Zack turned it over.
Mama and Angel. February 10, 1960.
It had been taken six months before Bruce Carmichael killed Miriam Driscoll.
Oddly disturbed, Zack put the picture down and went to the closet. Inside was a briefcase of sorts, more like a large black box that one might see a traveling salesman use.
It was locked.
Could Driscoll have rigged the cottage with some sort of explosives? Zack didn’t have the tools to defuse them, and it would take the bomb squad at least thirty minutes to get to the island, even if they used the Coast Guard.
He called Doug Cohn. “Doug, I need you and your team out to Vashon ASAP. Bring George Franz with you.”
“Bomb?”
“Probably not, but I don’t want to take the chance of not seeing your ugly face in the morning.”
“Got it.”
Zack gave him the directions, then instructed the sheriff’s deputies to secure the cottage and let no one in until the crime scene investigators arrived. Then he looked for Olivia.
Where in the world had she disappeared to?
Had she seen something? She wasn’t stupid-she wouldn’t have gone off after Driscoll on her own! Would she? Had he read her wrong the entire time? Her heart and mind were so wrapped up in this case, between her parents and her sister and what had happened with the Davidson family.
No. She was a professional first.
But his heart beat rapidly and he drew his gun, holding it at his side as he circled the cottage.
He saw her in the moonlight, kneeling in the dirt on the edge of the woods. Relief flooded his body and he reholstered his weapon.
Olivia knelt on the ground, her legs unable to support her any longer, the beam from the flashlight dancing over the gray stone in front of her.
It looked like a gravestone.
The now-familiar dots and dashes had been carved deeply into the stone, as if the craftsman had spent hours and hours at work, then polished it until it was as smooth as river rock.
“Olivia!”
She heard Zack’s voice, but it seemed to come at a distance. Instead, she heard Missy’s voice, loud and clear.
“Just let me finish this chapter.”
The names and faces of thirty similar victims flashed through Olivia’s mind until she felt nauseated. Lives cut short, girls who didn’t have the chance to grow and learn and love and be loved.
Nor had Olivia ever learned to truly love. She had never accepted anyone’s love because she’d been trapped in the past, her heart dead.
No longer would she allow Missy’s murder to stop her from living. No longer would she be a prisoner of her regret and guilt.
Zack knelt on the ground beside her. “Liv, what’s wrong?”
He sounded worried. She pointed to the stone.
“It looks like a gravestone, but there’s no disturbed earth.” She shined her light on the garden that surrounded them. In the daylight, the area would seem to burst with color.
“It’s a shrine,” she said, “to his dead sister.”
Zack nodded. “I called in Doug Cohn’s people. They’ll be here shortly. I’ll point this out.”
“For so long I’ve let the past control me. The career choices I made, the friendships I fostered, my relationships with people.” She stared into Zack’s eyes, imploring him to understand her. She didn’t know how to express the revelation that had come to her as she stared at the sad stone half-buried in the earth.
“My father’s indifference, my mother’s grief, my own feelings of guilt. I’ll be forty next year and I feel like I haven’t led my own life.”
She stood and looked down at Zack squatting next to the marker. “No longer. My decisions are my own. My feelings are my own.” She touched his head, her fingers brushing against his ear, his rough cheek, her fingers skimming across his lips. He kissed her thumb, took hold of her hand, and stood.
“You know what I think?” he said, his voice low and smooth, sending shivers across her skin. He took her hands in his, his thumbs skimming along her palms. “I think every choice you made in your career has led you here to this place and time. To me. You can’t think about the past, what might have been. What is, is. What you’ve done, you’ve done. So many things are out of our control, Liv. Too many things. But the choices we’ve made, to be on the right side of justice, balance the scales.”
He kissed her lightly, all too briefly. “Let’s go meet Cohn at the docks. I hate waiting around, but until we have more information, we can’t do anything else.”
They walked away from the garden shrine.
“Thank you, Zack.”
“For what?”
“For helping me find myself.”
He shook his head. “You were never lost.”
CHAPTER 25
Chris stopped the truck halfway up the Cascade Mountains, ninety minutes east of Seattle. The temperature had already dipped into the forties, and he had to set up camp. He’d checked out the area many times and had never seen hikers or campers here. He’d gone through the surrounding area, up and down the road, on foot and never seen recent tire treads or evidence of people. He suspected it was used primarily by rangers, and he’d hear them coming long before they reached him.
Being in the military had served him well; years of preparation and planning made setting up camp painless and easy. He’d leave nothing of himself behind. And any mess that was left when he freed the angel would within months be buried under snow. The ground would soak up her life, and he’d dispose of her shell.
She would be free, living without pain and sadness.
He sat on the ground, closed his eyes. Prepared.
It started when Mama died. Chris didn’t know how she’d died, not then, because Bruce took him and Angel from school and they left New Jersey.
“Your ma died in an accident. I have to find work.”
They never went home. Never collected his bug collection or books or toys. Angel wept for her teddy bear until Bruce slapped her.
They first went to Texas, a long way off. It took days and days to get there.
They had a one-room apartment where Chris could hear the people next door fighting. Bruce slept in the bed with Angel. Chris slept on the floor. Angel cried all night.
Bruce hurt her.
It didn’t take long for Chris to know what Bruce was doing to Angel, but he didn’t stop him. He was small for an eleven-year-old. His mother told him he’d grow big and strong, but he hadn’t. Bruce was so big and mean and Chris didn’t want to be hurt, too. But he took care of Angel when Bruce left. He cleaned her up and hugged her and bought her a new teddy bear with money he’d stolen from Bruce’s wallet.
He had loved her and taken care of her for three years, and now she wanted to leave him.
He couldn’t let her. He would be lost without her.
Angel could never leave.
Chris rose from his spot and crossed to the truck. He unlocked the back and reached in for his angel.
A sudden, sharp jolt across his chest startled him. He reached out blindly in the dark, his fingers brushing against hair, but he was falling down.
He jumped up immediately, sensing rather than seeing his angel leap from the back of the truck and start running.
Anger burned deep and hot in his veins. She was trying to run away. Leave him.
He would never allow that.
Zack and Olivia met the Coast Guard at the docks. Doug Cohn and his team disembarked. Zack filled him in on what they’d discovered, then went back across the Sound with the Coast Guard.