbow into the body behind her. As Elena gasped and lost her grip, Piper turned and shoved her away with both hands.
“Hands where I can see them, Elena!” Jake ordered, his weapon trained on the woman who now stood trapped.
Elena’s shoulders sagged, the fight draining from her. The cord dangled from her fingers for a moment before falling to the floor.
“On your knees, hands behind your head,” Jenna commanded, advancing with her weapon aimed at Elena’s center mass. Only when Elena had complied, only when Jake had stepped forward to secure her wrists with handcuffs and began stating her rights, did Jenna allow herself to look at her sister.
Piper leaned against the kitchen wall, breathing heavily. Their eyes met across the room, identical green finding identical green, and something passed between them—a recognition deeper than words, an understanding of the darkness they had both faced and survived.
Several of Jenna’s police team were arriving now, taking over the prisoner.
“Are you hurt?” Jenna asked Piper, holstering her weapon.
“No, but check on her,” she replied. “In the hallway. The woman is injured.”
Jenna moved to see where her sister was pointing and saw Brenda Drummond beginning to stir on the floor.
“Call for medical,” Jenna instructed one of her team. “We need paramedics.”
As Elena was led away and Jake was attending to Brenda Drummond, Jenna crossed to her sister. For a moment, they simply looked at each other, the weight of the night’s events settling between them. Then Jenna pulled Piper into her arms.