Chapter 21
Chapter
Twenty-One
Chills continued to race through Wren. “What do you think it means? That he was standing there like that.”
“I don’t know what it means. I know what it looks like.” Marlowe pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders. “It looks like someone programmed him to do it or something, like maybe a punishment his subconscious is reliving.”
“Or it could be trauma,” Nora said. “PTSD does strange things to people. Night terrors. Dissociation. If something happened to him—happened to him over and over, for years—his body might just keep doing it whether he’s aware of it or not.”
“That’s not better, Nora.” Marlowe gave her a look.
“I didn’t say it was better. I said it’s possible.” Nora’s jaw tightened. “I’m not trying to make this into something worse than it already is.”
“Standing at attention in the middle of the night is already something worse than it already is.” Marlowe’s voice climbed again, thin at the edges. “You said he didn’t even blink. That’s not a nightmare. That’s—I don’t know what that is. But it’s not normal.”
“None of this is normal.” Wren kept her voice even, though her pulse hammered in her ears. “That’s not the question. The question is whether it’s something he can’t help, or something someone brainwashed him into doing. We have no idea still what he’s been through.”
“Either way it means somebody had him long enough to do it.” Marlowe’s pitch lilted higher.
No one answered.
Wren watched Mason chase Bo, his laugh free and easy. She wanted to keep it that way—that innocent—for as long as she could. But right now that felt impossible.
“If someone trained that into him,” Nora said, “trained him to go still like that, silent, for who knows how long—that’s not something you do to a kid you’re keeping safe.”
“What do you think he went through?” Marlowe whispered.
“Part of me doesn’t want to think about it.” Nora pressed her lips together.
Inside, the phone rang, and Wren was up before either of her sisters could move. “I’ll get that.”
She went inside, crossed to the kitchen, and lifted the receiver off the wall. “Hello?”
Nothing.
“Hello?” Her own voice came back sharper the second time.
Silence and then . . .
Breathing.
Wren’s stomach dropped. She hung up without another word.
Marlowe was in the doorway when she turned around. “Who was it?”
“It was no one.”
“It didn’t sound like no one.”
Wren forced herself to let go of the phone. “Okay, it was someone. But . . . they were just breathing.”
“Just breathing?” Marlowe narrowed her eyes. “Like creepy, horror movie kind of breathing?”
She hesitated, unsure how much to share.
“What is it?” Nora stepped inside.
“There was another call like it last night. I dismissed it, thought it was just bad timing,” Wren admitted. “Now maybe I wonder if it wasn’t.”
“Wait . . .” Nora squinted. “What’s going on?”
Wren explained the details of both phone calls.
Nora’s eyes widened. “You think these calls might have something to do with Christian?”
Wren shrugged. “I don’t know anything for sure. Maybe that’s part of the problem. There are so many unknowns . . . and I think we’re making a mistake by just sitting back and waiting for someone else to call the shots here.”
Nash was refilling Tank’s water bowl when Deb called him back.
“That was quick.” He moved the phone to his other ear so he could keep filling the bowl.
“You know I don’t sit on things.” She paused, papers shuffling somewhere on her end. “I called in a favor with a friend.”
“I appreciate that, Deb. What did you find out?”
“You’re going to want to sit down for this.”
“I’m not sure I like the sound of that.” Nash pulled a chair around from the table anyway and sat, elbows on his knees.
“The man you asked about—Everett Voss. I looked into him.”
Nash’s grip tightened on the phone. “And?”
“He’d done some odd jobs for the Lovelesses that summer. According to the file, he was actually on the property that same night Christian disappeared. He’d been hired to help set up chairs and a sound system for the album party.”
“Tell me more.”
“He left around seven, by his own account.” Deb paused.
“But a neighbor driving by saw his truck parked on the side of the road closer to seven-thirty, which put him unaccounted for during the exact window the boy went missing. When investigators pushed him on the discrepancy, he changed his story.”
His jaw twitched. “What did he say?”
“At first, he said he’d forgotten something and had gone back for it. Then later he said he couldn’t remember the timeline at all.”
This man not only sounded like a liar, but he sounded like a bad liar. “So they brought him in again.”
“Twice. Both times he had his sister vouch for him. She claimed he was at her place by eight that night.”
He stored away that information. “Anything else?”
“There’d also been a minor complaint against him a few years earlier—a family two towns over accused him of lingering near their property after finishing a job, watching their kids play.
Nothing ever came of it beyond an uncomfortable conversation with local police.
Not enough to press charges on its own, but enough that it colored how seriously they took the discrepancy in his story. ”
“In other words, there was no confession and physical evidence to tie him to the disappearance itself. There was just a shaky timeline and a prior complaint that never went anywhere.”
“Exactly. The case against him never got anywhere close to actual charges.”
Nash chewed on that update for a moment.
“But here’s the thing that’s going to interest you.” Deb kept going before Nash could respond. “Voss dropped off the map about a year after the investigation stalled. There was no forwarding address. No known employment anywhere in the system since.”
His heart thumped harder. “That is interesting.”
“Isn’t it?”
Nash’s jaw tightened as he thought through the implications. “You said he has a sister?”
“She’s his only family. She lives in Knoxville. Seems to be an upstanding citizen.”
“Good to know.” Nash looked out the kitchen window, past his own yard toward the cabin where a woman he barely knew lived.
“I’ll call you when I have more.” A beat of silence passed. “And Nash—go easy on asking around about this. If Voss really did disappear on purpose and something’s brought him back into the light, he could be dangerous.”
“Understood.” Nash thanked her and ended the call.
He stayed sitting there a moment longer.
Everett Voss.
His gut told him that this nightmare for the Loveless family wasn’t over.
It was only just getting started.