“Gerald knew something. Someone wanted to make sure he never talked.”
“The same someone who took Vivien,” Natalie said.
“My father died 6 years ago.”
“If he was the primary abuser, maybe your father had an accomplice,” Rachel suggested, “someone who helped him hide Vivien, who’s still alive and still protecting the secret.”
Natalie’s mind raced through the possibilities. Who had been close to her father? Who would have helped him commit such a horrific crime and then kept silent for 3 decades?
Her phone buzzed with a text from an unknown number. She opened it and felt her blood run cold. The message contained a single photograph, a recent picture of Natalie herself taken through the window of her motel room the previous night. Beneath the image were 3 words: Stop digging. Leave.
She showed the phone to Sheriff Grayson, whose face darkened.
“Someone’s watching you. Someone who knows you’re here and what you’re investigating.”
“We need to get you somewhere safe,” Rachel said. “This person has already killed once, possibly more. You could be in danger.”
But Natalie shook her head. “I’m not leaving. For 32 years, I’ve lived with not knowing what happened to my sister. Now we’re finally close to the truth. I’m not running away.”
“Then we put you in protective custody,” Grayson insisted. “Move you to a safe house, assign an officer to watch you.”
Before Natalie could respond, her phone rang. The caller ID showed a local number she did not recognize. She answered on speaker.
“Hello.”
There was breathing on the other end. Then a woman’s voice, thin and wavering. “Is this Natalie Brennan?”
“Yes. Who is this?”
“My name is Patricia Henderson. I live at the farm next to your family’s old place. Sheriff Grayson came to see me yesterday asking questions about when your sister disappeared.”
Natalie remembered Mrs. Henderson vaguely, an elderly woman even back in 1993 who had lived alone and kept to herself.
“What can I do for you, Mrs. Henderson?”
“I didn’t tell the sheriff everything yesterday. I was scared, but I’ve been thinking about it all night, and I can’t keep quiet anymore. There’s something you need to know about the night your sister vanished.”
Natalie’s heart began to race. “What is it?”
“I saw someone that night. I couldn’t sleep, so I was sitting by my window around 2:00 in the morning. I saw a car pull up to your farmhouse, a dark sedan, headlights off. A man got out and went inside. About 20 minutes later, he came out carrying something wrapped in a blanket. He put it in the trunk and drove away.”
“Did you tell the police this in 1993?” Sheriff Grayson demanded.
Mrs. Henderson’s voice trembled. “I tried to. The next day I called the station and told them what I’d seen, but the officer who came to take my statement was a man I didn’t know. Said he was new to the department. He wrote everything down, then told me the car I described belonged to one of the deputies who’d been on patrol that night. He said I must have been confused, seen the deputy checking on your house after the missing person report came in. But Sheriff, that wasn’t true. I know what I saw, and it was before anyone knew Vivien was missing.”
Grayson exchanged a sharp look with Rachel. “Mrs. Henderson, can you describe this officer who took your statement?”
“Tall, maybe 35 or 40 years old, dark hair. He had a scar on his left hand, right across the knuckles. I remember because he kept flexing his fingers while he talked to me like it hurt.”
“What name did he give you?”
“Deputy Martin. But when I tried to follow up a few days later, the department said there was no Deputy Martin working there. My statement had disappeared from the files. I was scared, Miss Brennan. I thought maybe I was losing my mind, so I kept quiet all these years.”
Natalie felt pieces clicking into place. A man impersonating a police officer, someone with inside knowledge of the investigation who could intercept witnesses and suppress evidence.
“Not just someone,” Rachel said grimly. “Someone who knew exactly what Mrs. Henderson had seen and needed to silence her before it became an official record.”
Sheriff Grayson was already pulling up personnel files on his laptop. “I need to see who was working in the department in 1993, someone who would have had access to the case files, who could have posed as a deputy without raising suspicion.”
As he scrolled through the records, Natalie’s phone buzzed again. Another text from the unknown number: I warned you. Now someone you love will pay the price.
Below it was a photograph that made Natalie’s blood run cold. It showed Marcus, her partner, getting into his car in the parking garage of their Chicago apartment building. The image had been taken within the last few hours. She could see the date stamp in the corner.
“They’re threatening Marcus,” Natalie said, her voice shaking. “They know where we live. They’re watching him.”
Rachel immediately pulled out her phone. “I’ll contact Chicago PD, get someone over to your apartment right away.”
But as she made the call, Sheriff Grayson let out a low oath. He turned his laptop screen toward Natalie and Rachel, showing a personnel file with a photograph. The man in it was in his late 30s with dark hair and cold eyes. The name beneath read: Deputy James Keller, 1990–1996.
“He left the department in 1996,” Grayson said, “2 years after Vivien disappeared. His personnel file says he relocated to Illinois for family reasons.”
“Illinois,” Natalie repeated slowly. “Chicago is in Illinois.”
Rachel had gone pale. “This isn’t random. He followed you. He’s been watching you for years, waiting to see if you’d remember something, if you’d come back here and start asking questions.”
Grayson was already on his phone, calling in backup, issuing orders. But Natalie’s mind reeled. For 3 decades, the man who had taken her sister had been living in the same city as her, possibly watching her from a distance, ensuring she never got too close to the truth. And now that she had returned to Milbrook and the evidence was surfacing, he was eliminating anyone who could identify him: Gerald Brennan, who had witnessed the abuse and said nothing; Mrs. Henderson, who had seen him that night but had been silenced before she could give official testimony; and now Marcus, whose only crime was loving Natalie and supporting her search for answers.
“I’m calling him,” Natalie said, pulling up Marcus’s number.
The phone rang once, twice, 3 times. On the fourth ring, it went to voicemail. She tried again. The same result.
“Chicago PD is en route to your apartment,” Rachel said. “ETA 3 minutes.”
Those 3 minutes stretched into eternity. Natalie paced the conference room, trying Marcus’s phone over and over, each unanswered call ratcheting her terror higher. She thought about all the times she had felt watched in Chicago and dismissed it as paranoia left over from childhood trauma. But she had not been paranoid. James Keller had been there in the shadows, waiting.
At last Rachel’s phone rang. She answered, listened, and then met Natalie’s eyes with an expression of relief.
