Chapter 1
BECOME HIS MISSION
Fifteen Years Later
“Rory, stop being a dickhead.”
“You’re a dickhead,” he said, giving her a playful shove.
She’d aged some in his dreams, but not much. It was like his brain couldn’t process she would have turned thirty months ago.
She still had straight brown hair down the middle of her back. Sometimes she was sporting a ponytail, other times, braids, this time it was straight and flowing. The stretchy jeans she had on were ripped in the knees, her T-shirt baggy and cut off at her waist, her feet bare.
“I can’t be a dickhead if I don’t have a dick,” she said, flopping on his bed. His sister always sat on his bed when he was dreaming, if she wasn’t walking around his room.
It drove him insane that he couldn’t dream of her anywhere else other than talking to him in his bedroom while he was sleeping, as if his subconscious had to anchor him, reminding him this was only a dream and not proof he was losing his mind. The way he’d feared for years.
Maybe he wouldn’t mind seeing her outside walking, or riding a bike, going on a hike, even drawing on the deck. All those things she’d enjoyed.
Nope, had to be a bedroom conversation, like the last one they had before he never saw her alive again.
It wasn’t as if he’d ever admitted to anyone that he’d been dreaming of his dead sister for more than a decade. The dreams hadn’t even started right away, which, in hindsight, was probably a good thing.
They began after college. When he was in the police academy.
Finding his sister’s killer had become his mission. Solving the crime no one else could had been his purpose in life. The one thing that kept him going when everything else crumbled.
But five years on the force had taught him one hard truth. He didn’t belong there.
“Why are you bothering me?” he muttered. “I was hoping my next scene could play out in my head, not be spent talking to my annoying little sister.”
Rene leaned back on her elbow, her gaze on the ceiling. Only then did he realize they weren’t in his apartment at all. They were in his childhood bedroom. This was a new one.
“You’re looking in all the wrong places, Rory. And focusing on the wrong things.”
He normally didn’t stall like this when writing. Five bestsellers behind him and a fresh contract for a new series already signed for small-town crimes.
Figures. No wonder he was struggling.
Too many memories of the actual crime he’d lived through, not the ones he was supposed to invent.
Did he think that writing about crime, mystery, and justice would somehow help him uncover the truth about his sister?
Yes. Arrogant on his part, he knew.
But so far, he’d been nothing more than a failure to his sister. Just as he had been the day she died when he should have been watching her.
“Tell me what I’m missing then?” he asked.
He wanted to beg. Plead. Get down on one knee and yell.
All the things he’d done for years but still got no answers out of her.
The only people who knew what happened to his sister that night were Rene and whoever killed her.
No DNA on her body, nothing but bruises on her neck from where she’d been strangled.
A crime of passion, but this was more about rage. Her petite frame lifted in the air by her neck as the air was squeezed out of her. Her head almost disconnected from her body as if she had been tossed over someone’s shoulders.
The individual responsible was strong and capable enough.
Not the person who was falsely on trial and finally found not guilty.
He never believed Cooper Stevens did it, but his father wouldn’t listen.
“There are a lot of things you’re missing. The same as everyone else.” She put one foot on his bed, her toes wiggling close to his face.
He was ready to shove it off his pillow when he noticed the blue threads on her ankle.
That silly bracelet she’d made with strings she’d found in the cabin his parents rented.
It looked different this time, but since it was the first he was seeing it in a dream, he was going to remember what he could.
His hand went out to touch it. It wasn’t real, he couldn’t feel it, but his fingers felt as if they could.
There were four strings and a knot holding them on her ankle. Tighter than he remembered. As if it was pulled more than it should be and leaving an indentation in her skin.
It was looser when he’d noticed it that night. And wider maybe? Was there more on it before?
Why couldn’t he remember anything? But he knew something wasn’t right.
The knot!
There were more frayed threads hanging off of it. Rene was particular about things like that. She would have trimmed it so that it was neat and even burned the edges so it was smooth.
“Is this the clue?” he asked her. “What do you want me to know?”
She smiled at him and drifted away, her voice just an echo in his head. “You can do it, Rory. I know you can.”
He sat up with a jolt, grabbed his phone and talked into it, describing exactly what he’d seen. The entire dream, he recorded each memory, each thought, each emotion he’d felt.
One thing he’d learned was to leave nothing out.
He’d sort through it another time. For now, it was just one more clue among thousands, details he remembered that led nowhere, along with notes he’d chased into dead ends. The frustration had piled so high it had nearly broken him more times than he could count.
When he set his phone down, he noticed it was nine in the morning. He never slept that late. Ever.
But he’d been up past two this morning searching his brain for the start of his next series.
Or the location he was going to use, the characters he needed, the personalities to bring his mysteries to life.
He had time, he’d get there. He always did.
After a shower, he found himself in the kitchen looking for something to eat, but he couldn’t get the dream of Rene out of his head.
He needed to see the evidence again. He had to get his hands on the ankle bracelet that everyone else overlooked. Even him. For fifteen fucking years.
Would it be another wild goose chase? Most likely, but he wouldn’t be able to rest until he crossed it off the growing list of clues with red lines through them.
As much as it killed him to do this, he called his mother.
“Rory,” Katy Connors said. “How are you this morning? You don’t normally call.”
“I know,” he said. “I had a dream.”
“Of Rene? How does she look?”
He battled the tears away. His mother wasn’t there to see them. She was the only one who knew. The only one he confided in because his mother confessed that Rene had been visiting her for years.
He hated to think his sister was trapped between worlds. If there was more than one world.
Was she trying to be free? Was she helping them? Looking out for them?
So many questions that he had no answers for.
“She’s doing well. Busting my ass as always. She left me another clue.”
“It’s like a game to her now,” his mother said.
Normally he’d agree. That it was his sister’s ghost playing pranks from the grave. Not this time. This time, he felt it in his gut. The churning and coiling that told him now was the time.
This was too strong. Too deep. The clarity and the importance were not lost on him that it was something only he noticed before she’d left the house and even commented on when his parents were questioned.
He just didn’t know what any of it meant.
“Could be,” he said, not wanting to get her hopes up.
Too many times over the years he’d done that internally, then protected his mother, only for them both to be crushed when nothing came about it.
As for his father, they barely spoke anymore. Mike Connors completely withdrew, his life over when his daughter died, blaming himself more than Rory did. He knew his father blamed his only son too and it was for the best that relationship no longer existed.
His parents had given up on each other. More like his father had given up on life, now just a shell of the man Rory had remembered.
His mother, she never gave up, even dug in so much that she pushed his father away.
Their family had been broken in more than one way on the last vacation they’d ever had together.
“I’m sure you’re going to sink your teeth into it. Are you going to tell me what it is?”
“No,” he said. He stopped sharing those details unless he thought she could add to them. This one she couldn’t. He knew that. “I’m going to look into it some more.”
“How are you going to do that? Make more calls to the Warren County Sheriff’s office? Or the DA?”
He shook his head. “No. I’m going back to Lake George. It’s time.”
He hadn’t been back once since the verdict. Didn’t feel he could put himself through it.
Everything he’d researched, everything he’d done, or clues he’d looked for had all been from afar.
Maybe that was part of the problem. Maybe it was time to immerse himself back in history.
He just hoped he came out in one piece.