CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Riley and Bill hadn’t spoken much since Garner Hogue’s phone call.
What was there to say? Leo had sent them chasing ghosts while Jilly remained in his grasp.
And now they were driving toward a location Riley had sworn never to revisit, a place where water and blood and terror had all combined on a night she’d tried desperately to forget.
“You doing okay?” Bill asked, his voice cutting through the silence.
Riley didn’t take her eyes off the road. “Fine.”
It was a lie, and they both knew it. Nothing about this was fine. They were both like two taut strings, pulled to their limit and threatening to snap at any moment.
Neither she nor Bill had gotten any sleep since the night before last. Her youngest daughter was missing, her oldest daughter was being terrorized from afar, and a psychopath with an obsessive fixation on Riley was orchestrating it all.
“We’re about ten minutes out,” she said, more to fill the silence than to inform Bill of something he already knew.
He had been there that awful night, too—arriving after it was over, finding her kneeling in the muddy shallows, April sobbing in her arms, Peterson’s body floating face-up in the current.
“If he’s there,” Bill said, “we need to be prepared for anything.”
Riley nodded, though doubt had been increasing with every mile. “I’m not sure he will be. This feels like...”
“A diversion?” Bill finished for her.
“Or worse. A mind game.” She sighed. “He’s studied me. Studied all of us. He knows exactly what buttons to push.”
The late autumn landscape slid past the windows—skeletal trees reaching toward a pewter sky. In the distance, Riley could see the river, a silver-gray ribbon winding through the landscape. Her heart quickened at the sight of it.
She slowed the car as they approached a bend in the road that she recognized with sickening clarity. This was as close as the road got to the spot they were headed toward. Now Riley pulled the car onto the shoulder of the road. She cut the engine, and the sudden silence felt oppressive.
“No other cars,” Bill observed, scanning the empty road stretching in both directions.
“Maybe he parked elsewhere. Or came on foot.” But even as she said it, Riley knew it was unlikely. This place was isolated, the nearest town fifteen minutes by car.
“Or maybe he’s not here at all,” Bill said softly, voicing her own growing suspicion.
Riley pushed open her door. She stood, stretching her legs after the drive, and surveyed their surroundings.
The woods looked peaceful, ordinary. Birds called to one another among the branches.
The wind sighed through the trees. Nothing suggested the horror that had unfolded here years ago.
Nothing suggested anyone had been here recently.
“Let’s check it out anyway,” she said, retrieving her weapon from its holster. “We need to be sure.”
Bill nodded in agreement as they left the road and entered the woods. The path wasn’t marked, but Riley didn’t need signs to guide her. Her feet remembered the way, stepping over fallen logs and skirting bramble patches.
“I’ve informed Hogue we’re checking the site,” Bill said, tucking his phone back into his pocket. “He’s got a team on standby if we need them.”
Riley worried again about how tired both she and Bill were. In all the years they’d worked together, she’d never once had to question his support. But now something seemed to have changed. With emotions running high and the stakes impossibly personal, she felt an unspoken tension between them.
The forest floor was springy beneath their feet, cushioned with years of accumulated pine needles and decaying leaves.
“No footprints,” Bill observed, crouching to examine the ground. “No broken branches or disturbed vegetation. If someone came this way recently, they were extremely careful.”
“Or they didn’t come through here at all,” Riley said, her certainty growing with each step they took.
They continued in silence, the only sounds their measured breathing and the occasional snapping twig beneath their feet.
Riley tried to focus on the present moment—the air filling her lungs, the dappled sunlight filtering through the canopy above, the solid presence of Bill beside her—but her mind kept slipping backward in time.
The woods had looked different that night.
Darker. Malevolent. Each shadow had seemed to conceal a threat; each sound had been magnified by her fear.
She had moved through the trees with her heart in her throat, guided only by the distant sounds of struggle and her desperate need to reach her daughter.
“Riley,” Bill’s voice pulled her back to the present. “We’re close.”
She nodded, unable to trust her voice. The sound of flowing water reached her ears now, growing louder with each step. Through the trees ahead, she could see sunlight reflecting off the river’s surface.
They emerged from the woods onto a small rise overlooking the water.
The river flowed past them, wide and deep, its surface rippled by the wind.
Directly below, a narrow strip of muddy bank gave way to the water.
There was nothing remarkable about this spot—nothing to suggest it was different from any other bend in the river.
Nothing except the memories that crashed over Riley like the current below.
Her knees threatened to buckle, and she reached out instinctively, her hand finding Bill’s arm for support.
“Easy,” he murmured, steadying her.
Riley closed her eyes, but that only made the images more vivid.
She was back there again, wading knee-deep into the river, the cold water numbing her legs, the shotgun heavy in her hands.
Ahead of her, Peterson stood with April, his arm locked around her neck, a gun pressed to her temple.
April’s face had been pale in the moonlight, her eyes wide with terror, but there had been something else there too—a fierce determination that mirrored Riley’s own.
April hadn’t been a passive victim. She had fought, had managed to escape briefly before Peterson recaptured her and brought her to this river, thinking the remote location would give him privacy for what he planned to do.
Riley opened her eyes, the present slowly reasserting itself around her. Bill was watching her with concern, his hand still supporting her elbow.
“Leo’s not here,” Riley said, her voice raw. “He never was.”
“Let’s be thorough,” Bill suggested gently. “Check the area.”
They made their way down the sloping bank to the water’s edge, moving carefully on the slick mud.
Riley’s gaze was drawn to a particular spot where the bank jutted slightly into the river.
That was where it had happened, where Peterson had dragged April into the shallows, where Riley had followed, her heart thundering.
The struggle had been swift and desperate. April, sensing her mother’s approach, had twisted violently in Peterson’s grasp, breaking free just long enough to throw his aim off. Riley had fired, missing Peterson but creating enough distraction for April to lunge away.
Peterson had turned his weapon toward Riley then, but in his rage, he’d stepped too close.
Riley had dropped the shotgun, grabbed a rock from the riverbed, and swung it with all her strength.
The impact had sent Peterson reeling backward, blood streaming from his temple, his gun slipping from his grasp and disappearing beneath the dark water.
Riley had retrieved the shotgun, advancing on Peterson as he struggled to regain his footing. She had stood over him, the barrel pointed at his chest, her finger steady on the trigger.
“I wish you could see yourself right now,” she’d told him, her voice eerily calm despite the storm raging inside her.
Peterson had looked up at her, his eyes glittering with hatred and something else—a grudging respect.
“You taught the kid well,” he’d sneered. “She’s got the makings of a killer, just like her mother.”
The shotgun blast had echoed across the water, across the trees, across the years separating then from now. In that moment, Riley had crossed a line—not as an agent enforcing the law, but as a mother protecting her child.
Standing at that same spot now, Riley felt the demands of that action. She had killed before in the line of duty, had faced down monsters and walked away relatively unscathed. But that night had been different. That night had changed her in ways she was still discovering.
“There’s nothing here, Riley,” Bill said, his voice gentle but firm as he completed his circuit of the area. “No footprints, no disturbances, no signs anyone’s been here in a long time.”
Riley nodded, unable to speak past the knot in her throat.
She turned her gaze to the water, remembering how it had closed over Peterson’s body, carrying him several yards downstream before the current caught him against a fallen tree.
How April had collapsed against her, both of them standing knee-deep in the river, holding each other as if they might shatter if they let go.
What struck Riley now, with the clarity of distance, was how that trauma—as shattering as it had been—compared to her memories of her own captivity at Peterson’s hands.
Before he had taken April, Peterson had held Riley prisoner in a crawlspace beneath a house, keeping her in darkness, tormenting her with a blowtorch, the heat searing close enough to her skin that she could feel her hair singeing, smell her own fear.
Those days had been a nightmare she still revisited in her worst dreams. But somehow, the threat to April had cut deeper. Her own suffering she could bear; the thought of her child suffering was unbearable.
And now Jilly was in the hands of a different monster.
“He sent us here deliberately,” Riley said, the realization dawning with cold certainty. “Not because he was coming here himself. But because he knew what it would do to me. To remember this.”
Bill’s expression hardened. “He’s playing psychological games.”
“And I walked right into it.” Riley pressed her palms against her eyes, fighting back despair. “While we’ve been out here chasing ghosts, who knows what he’s been doing with Jilly?”
“It was a diversion,” Bill said firmly. “He needed us away from somewhere else.”
“But it was more than that. It was because he knew it would shake me. Weaken me.” Riley took a deep breath, fighting against exhaustion and forcing her mind back into analytical mode. “He’s studied me. Learned my triggers. He knows about Peterson—details that weren’t in the official reports.”
“He’s read your psychiatric files,” Bill concluded. “Mine too.”
Riley opened her mouth to respond when her phone buzzed in her pocket. Her heart lurched at the sound, every cell in her body suddenly on high alert. She pulled it out, already knowing who the message would be from.
Unknown: I hope you enjoyed your little trip down memory lane, Riley.
Such a shame I couldn’t join you—I’ve been rather busy elsewhere.
Perhaps we can visit this place together someday soon—you, me, even April.
A family outing to commemorate the moment you became what you truly are.
For now, though, I’m somewhere else entirely, and I’d be delighted if you’d join me. Come alone. Here’s where to find me:
Beneath that text was a pinned location—GPS coordinates that, when tapped, opened to a map showing a spot Riley didn’t immediately recognize.
Then came a final text with these chilling words:
Unknown: Come alone this time, or someone will surely die.