23. Freya
FREYA
J ude’s blood sits in a pool on the wooden floor in the living room. My hands shake as I stare at the crimson liquid. Fragmented memories of him lying on the floor filter in, of me screaming at him to stay with me. To keep his eyes open .
The feeling that sank to the pit of my stomach when he lost consciousness will forever be embedded in my body.
River comes up behind me and I snap myself out of it. He grabs a bucket and a mop, and I go upstairs to change my shirt and wash my arms before sitting at the foot of the steps as he cleans the blood up.
I refused to speak to him in the car and neither of us say anything now.
Eli and Oz stayed behind to sort out us taking custody of Angelica with the police. Oz messages me to say they’re getting a lift back with one of the Uniforms and by the time a car engine rumbles on the drive, River’s finished cleaning up.
He’s done his best, but the floor is discolored where Jude’s blood spilled, the dark red having stained the wood. I sit on the couch and stare at it until Angelica, Oz, and Eli come join me around the coffee table.
Angelica sits on the couch to my left. She pulls her legs up to her chest. “I didn’t mean to,” she says.
I nod, the distant feeling I thought I’d left behind at Carmen’s coming back. “I know.”
River speaks up from behind me and I turn to find him leaning against the island, his arms crossed. “Jude said you have something to give to Freya.”
Angelica nods and reaches into her pocket.
Everyone tenses and Eli’s hand drops to the gun holstered at his hip, but she doesn’t pull a weapon.
No. My sister retrieves a brown folded envelope.
The hairs on my neck spike as she hands it to me. It hasn’t got an address on it and the envelope bulges in the middle. I tear it open and upend it.
A chess piece falls into my palm. The black queen.
I pinch it between my fingers, hoping I’m wrong.
I’m not.
It’s the same piece from the game I played with Zach in the park. The piece he made me sacrifice. I’m about to put the envelope down when something soft brushes my skin. I shake it. A lock of hair falls into my hand. Ginger. Tied with a piece of string.
Harley’s.
“You got this from Zach.” My lips are numb.
Angelica nods. “He said to check the PO box every day and if there was ever a letter there, I was to give it to you. He said you’d know what it means.”
Eli digs his hand into the back of his neck and Oz looks over at River, wariness seeping from his eyes.
“It means he knows I’m back.” I put the hair back in the envelope and tell myself a lock of hair doesn’t mean she’s dead. I curl the chess piece inside my fist, the wooden edges digging into my palm. “It’s a threat.”
“A threat?” my sister asks, her brows furrowed in confusion.
“Zach’s not a good person, Allie.”
Her frown deepens. “He helped me. He got me out of that place and said he’d protect me. He gave me money.”
I press my lips together, part of me not wanting to tell her the truth because she’s in her regressed self right now. This Allie is more like a teenager than a fully matured adult. But if we want her to help us, she needs to know Zach’s not on our side.
I draw in a steady breath. She spent time with him, might have information that could help us find him.
“Zach hurt me, Allie. When we were little. And now he’s taking other little girls and hurting them too.”
She shakes her head.
“It’s true. That lock of hair is from a little girl named Harley. She’s been missing for almost a week,” I say.
She stiffens. Her fingers form fast shapes, spelling out the physical signs we used for our code language.
I sign back, promising I’m telling the truth.
Her face crumples and she huddles farther back in the armchair.
“There’s something else,” I say, catching Eli’s eye in case she takes what I’m about to say badly. It’s been all over the news, but Allie is likely too detached from the world to have noticed.
Eli nods and River moves to subtly block the route to the front door as I turn back to my sister.
“Dad is dead.”
Allie goes deathly still. Almost a minute passes before she looks across at me, her hands white as she grips her legs. “He’s gone? Like, forever?”
I nod. “Forever. He can’t hurt you anymore.”
She blinks in rapid bursts then mimics my nod. “That’s good. That’s better.”
I let out a breath. It was honestly hit or miss whether she would see the news that the man who abused us was finally dead as a good thing or not.
“Hey Allie,” I ask my sister, “did Zach tell you to shoot Jude?”
She shakes her head.
“Did he give you the gun?” Eli asks.
“Yeah. He said it was so I could protect myself.”
River looks at Oz. “I’ve put it in my office. See if you can trace where he got it from. We need to get that hair to the lab too.”
“Ten bucks says he’ll have scratched off the serial number, but I’ll see what I can do.” Oz gets up and heads down the hall.
Eli rolls his eyes. “Man doesn’t know how to bet. I’d have gone in for a hundred.”
River walks over and sits down where Oz was. “You’ve lost money every single time you’ve gambled.”
Allie watches the two of them banter, curiosity in her gaze before settling back on me.
“Where is the PO box?” I ask her.
She gives me an address then bites her nails. “Zach’s really bad?”
I nod. “Yeah. We need you to tell us about the time you were with him. It might help us find where he’s taken the latest girl. Can you do that?”
Allie shrugs. “It was only a few days. He didn’t hurt me. But he kept calling me Annie or Little Star.”
“Annie?” River asks.
My chest aches, the nickname feeling a world away from the person I am now. “It’s what Allie used to call me when we were kids. She was Allie. I was Annie.”
Eli taps the back of the couch and looks over at me. “He’s fixated on you.”
“Which could explain why the girls he’s taken are mirror images of your younger self. It might not just be about taunting you,” Oz adds.
I go quiet. The chess piece is heavy in my hand, the warning behind it sinking into my bones. Zach only agreed to leave the people I love alone if I left. And now I’m back.
I play Alistair’s voice over in my head, trying to convince myself that running isn’t going to solve anything.
The reminder that I’m the reason Zach is doing all this makes my very existence feel like a danger but running won’t help.
What will help is catching Zach and making sure he can never hurt another soul.
River’s voice breaks through my thoughts. “I think that’s enough for now. Eli, show Angelica to Freya’s room. Freya, you’re with me.”
I look up from the chess piece, my gaze trailing after my sister as Eli takes her upstairs. I still don’t want to talk to River but the case comes first. Harley comes first.
“Where are we going?” I ask as he strides past me.
“I want eyes on the PO box. That envelope is unmarked which means it was hand delivered. If we’re lucky, they might have caught Zach on camera.”
Somehow I doubt it, Zach’s too smart to have slipped up like that but we make the trip anyway. Smart people get cocky and cocky people make mistakes.
The PO box is located inside the post office. The place is empty when we arrive, the post woman behind the front desk the only other person around. She looks up from her magazine as River and I approach.
River flips his badge, and I grit my teeth at the reminder that I no longer have mine. My anger for River fights with my worry for Jude, both of them writhing inside of me but I push the emotions down, focusing on the case.
“I need access to box 189 and the security footage from yesterday,” River tells the woman.
“Sure thing. Looking for someone in particular?” She gets off her stool, keys jangling on her work belt as she leans over to lift the flip-up countertop.
“A man,” I tell her as we follow her back into a small office. “Early thirties, brown hair, thin build. Ring any bells?”
The woman’s graying dreadlocks sway as she glances back at me and shakes her head. “A lot of folks look like that, honey. The cameras would have caught him though.”
She clicks the mouse, waking up the computer, and pulls up the security footage from yesterday.
She fast-forwards through the day but when she hits noon the screen scrambles.
“What the…” She squints and keeps forwarding through till the image clears again.
I check the timestamp. There’s over three hours of footage that’s been corrupted.
I tilt my head back and stare at the ceiling panels. “Shit.”
The postwoman clicks through a few settings on the computer, trying to clear the image but quickly gives up. “I don’t know what’s happened there. I’m going to need to call my manager. Do y’all need anything else?”
“The locker. Can you open it for us.”
She nods and we follow her out into the main space, a small room with walls of PO boxes on three sides. We find the right box and the lock clicks as she twists the key before hesitating. “This thing isn’t gonna blow up in my face, is it?”
“No,” I say. “But I’ll open it if you want.”
She steps aside and I pull the square metal door back. Nothing. The box is empty. I run my fingers through my hair, turning away when a flash of white catches my eye.
There . Right at the back. I reach into the locker, my fingers settling on a slip of white paper tucked into the seam of the metal box. I slide it out. A handwritten message is scrawled across the paper.
Try again, Little Star.
I fight the urge to crush the note in my fist and pass it to River.
Anger darkens his eyes as he reads but I’m already walking away, heading for the door that leads to the street.
I should stay and ask for the details of the person who owns the locker.
Of how they paid. When they started renting the box.
There’s so much more information we need but I can’t do this right now.
I step outside, straight into a thin cold drizzle.
The water chills my skin as I lean against the brick wall.
Zach’s toying with us.