Chapter 16
Chapter
Sixteen
Wren sat on the bottom bleacher with her arms wrapped around her knees, watching Mason chase a ball he had no real chance of catching up to. Coach Ferris jogged the sideline, calling out corrections in a voice pitched to carry without shouting.
Past the far goal, the ground dropped toward town.
From up here she could see the whole of it—the movie theater’s sign, the church steeple, the roofs along Main.
The lake sat beyond that with fog already coming off the water, the way it did nearly every evening this time of year.
The mountains stood up behind all of it and closed the whole place in.
She’d lived here her entire life. Some days that felt like being held in a caring embrace. Other days it felt like a town where everyone knew your business and had decided a long time ago what to do with it.
Her phone buzzed in her hand. Nora.
Did you make it?
Wren had forgotten to let her know. She typed back:
Here. He’s fine. We’re fine.
She hit Send before she could decide whether the second part was true.
She tried to force herself to think about nothing but the ordinary rhythm of a Saturday practice.
But it didn’t last.
An old blue truck turned into the lot. She recognized who it belonged to right away.
Nash.
What was he doing here?
A moment later, he climbed out and strode across the grass toward the bleachers.
“What happened?” she rushed when he was close enough.
“Nothing’s wrong. Not like that.” He sat at a careful distance beside her. “I went by the house, and your sisters said you were here.”
“Why’d you go by the house?” Concern pulsed through her.
“Because I didn’t want to say this over the phone, and I didn’t want to wait until tonight.
I didn’t think you should hear this secondhand, after it’s already all over town.
” He kept his voice low as he angled away from the nearest cluster of parents.
“I called an old contact of mine. Deb Ellison. Retired TBI, but she still knows people.”
Wren stared at him, a wave of unease rushing through her. “About Roy or Christian?”
“About Roy.” He held her gaze. “I told you I wouldn’t report Christian, and I won’t.”
“Okay then . . .” What had he found out?
“Nothing’s official yet concerning his death. It’s too soon for the ME to have anything final. But her source told her blunt force trauma is the working theory. That’s off the record and not for repeating.”
Wren’s stomach squeezed. “Someone hit him.”
“That’s what it sounds like. The official cause of death could change once the actual report comes back.” Nash’s jaw tightened.
She turned the news over a second before she let herself ask the rest. “Then whoever did it was in those woods today. Same as Christian.”
“Yes.”
“How far was he found from our property?”
“A half mile.” His jaw hardened.
“So he could have been out there with Christian?”
“Maybe.” Nash didn’t soften it. “I don’t have any evidence that proves it either way.”
Wren didn’t like the timing either. It unsettled her, alongside everything else.
Out on the field, Mason stole the ball and sprinted three strides before losing it again. Despite that, he threw both arms up as if he’d won something. Wren watched him, but her mind was still caught on the three words. Blunt force trauma.
“Can I ask you something?” Nash leaned forward, forearms on his knees, and kept his attention on the field. “About the case. Back when Christian first went missing.”
“Yes.”
“Did the police have any suspects they really zeroed in on? Before the case went cold?”
Her mind drifted back in time, and this time the memory came fast, well-worn, a groove she’d walked a hundred times before. “Everett Voss.”
“Tell me about him.”
“My parents fought about him more than once. Dad was convinced the police weren’t looking at him hard enough. He’d done some handyman work at our house that summer, fixed the gutters, and something about him never sat right with Dad afterward.”
“How about your mom?” Nash asked. “How did she feel about him?”
“Mom used to tell Dad to stop saying the name out loud, like saying it too much might make it true.” She shook her head slightly. “I was fourteen. Old enough to understand more than they probably realized. I remember the name because I remember the fights they had about him.”
“Did you know Voss yourself?”
“Barely. He was just the guy who came around sometimes with a truck full of tools.” She paused. “He was polite, from what I remember. Quiet. It didn’t match, in my head, the idea of him kidnapping my brother. But I was a kid. I don’t know that my read on him means anything.”
Nash filed that away without comment, some thought working behind his eyes.
“I’ve got a name for the original agent who worked the case,” he said. “Donnelly, you said. I can try to track him down myself, see if he remembers anything that never made it into a file.”
Mason waved at her, and Wren lifted a hand back, grateful for the excuse to look away from Nash for a second.
“Maybe,” she told Nash. “My family needs to figure out a few things first.”
“Of course.”
A moment of silence passed before she finally said, “Thank you. For coming to tell me yourself. I appreciate it.”
He nodded and held her gaze a beat longer than the moment strictly needed. “Something’s happening here, Wren. I don’t like the shape of it.”
Nash stayed on the bleachers after Wren climbed down to gather Mason’s gear. He watched the last few minutes of practice wind toward its end. Then the coach called the kids in for a final huddle.
Nash hadn’t planned on staying this long. He’d only meant to deliver what Deb told him and leave. Instead, for a reason unbeknownst to him, he’d sat through the rest of practice.
His mind circled back to Voss. His name still lingered ten years later. The investigators for the case had probably carried his name a long time without ever closing the file on it.
He knew something about that too. His own name had followed him out of Nashville the same way. He’d been cleared on paper, the review board’s report as clean as any he’d ever read. But that didn’t matter.
People had decided who he was. They were quick to make assumptions and slow to let them go, whether or not it had ever been true.
Maybe that was why he couldn’t leave Voss’s name alone either—not because he thought the man was innocent, and not because he thought he wasn’t. He didn’t know yet.
Mason broke from the huddle and sprinted for his mom, already narrating the play he’d just made to anyone who’d listen. Wren laughed at something he said.
Nash’s chest warmed at the sight of the two of them. Right now, Wren was unguarded in a way she hadn’t been on the bleachers. This was how she probably acted—or had acted—before the stress of today descended upon her.
He needed to nip in the bud the warmth he felt. It wouldn’t lead anywhere good.
But he’d already found himself checking her finger for a ring. She didn’t wear one.
However, he’d spent the last year proving to himself that he could bounce back after being written off by a woman who’d claimed to love him. Letting someone else in would only be a mistake.
His physical wound wasn’t the only wound still healing.
He was still watching them when a prickle hit low on the back of his neck.
Nash straightened on the bench and scanned the field.
Parents clustered near the fence, packing up chairs and coolers, calling kids toward the parking lot. A couple of teenagers cut across the far end, earbuds in, uninterested in any of it.
Nothing indicated where the feeling had come from. But he hadn’t imagined it.
He scanned the woods next, a dense stand of pines bordering the far side of the complex. Still nothing he could point to. No shape, no movement, no glint of anything catching the last of the light.
That didn’t loosen the tension across his shoulders.
He sat there a moment longer and scanned the field again—faces this time. He looked for anyone lingering too long. Anyone watching too carefully. Anyone standing apart from the ordinary current of parents and kids packing up for the night.
Nothing.
Down at the fence, Wren looked up and caught him watching. She gave him a small, uncertain smile and then waved goodbye.
Nash made himself smile back.
But he couldn’t help but think she was in danger. And he knew that, despite his reservations, he would fight with everything inside him to protect both Wren and her son.