13. Well, that’s not ominous at all.
Unlocking the door, I feel around for a switch. When the room fills with hazy yellow light, I make my way back to the car and unload everything before turning the car off. I step inside, closing and locking the door behind me.
Here I am. Officially a temporary resident of Feathered Nest.
I should want to crawl into bed right now, but the exhaustion from the train is gone. I change into stretchy pants and ward off the chill of the night with a baggy sweatshirt. Twisting my hair up onto my head, I make my way into the living room to look through the files I brought with me. Reading through the stories of the people who have gone missing sends chills along my spine and makes my skin prick. But it isn't just their eyes haunting me.
Looking at them makes thoughts I try to keep pushed to the back of my mind rush forward. In the dark-haired man laughing from a lawn chair as fireworks reflect just in the bottom corner of his sunglasses, I see my father. The corners of my eyes sting just thinking of him. In the nine years since he disappeared, I haven't stopped wondering what happened to him. I won't stop looking for him.
My throat tightens more when my eyes move over to the picture of a younger man sitting astride a motorcycle at the edge of a dirt road. Greg would never have ridden a motorcycle. I cringe at the thought. I'm thinking of him in past tense again. I can't do that. He's out there somewhere. I have to tell myself that and really believe it. There's a reason he went missing. Just like there's a reason our last conversation, just three weeks before he disappeared, was a breakup that came out of nowhere.
Forcing both men out of my mind, I replaced their images with the details about the case. I'm trying to lay them out to coordinate with a map of the town and surrounding areas so I can visualize the places where they disappeared. It doesn't make any sense. There aren't any patterns or obvious meaning to any of the locations. My phone rings, and I pick it up from the corner of the table where I set it, glancing at the screen before answering.
“Hey, Eric.”
“Did you get into the deep, dark woods okay?” my other best friend asks.
I can almost see the laughter in his light brown eyes.
“You were in on this, weren't you?” I ask. “You knew what they were sending me into.”
“I thought you wanted to be back out in the field.”
“Of course I do. That doesn't mean I love the circumstances. Especially since I know what the Boys' Club has been saying about it.”
“What do you mean?” he asks.
“You know exactly what I mean. Every guy on the team has been muttering and griping about Creagan sending me here rather than any of them. They think I can't possibly handle something like this, and he only chose me because I'm a woman and will be able to manipulate the people of the town more easily.”
“I don't think that's really what they think,” Eric says.
“One of them called the case the Mayonnaise Jar,” I tell him.
“The what?”
“The Mayonnaise Jar. Like when a girl can't open a jar of mayonnaise and a guy does it, but she says she loosened the lid? Yep. That's what they think of me. Van Drossen came up to me right before I left and told me not to worry. All I needed to do was a little snooping and see if I can get a lead or two, then you boys would swoop in and finish it up for me. I wasn't going to have any trouble.”
“He said that to you?” Eric asks incredulously.
“With his arm wrapped around me,” I say, shifting a few of the pictures.
I put the phone on speaker and set it down, so I have both hands to work with.
“And he still has all of his appendages?”
“He's lucky as hell I'm still on a short leash after the Mr. Big incident. But it's fine. It will just make him look all the worse when I figure this out myself and don't need any knights in shining FBI badges to come rescue me,” I mutter.
“You're going to solve the case yourself?” Eric asks.
“Was that a note of disbelief I heard in your voice?” I ask.
“No. Just keeping up on the news.”
I laugh. “Well, that's the news. I'm tired of having these guys look at me like I'm not good enough or that they're better agents than me. Even worse are the ones who are treating me like glass since Greg.”
I swallow hard to rid my throat of the sudden tightness.
“We're going to find him, Emma,” Eric tells me gently.
I nod even though he can't see me. “I know. But I can't really think about that right now. I have to concentrate on this and how I'm going to figure it out.”
“Have you made any progress?”
“Not really. I've been looking over the files for the last week, and nothing has fallen into place. I can understand why the local police didn't immediately link the disappearances. They don't seem to have anything to do with each other. There's no pattern other than the people being gone and there being blood. They all come from this same tiny town, but that's about it. No other real connection. I can't really imagine a police force in a place like this has a tremendous amount of experience with murder cases, much less mass disappearances.”
“Are you sure you don't want me to come out there to help? I could take a backseat and just give you a hand when you need it.”
“No. Thanks, but I really need to do this on my own. This is my chance to get back into the Bureau's good graces, and it really is a fascinating case. I'm looking forward to trying to unravel it. Besides, it would be more suspicious if there were two strangers who suddenly showed up in town and started poking around.”
“Well, the offer stands,” he says. “You let me know, and I'm on the first covered wagon out to you.”
My laugh almost drowns out the sound of the two slow knocks on the front door of the cabin. I scoop up my phone to carry it with me.
“Hold on. I think the owner of the cabin where I'm staying just showed up. Give me just a second.”
I cross to the door and pull it open. The man outside stares at me with widened eyes, then collapses onto the porch with a heavy thud.
“Emma?” Eric says.
“I'm going to have to call you back,” I tell him, my eyes locked on the blood soaking through the man's shirt.
I shove the phone in my pocket and crouch down over the massive form. He's gripping something in his hand, and I pull it out. The folded piece of paper feels hot and damp from his palm despite the chill of the night. I unfold it slowly, with trembling hands.
My heart wedges in my throat. Scrawled across the paper, in heavy writing, is my name.
Chapter Two
Then
She cowered behind the banister, gripping a spindle in each hand as she watched what was going on in the landing beneath her. She was too old to be hiding this way, she knew it, but that didn't take away any of the fear that kept her locked in place on the steps. All the men in dark suits shuffling around on the shiny polished floor made her think of ants in the summertime.
No matter what they did, the tiny little sugar ants made their way through the windows and gathered on the kitchen counters and in the bathroom sinks. They were so tiny they looked like specks; their legs invisible until you were right up on them. They always looked so busy, so determined to do whatever they needed to do. Sometimes she would put her finger down right in the middle of their line just to see what would happen. The ones ahead of her fingertip marched forward, unbothered by the sudden appearance of an obstacle behind them. Those she blocked scrambled back and forth, trying to decide which way to go. When they finally did, the line fell into place, and they just continued on their way.