Chapter 11
Eleven
JACE
Layla didn’t blink. Didn’t shift. Didn’t do any of the things people did when a question landed close to something they were protecting.
“I never said I hadn’t been to Hatterwick before.”
I turned that over. “Seems like something you might’ve mentioned.”
“No one asked, and it wasn’t relevant to my briefing on the case.” She picked up her burger with both hands. “Unless you’re implying that my failure to divulge past family vacation history is suspicious and somehow makes me unqualified to assist with this investigation.”
Put like that, I felt like an ass. Which didn’t change the fact that something about her kept snagging for me.
Not in the way that pinged my instinct for danger or made the back of my neck prickle.
More like the sensation of a puzzle where one piece kept not quite fitting no matter which way you turned it.
I was reasonably certain she wasn’t lying.
But she wasn’t giving me the whole picture, and those two things could coexist just fine.
She also didn’t owe me her picture. We’d known each other for less than forty-eight hours.
I lifted a hand in apology. “Sorry. Naturally suspicious human.”
She looked at me over the burger. “Is that temperament or training?”
“Some of both.”
She set the burger down and reached for a hushpuppy.
I watched her hands as she did it, looking for the fidget or the shifting of feet beneath the table—all the micro-expressions that revealed what someone’s face was too careful not to.
Nothing. Her stillness wasn’t forced, just habitual.
The scars on both hands caught the bar light again, pale against her skin, disappearing under the jacket sleeves where the ink began.
Old scars. Whatever they were from, it hadn’t been recent.
“And what does that suspicion make of me?” I heard genuine curiosity in her tone rather than offense, as if she actually wanted the answer.
“It had me looking into your work last night. The photography.” I picked up a fry. “It takes a hell of a lot of skill to make art out of what isn’t there.”
Something flickered across her face, there and gone in an instant. “It’s not meant to be art.”
“Doesn’t change the fact that it is. You have a serious eye.”
“Those people deserve to be remembered.” She said it without heat, just conviction. “The podcast bringing attention to cold cases is one way. My photographs are another. It’s not something I’m interested in profiting off of.”
“How do you make a living, then?” The moment the words left my mouth, I realized how they sounded and lifted a hand. “You don’t have to tell me. I’m just curious.”
She considered for a moment, apparently deciding it wasn’t a dangerous question. “I’m on retainer for the podcast. I do other freelance photojournalism on the side. And I’ve got an evergreen situation with stock photography and the occasional custom shoot.”
“That’s a reasonable ecosystem.”
“It keeps the lights on.” She reached for another hushpuppy. “Any other questions for your interview?”
I suppose it did feel like that. But she wasn’t trying to shut it down, so I kept going. “You’ve met my sister. Do you have siblings?”
“Two. Sister and brother.”
“Where do you fall in the lineup?”
“Middle.”
“Are y’all close?”
“My sister and I are. We’re only a year apart.” She dunked the hush puppy in the Rotel dip. “Are you and Willa close?”
“Closer than we used to be.” I knew I had Sawyer to thank for that rather than my own efforts. Because I’d been traveling the world hunting shadows. The complicated weight of it lay heavy across my shoulders, and I twitched the sensation away. “Growing up, our parents were… hard on her.”
More than a flicker on her face this time, but she controlled it quickly. “Abusive?”
“I didn’t think so at the time. Looking back?” I stroked a thumb through the condensation on my water glass. “If not before I left for college, then definitely after. I had no idea what she was going through, and I wasn’t there to protect her when she needed it.”
She sat back in the booth, studying me. “You still blame yourself.”
“I absolutely do. That was my job, and I failed at it. If I’d been paying attention… If I’d been keeping my eye on her instead of handing her off to Sawyer so I could enjoy the party, I’d have seen when she and Gwen headed into the woods. Maybe I could have stopped all of it from happening at all.”
I didn’t realize I’d fisted my hand on the table until hers settled over it. The contact sizzled through me like electricity, immediate and involuntary, and I made myself hold still rather than react to it.
“If you’d stopped it that night,” she said, “they would have gone after Gwen some other time. People who operate like this don’t give up because of one obstacle.
They had a point to prove and the means to prove it.
At best, you’d have delayed the inevitable.
At worst, you’d have gotten hurt, or killed.
” The certainty in her voice sounded like someone who’d learned it from closer range than case files.
“The outcome for Gwen would have been the same.”
I looked at her hand on mine for a moment, wondering what she’d do if I turned my hand up, palm to palm with hers. She moved hers away easily before I could examine the wisdom or insanity of the thought.
“She was just a kid,” I murmured. “A sweet, kinda goofy, sassy kid.”
Layla was quiet, watching me. “Will you tell me about her? Not her case—her. It helps to know more than what’s in the files.”
So I did.
“She and Willa were tight from diapers. Gabi came into the picture a little later, once they all started school, but those three were inseparable after that. She was three years younger than me and my friends, so obviously there was a phase where we were annoyed when they wanted to tag along.” I turned the water glass again.
“But they always kept up. She was always in and out of our house. We weren’t close exactly—she was Willa’s person, not mine—but I knew her the way you know someone who’s just part of the fabric of things.
She hated mustard. Loved chocolate chip cookies.
Loved basically every animal she ever encountered, but had a particular preference for dogs over cats.
” Koa’s tail moved once under the table at the word dogs.
“Her favorite color was blue. She had the best laugh. Big and loud, and when she really got going she’d snort, which always mortified her but was actually pretty endearing. ”
I was seeing it as I said it. At a picnic table, some summer afternoon, Gwen and Willa perched on the top with their heads together over something.
“She loved country music, which I used to mock her mercilessly for.”
Layla pointed a hush puppy at me. “Excuse me. What exactly is wrong with country music?”
“It’s all whiny nonsense about short shorts and sexy tractors.”
“That’s dude bro country, and you know it. This would have been fourteen, fifteen years ago. There were female powerhouses all over the genre. Not to mention Dolly, who should genuinely run for president.”
I held up a hand. “I will not disparage Saint Dolly. There are lines I won’t cross.”
“Nice to know you have one.” The corner of her mouth was doing the thing it did when she was amused and trying not to show it.
“She was a hell of a sailor, too, even at fifteen. Completely fearless on the water.” I paused. “But she was soft, too.”
“Soft how?”
“Willa—you’re meeting her on the other side of a lot of therapy and a lot of work on herself.
But growing up, she had pretty severe social anxiety.
She was withdrawn and quiet outside of her circle.
Gwen was always gentle with her. Emotionally in tune with people in a way that was unusual for a teenager.
She liked to look for the best in everyone.
” I looked at the table. “I always thought that would get her in trouble someday. Being too trusting. I can’t help but wonder if it finally did.
If she went because someone she trusted lured her in.
” I stopped. “I’ll probably never get an answer, and I can’t decide if that makes it worse or not. ”
“Whether a single known hell is worse than a thousand imagined ones.” She said it quietly, turning it over.
“Tough to say.” She looked at me steadily.
“But it’s very clear from meeting all of you that you were all profoundly impacted by this.
That you still are. You’ve all kept looking and kept trying all this time, even knowing the answer probably isn’t going to be a good one. It’s more than most people do.”
“It doesn’t seem like enough.”
Her gaze was direct and unhurried. “Can I ask you something?”
“Go ahead.”
“If we don’t find conclusive answers at the end of this—and in cold cases, we often don’t—will you ever be able to forgive yourself?”
I sat with the question for a moment. “I don’t know. But I figure we’re the best chance she’s got of not being forgotten. We sure as hell owe her that much.”