The Girl and the Last Scene

Copyright © 2025 by A.J. Rivers

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Author's Note

Also by A.J. Rivers

On our last adventure with Emma…

Emma’s continuing search for the Game Master and his victims was put on hold when an old friend called for assistance. Emma rescued a young single mother, her young daughter and found further notes left by the Game Master to more missing victims. What she didn’t expect, however, was for her father to reappear for the first time in a year—bringing with him the missing man she’s been tearing her hair out to find.

His scream reverberated off the concrete block wall.

The gurgling blood in his throat caught the sound and dragged it back down into his lungs.

He stumbled forward, his hand reaching out for the wall. It scraped down the blocks, the blood dragging from where he had pressed his palm to the gaping hole through his shirt. His eyes were wild, bulging, but that didn’t make it any easier to see in the partial light of the basement.

His movements were unsteady. Pools of dark-red liquid collected on the plastic sheet beneath his feet made him slip when he tried to move. He felt them move out from under him as he clawed at the wall again in an attempt to grip something. Another scream tore from inside him, and it was like the force of the sound pushed his body backward.

One foot hit a slick fold in the plastic, and he dropped onto the floor. Pain radiated up through the bone of his elbow as it impacted the cement. He let out a growl and flipped onto his back. The dark figure from the other side of the basement came toward him, forcing him to scramble backward. The sheet was even slipperier under his hands, and he made it only a few inches before his hands slipped out from beneath him again. He landed hard on the ground.

A bitter taste rushed into his mouth. He tried to get back up so he could run for the wooden steps leading up to the main floor of the long-empty house. That was where he needed to go. A desperate attempt at freedom before the knife sliced through the air toward him again. But he couldn’t get on his feet. It was too slick. His hands were coated. The sheet folded and wrinkled so he couldn’t get his footing while still keeping his focus on the dark figure and trying to scream for help.

He wasn’t going to make it to the stairs like this. This was the way it had to be.

Letting out a final cry, his body collapsed on the floor. A shuddering gasp sucked the plastic sheet to his face and the sticky fluid kept it there.

His lungs went still.

He could have held his breath that way for much longer, but the lights suddenly turned on. Voices rose around him.

“Damn it,” Astor Barrett growled from somewhere behind him. “What the hell, James?”

James pulled the plastic away from his face and used the cuff of his sleeve to wipe away as much of the stage blood as he could. He wanted to spit out what had migrated into his mouth, but there was nowhere to do it, so he just folded down his sleeve and wiped at his tongue.

“What’s the problem?” he asked, turning toward the director with his arms out to his sides. “Why’d you stop rolling?”

“Are you serious? What the hell was that? You sounded like a cat in heat wailing like that.”

“I was stabbed,” James pointed out.

“In the gut,” Astor said. “You could not force out a scream like that when you’re half disemboweled. And what was crawling around on the floor like that? You were supposed to get up and run for the steps. He grabs you from behind, gets your ankle, yanks you back down onto the floor, and finishes the job.”

“This plastic you got is so cheap I couldn’t keep my feet under me,” James protested, starting to get angry at the harsh critique of his performance. “Why the fuck is there plastic anyway?”

“It’s the killing room,” Grant Moses said.

The actor didn’t look as imposing when the lights were on and the makeup artist was trying to fix a piece of prosthetic that wouldn’t stay in place on the side of his face.

“So you’re telling me this crazed killer commandeered a house that no one has lived in for half a century so he could slaughter a bunch of people—but he’s worried about making a mess, so he puts down plastic? I’d think if he was going to be that picky, he’d go for something other than a dollar store paint-drop cloth.”

“It’s the best I could do considering the budget,” the set dresser mumbled. “I didn’t have a lot to work with.”

“Seems like a common issue around here,” James said, crossing his arms over his chest and glaring at Astor. “Sounds to me like nothing around here is getting the money it should.”

“All right, that’s enough,” Astor said, holding up a hand. “You’re just trying to distract from the bullshit performance you just gave. We’re going to have to reset and do the whole thing again.”

Groans and protests filled the basement.

“Astor, it’s three in the morning. We’ve been going for almost twenty-four hours,” Curtis Walsh said, releasing the camera he was holding so he could stretch his arms.

“And we’ll keep going until it’s what it should be,” the director said forcefully.

“The footage is actually good,” Lynette Mann said, gesturing to the monitor she was watching. “No one’s watching a horror movie for quiet. They want screaming. And the way James did that, especially considering what he was working with, was great. I know it wasn’t exactly what was in the script—”

“Which means it wasn’t right.”

“Maybe it was better though. I mean, the scrambling up the stairs thing is seriously cliché,” Lynette said. “What James did had a lot of tension and energy.”

“No!” Astor shouted, losing control. “This is the way I want it, and that’s the way it’s going to be. Now reset, and we’ll go again.”

“Not me,” James said, backing up a few steps away from the director.

“What?” Astor asked.

James held up his hands and shook his head. “Not me. I’m done. Just because you’re the one in charge doesn’t mean you know everything and doesn’t mean you’re always right. Look at the shit show you made of this project. I’m not dealing with it anymore. I’m out.”

The actor turned and headed up the steps.

“You can’t do that!” Astor shouted. “You can’t just leave.”

“Yeah, I can. This production isn’t worth this,” James said.

Astor came toward him, the look on his face almost repentant. “Look, I know things aren’t exactly what they were supposed to be with this project.”

“You’re paying me a fraction of what I’m worth, conditions of the set have been horrible, you’re treating everybody around you like trash—except for Bruce, who you seem to think has the sun shining out of his ass for reasons none of us can really understand. And speaking of that particular bit of anatomy, you have your head up your own ass so far you aren’t even considering anyone else’s creativity or input. Even though I’ve been doing this for… how long? Yeah, I say things aren’t exactly what they are supposed to be with this project,” James snapped.

Astor drew in a breath. His eyes flickered over his shoulder toward the rest of the production crew standing behind the camera line. He wasn’t used to having someone buck up against him like this.

But James didn’t care. He’d been in the industry for years. He wasn’t green. He wasn’t in a workshop. He wasn’t going to tolerate these conditions anymore. This wasn’t anything like what this movie was built up to be, and he was done accepting it.

“Don’t run off yet,” Astor said. “It’s late. At least stay until the morning. We’ll do a couple of brief scenes with Grant, and then I want to sit down and talk for a bit. After that, you can decide what you want to do, and I won’t stop you, okay?”

James really wanted to tell him to screw off. But he forced himself to release a long exhale. Maybe he would say something that would matter to him. Probably not. But he could give him the benefit of the doubt one more time.

“Fine,” he said. “But I’m not staying down here. I’m going to take a shower and get something to eat.”

“I’ll come find you when we’re done. It shouldn’t be long.”

James didn’t bother to respond. He went upstairs and walked through the sagging old house to the back door. There was no running hot water inside the building, but portable showers had been set up. They were awful, but it was better than staying caked with the sticky, disgusting fake blood and dust from the set. He cast his dirty, torn costume onto the ground, knowing it was just going to get thrown away. He’d wear a towel back to the room where he’d been sleeping. He didn’t care.

His shower done, he went back into the house and up two flights of steps to the bedrooms where everyone was camping out during production. There was no furniture in any of the rooms. Everyone was sleeping on sleeping bags or bed rolls and doing their best to get some rest. He should have known this was going to be a disaster from the jump. Astor had made promise after promise, but when it came time to follow through, everything went to shit.

The set they were promised hadn’t come through. Just like the budget hadn’t. The accommodations were primitive and beyond uncomfortable. Astor presented himself as having total control over the project and knowing exactly what he wanted, but then he shifted and changed at the drop of a hat, all the while refusing to let James or even Jasmine, the closest thing to an assistant director he was going to get, have any influence.

Honestly, he didn’t really know why he agreed to wait and talk to Astor when they wrapped up for the day. He could have just asked one of the production assistants or actors to drive him back to his car at Astor’s house. But it was an hour away, and it was so late. Besides, he had some strange interest in hearing what the director had to say for himself.

James stretched out on his sleeping bag and pulled a book from his backpack. He’d read through a couple of chapters when he heard the door to the room open. He looked around the book.

“Oh. Hey.”

“Has anybody seen James?”

Astor walked down the hallway looking into each of the rooms at the exhausted cast and crew trying to settle in for a few precious hours of sleep. They all shook their heads.

“He said we could talk, but I can’t find him,” he said. “He’s not in his room.”

“His stuff isn’t here,” Grant said. “It looks like he packed everything up.”

“I found his costume by the shower outside,” Lynette said.

“Looks like he decided to just roll out,” Curtis said. “He must have gotten tired of waiting.”

“And headed back to the house on foot?” James asked.

The production team didn’t respond. They were all too tired to care much at this point. The truth was, they all felt like James had done what he needed to do. What most of them wanted to do. And even the ones who would dig in their heels and suffer their way through anything just to stay a part of it still harbored a seed of bitterness at how it was all going. They knew what Astor was refusing to admit.

This production was doomed.

James might have been known to be difficult to work with sometimes and could turn a production into his own private showcase for himself if given the opportunity, but he could see the ship sinking. And it seemed like he saved himself.

His stuff was gone. He was gone. Who cared if he hadn’t stuck around to talk with Astor and listen to the director’s self-congratulatory tirade meant to somehow simultaneously butter him up and nail him down in his place? He’d had enough, and finally, the director was going to have to deal with the aftermath of his own nonsense.

They didn’t even really put a lot of thought into it when no one could get in touch with him the next day. He was smart enough not to answer.

It wasn’t until the day after that, when they’d run out of scenes to film without James and were scrambling to figure out what they were going to do next, that they started to feel uncomfortable. And then the call came.

The police had been trying to reach James, but there had been no answer, so they called Astor. James’s car was parked in front of Astor’s house when it was hit by a drunk neighbor. The director’s face contorted when the officer told him that. He heard the words. But for a second, he couldn’t process them.

“James’s car is still at my house?” he asked.

“The car that was involved in the hit and run is registered to James Delaney,” the officer told him. It was a noncommittal version of the answer, but it was the information Astor needed.

“Then where is James?” he asked.

“I called you because I hoped you could answer that question. I spoke with your neighbor, who gave me your contact information. She told me that the car has been parked there for several days.”

“Yeah…” Astor said, sharply holding up a hand to Lynette and Grant when they tried to ask who was on the phone.

He walked away from the group so none of them could hear him. “We’re filming a movie. He parked there and rode with the crew to set. You’re…” He stopped himself, knowing how ridiculous the question he was going to ask would sound. But he had to ask anyway. “You’re sure that he isn’t in the car? Or maybe in the house?”

There was a beat of silence from the other end of the line. “No, sir. He is not in the vehicle that we can see. There’s no sign that anyone is inside the house. Did you give him permission to go into the house? Or a key?”

“No,” Astor said, shaking his head even though the officer couldn’t see him.

“But you have reason to think his car shouldn’t be here?”

What started as a call trying to track down the owner of a car that was hit by a drunk driver was changing with every passing word. The officer’s voice had shifted. It was slower now. She was not doing a welfare check or trying to make contact with the owner of the vehicle. She was gathering information about something that could be much more serious.

“James isn’t here. He left set two days ago.”

“And no one has had contact with him since?” the officer asked.

“No one here on set. He was pretty pissed off when he left, so I figured he just doesn’t want to talk to any of us right now.”

“Why was he angry?”

Astor exhaled bitterly. “The production wasn’t going the way he wanted it to, and he was having a fit over creative differences.”

“A fit?”

“James is an actor. That should sum it up for you,” Astor said thinly.

“Actually, it doesn’t. Enlighten me.”

“He is very invested in what he sees as his talent, and he thinks that even the slightest commentary that isn’t gushing with praise is a personal slight on him. He can’t stand the idea of actually being directed. He wants to take a script and do whatever he wants to with it, regardless of my vision as his director. This is my project. I wrote the script. I am producing it. I am directing it. And he can’t stand that, so he decided to quit the production and storm off,” Astor said.

“And that was the last anyone saw of him?”

“Yeah. His stuff is gone. His clothes and bedding and everything. He said he was leaving, so we figured that’s what happened.”

“Where are you?”

“Near McGinty. Just past it. There’s a property up here that used to be a ranch. We’re using it for location.”

“That’s at least an hour from here,” the officer said.

“Yeah.”

“All right. Does he have family that you know of? Anyone who he might have gone to see or who could have come to get him?” the officer asked.

“No. Nobody he’s ever talked about anyway,” Astor said.

“How well do you know him?”

“I’ve known him for about eight years. I wouldn’t say we’re good friends or anything, but we’ve spent a lot of time together.”

“And he’s never mentioned his parents or siblings or anything? How about a girlfriend?”

“No, none of that. James likes to hang out with James. Over the years, he’s dated a few girls, but none of them lasted long. He hasn’t mentioned anybody new in the last six months or so,” Astor said.

“I’m going to come up there to talk to you about what’s going on. If you have access to any social media or anything, I need you to get in touch with everyone James knows and find out if anyone has heard from him.”

It took nearly an hour and a half for the officer to arrive. She had thick, mahogany-colored hair coiled into a bun at the back of her head and sharp eyes that swept over the surroundings as she got out of the car. Astor told the rest of the production team she was coming, knowing he couldn’t hide it from them, and they were all gathered outside the main house waiting for her. It was late enough that the loudest sounds were the crickets and cicadas, but no one was tired. The news that James never made it back to his car had taken the exhaustion out of them.

The officer looked at each of them without lingering on any particular face.

“I’m Officer Lin. Who did I talk to on the phone?”

“That’s me,” Astor said, getting up from where he was perched on the top step.

Jasmine and Grant folded in on themselves at the opposite ends of the lower step to let him pass as he climbed down. He approached the officer with an extended hand.

“Astor Barrett.”

Officer Lin shook his hand and glanced around again. She couldn’t see much in the dark. The only lights besides the one coming from the large, nearly full moon overhead were from the battery-operated lanterns scattered around the porch and the few generator-powered lights inside. It didn’t give much illumination for the officer to take in what was around her.

“What is this place again? You said it was some kind of ranch?” she asked.

“It used to be,” Astor told her. “It hasn’t operated in decades. But it used to have horses. Maybe cattle. I bought it for the set.”

“You did what?” Grant asked, his voice carrying all the shock of everyone else sitting on the porch.

They looked at each other, their eyes snapping from face to face, searching for some type of recognition. Someone who knew what Astor was saying.

“You bought this place?” Lynnette asked. “Not rented?”

“You didn’t tell me that,” Jasmine said. She sounded angry and shocked like the others, but with an edge of hurt.

“Really? I thought I mentioned it.”

He knew he hadn’t. He purposely didn’t tell anyone on the production about the spontaneous purchase of the sprawling land and everything on it. He knew they weren’t going to react well, and he thought it would be better if he waited to tell them until they’d had a chance to experience the magic of this place. When they saw how awesome it really was and how much opportunity they had there, they’d fall in love with it. They’d have all the same excitement for all the projects that could be done here. They’d be thrilled when he surprised them.

“Bullshit,” Curtis said. “You’ve spent this whole time talking about the budget being tight because funding didn’t come through like you thought and guilt-tripping everybody into not taking the pay we were promised. We’re barely eating. We’re sleeping on the floor. And now you tell us that you spent all that fucking money on buying this place rather than renting it like you told all of us you were going to do?”

“It all happened really fast,” Astor said.

Officer Lin held up a hand. She could see the conversation devolving. Nothing good was going to come of this.

“Look, that’s not important right now. Everybody can hash all that out some other time. Right now, we’re trying to figure out where James Delaney is. From what we can tell, he’s been missing over forty-eight hours. That already puts the investigation at a disadvantage.”

“Investigation?” Maria, an almost alarmingly young actress just venturing into her first project, asked in a weak, nervous voice.

She was sitting on the floor of the porch, her back against the house and her legs bent up against her chest. A blanket wrapped around her shoulders made her look even smaller than she already was.

“Yes,” the officer said, looking at her with a slightly raised eyebrow like she was curious about the girl’s reaction. “We’re trying to find Mr. Delaney.”

“But… an investigation. That sounds so serious,” Maria said.

“It is serious,” Lynette snapped. “Didn’t you hear them? His car is still sitting at Astor’s house. We all saw him leave set, and all his stuff is gone… so where the hell is he?”

Maria shifted uncomfortably. “I know, it’s just that… an investigation sounds like they think something happened to him.”

“Right now, the focus is just finding him,” Officer Lin assured her. “From what I’m gathering, things were in a heightened emotional state when he left here. That could mean he decided he needed some time to himself and went somewhere to cool off. He is an adult, so he has the right to do that. But the fact that his car is still at the house and we can’t get in touch with him is a concern.”

“I sent out a message online,” Astor said. “Like I said, I don’t know any of his family, but we have some mutual connections. Nobody has said they’ve seen or heard from him. But people know we’re looking.”

“That’s good,” Lin said. “The more people looking for him, the better. But I do need to make sure you all understand this is a serious matter. We don’t know what’s going on or what is going to happen as this all unfolds. Because of that—and out of respect for the fact that, again, James is an adult and doesn’t need permission to not be where you think he should be—details about this need to be managed carefully.”

“Managed?” Astor scoffed. “You mean ‘censored.’”

Officer Lin was not impressed by the indignance.

“A message asking if anyone has had contact with James is fine. But I don’t want details, conjecture, rumors, anything like that. To put this as frankly as I can, this is not a story for you to tell.”

“But it’s happening to us,” Curtis said. “That gives us the right to talk about it.”

“I’m not going to argue with you about your rights,” Officer Lin said forcefully. “I’m telling you that this situation is still in its very earliest stages, and we don’t know which direction it is going to go. Until we have more information, this isn’t the time for multiple narratives.”

“Shouldn’t we be talking about James?” Jasmine asked. “Rather than what we aren’t allowed to talk about?”

“Yes,” Lin said. She looked behind her as another squad car pulled up toward the house.

An officer got out of the car and walked toward them.

“Officer Constance,” he introduced himself. “How you doing, Sarah?”

“Good, Ben. Thanks for coming out.”

“No problem. Sorry it took a bit. What have we got?”

Officer Lin filled him in on the little she knew so far. “I was just about to do a search around the area.”

“You want to search the property?” Astor asked.

Lin eyed him. “Is that a problem?”

“No. It’s just that… it’s thirty acres.”

“Then we need to get started,” she told him.

David Richards, another actor on the set, suddenly stood. He shook his head, his arms crossing over his chest.

“You can’t do this.”

“Can’t do what?” Officer Constance asked.

“You can’t come on private property and search without a warrant. Astor owns this place. It’s up to him where you’re allowed to go.” His spine was stiff, the muscles in his forearms twitching.

“James Delaney is missing. He could be in danger,” Officer Lin stated. “We don’t need permission to walk around the property looking for signs of where he might have gone.”

“What’s your problem?” Jasmine asked, glaring at David. “Why shouldn’t they look?”

“Because they don’t have the right,” David said fiercely. “They don’t have the authority to do whatever they want to do. Nobody did anything to James. He left. Just like Astor said, he threw a fit and he left. We worked our asses off getting this place set up for the shots. If they fuck everything up, the whole shoot is going to be ruined.”

“I doubt they intend on bringing out a tank and rolling through the property,” Lynette told him. “Like she said, they just want to see if there’s any sign of him. His car is an hour from here. None of us saw anyone else show up to get him. So maybe he walked off in some other direction. You can’t just say ‘Oh well, I’m sure he’s fine’ when nobody has heard from the guy in a couple of days and his car is sitting around not touched. This is where he was last seen. It would be asinine for them not to look for him.”

“We’re not going to move anything,” Officer Lin said. “Again, what we’re focused on right now is finding Mr. Delaney. We’re just starting at the most obvious place, where he was last seen, and moving our way out.”

David stepped back. Astor didn’t argue.

The officers went into the house and searched. They looked in the rooms and saw where James had been sleeping. They saw the costume he discarded beside the outdoor shower. From there, they ventured out onto the property. Led by flashlights, they walked the overgrown fields and ducked their heads into sagging barns and shelters. It was hard to tell much of anything in the darkness, but there was nothing immediately obvious that stood out to them. They didn’t see any of James’s possessions or any signs of a struggle. The only tire tracks they saw, Astor could easily explain away as his. They’d been there for several days, far longer than James had been missing.

Satisfied that James wasn’t at the ranch but also not seeing any immediate signs of how he left or where he went, the officers handed out business cards and gathered contact information. Then they drove off into a night that was quickly becoming morning.

In the dust behind their wheels, they left exhausted faces and suspicions that chilled to the bone.

They didn’t know they were leaving James behind them.

They barely paid attention to the metal shed at the edge of what used to be a large vegetable garden and was now rows of weeds and scraps of mesh over unused mounds. Lin had tugged on the padlock. It didn’t move.

If they’d asked for the key, they would have opened the door and seen the props, costume racks, and boxes of supplies and equipment stuffed inside. Even then, they probably would have just closed the door and moved on. But if they’d looked closer, they would have noticed bits of broken glass, where a mirror fell while the crates along one side were being moved. They would have seen the harrowing tip of some of the props on top of the shifted piles.

And at the very back, in the corner where it was stashed among dozens of objects ranging from the unsettling to the mundane, they would have seen the body bag.

It had once been a prop. Now it was nothing more than what it had been designed to be.

James couldn’t see the zipper right above his face. He didn’t feel the translucent white desiccant crystals packed around him.

But they were already doing their job.

Ten years later…

Emma

“Sorry, I thought we were going to get back before you got here,” Dean says.

“It isn’t a surprise party, Dean,” my father says.

“I don’t know. She looks pretty surprised to me,” Xavier says.

Their words are happening around me, but I don’t care about any of them. I haven’t taken my eyes off Sebastian McDonnell. I’ve spent weeks investigating his disappearance without any real progress, and now he’s standing right in front of me. In my own living room.

“What the hell is happening right now?” I ask, turning to my father. “What is he doing with you?”

I haven’t seen my father in more than a year. I can count the number of times I’ve talked to him in that time on one hand. And he decides to show up along with a missing person he should know nothing about.

“Why don’t we all sit down and eat. I’ll explain everything,” Dad says.

He starts to reach for one of the drinks Dean is carrying, but I hold up a hand to stop him.

“You’re going to explain everything now. Do you have any idea what I’ve been going through trying to find this man?”

“Yes, Emma, I do. Which is why I brought him here,” Dad says, trying to sound patient but clearly put off by my reaction.

I don’t know how else he expects me to react. He probably thought I would be excited and immediately grateful to him for bringing Sebastian to me. And he isn’t entirely wrong. I am glad Sebastian McDonnell is standing in front of me. It’s better than the other alternatives. Having been missing for three weeks, chances seemed very high that he was dead. And if not dead, then involved in something nefarious. I’m relieved he shows no sign of being held captive or tortured. I’m glad he’s alive. But this is so typical of my father.

My relationship with him is complicated. I honestly don’t think he would describe it that way. I believe in my father’s mind, everything is good between us and there’s no problem with our dynamic or anything that’s happened. The past is firmly behind him, and the way things are between us now is how they have to be.

I grapple with a much wider range of feelings.

It has taken me years to really unpack everything I went through when I was young. For so long, I only had hazy, pieced-together memories of what I thought I knew. I knew my mother died before I was a teenager and that we were never in one place for very long either before or after that. Then my father disappeared when I was eighteen, and it felt like my world had crashed down. The two most important people to me had been taken, and I felt like the only way I wouldn’t spend the rest of my life crushed by a sense of helplessness was to take the skills my parents taught me, and the anger I carried inside me, and turn them into a career in the FBI. That career led me to the truth.

Now I know my mother was murdered. I know my father knew who did it: an uncle I never knew. I know that when he disappeared, it was intentional, and that he stayed away for those ten years of his own accord. And I know all those years of my childhood that seemed so disconnected were because we moved around constantly, often under the shadow of night and always without me knowing exactly what was going on.

Not that it made it so I didn’t want my father back. I was thrilled when he came back into my life, and I am still happy he’s a part of it. But I’m challenged by the feeling of being manipulated and of still never really knowing, of always being an afterthought or a child who has to be shielded from everything.

And that’s exactly what I’m feeling right now.

“I haven’t even gotten a phone call from you in how long? You didn’t come for the holidays. You didn’t come for the move. When I do finally hear from you, it’s you showing up to make spaghetti sauce and hand over a missing person? Someone you’ve clearly been in contact with, whom you could have told me about,” I say.

I’m angry. Maybe more than I should be, but I feel like every ounce of it is justified. With the intensity of the cases I’m working on pressing in on me, the last thing I needed was to feel like someone else had something held over my head.

“I thought you would be glad to see him,” Dad says.

“I would have been glad for a phone call. To have not spent however long it has been since you’ve been in contact with him continuing to wonder where he is and what happened to him,” I say.

Now Sebastian steps forward. His hands lift slightly like he’s trying to appease me.

“Please don’t be mad at him. The way all this was handled was my choice. I asked him not to get in touch with you until I was ready. It’s safer this way.”

“What do you mean ‘safer’?” I ask.

“We just need to sit down and talk. I will explain everything. I haven’t been missing. Not really. I left.”

Plates streaked with the remnants of Dad’s spaghetti sauce sit off to the side with my barely touched salad. They insisted on eating while we talk, but food is the last thing on my mind right now.

Sebastian left on his own. He wasn’t abducted. No one came into the house and took off with him. He wasn’t murdered and isn’t being held for ransom. Which means his mother was right.

Except she wasn’t.

Sebastian didn’t frolic off on another spirit quest or decide he was going to throw all his energy and effort into saving an obscure endangered species only found in the furthest corner of the tropical rainforest, as Anita so flippantly declared her son was likely doing this whole time. Sebastian left, but he didn’t wander. He ran.

“What made you think that your mother knew you found out about what’s going on in her company?” I ask. “You just said you knew somebody was on to you and that they were going to come after you. What made you think that?”

“I know my mother. I know how she acts and her routine. That includes how she interacts with me and with Lavinia. Not too long after I started figuring all this out, my mother started acting strangely. She was doing things that just aren’t like her. She has never been especially… affectionate or demonstrative. Toward anyone. It just isn’t part of her personality. She loves me, she just has a particular way of showing it.

“The same goes for Lavinia. I know there’s been a lot of talk about them not getting along or my mother not approving of my marriage. I know that I haven’t always fit in with the image people had of who the McDonnell heir should be. I don’t have the same priorities. I don’t put my energy and effort into the same things. I don’t keep the same company. And that includes choosing my wife.

“Everybody thought I was going to end up with the daughter of one of the families my father associated with. Almost like it was prearranged. But I made the choice to marry someone I love, even if she wasn’t from the same world as me, and it raised eyebrows.”

He’s losing focus. The emotional turmoil he’s feeling has jumbled his thoughts, and he’s rambling his way down paths that might lead to where we need to go eventually, but I’m much more interested in the express route.

“Sebastian? I need you to just explain what’s going on.”

He draws in a breath and holds it for a few seconds like he’s letting it fill his entire body before slowly letting it out.

“I’m sorry. Anyway, people always thought my mother was angry that I married Lavinia and that she dislikes her, but that really isn’t the case. They’ve always gotten along, and there’s never been any suggestions that Lavina isn’t really part of the family. Nothing like that. They have always maintained a perfectly good relationship,” he says.

“Just not affectionate,” I say.

“Right. But after I started finding things out about what’s really going on in my mother’s company, things between us changed. She suddenly started calling a lot more often. She wanted to get together and do things a lot more. She even started hugging me when she saw me in the office or stopping by to say hello. That’s something she would never do. I have been taught ever since I was little that it’s unforgivably rude to just show up at somebody’s house without any kind of notice, family or not. So it was a hell of a surprise when I came home one day and found her sitting and having tea with my wife, saying that she had just popped in to spend some time together.”

“What did Lavinia think about that?” I ask.

“She was delighted. Her family is really close and always spends a lot of time together. The whole idea of not going over to each other’s houses is totally foreign to her. She grew up with a big family that all lived close. There never would’ve been a thought about having to call to check in and make sure it was okay. She thought it was wonderful that my mother was comfortable enough to just come over, especially when she knew that I wasn’t there and it was just to spend time with her. But I knew there was something off. What really got me concerned, though, was actually your father.”

“My father?” I look over at Dad. “What does he have to do with it?”

Dad clears his throat. “I was already looking into what’s going on with the McDonnell holdings. I’ve been collecting information about it for over a year. The corruption runs extremely deep, and everybody involved has gone to extensive lengths to make sure nobody finds out about it. There are shadow companies and fake identities. Entire segments of companies and investment groups run by Anita are employed by what turns out to be fake people. And each of those fake people has a whole fake life attached to them. I’m talking paperwork, social media accounts. Everything. They look completely legit until you start digging deeper. And that’s what I’ve been doing. There are a few suspicious deaths and disappearances linked to the holdings, and it looks very much like at least a couple of the shareholders were starting to get suspicious about what was really going on.

“I was specifically trying to get to the bottom of a man who died in a small aircraft crash very soon after telling his lawyer that he needed to speak with him about something important within the company. And so far, nobody has been able to figure out exactly what it was he wanted to talk about or what happened to him. Several experts who looked at the crash site believe the possibility of sabotage is high. While I was looking into that, I came on mentions of Sebastian. Not just as Anita’s son but being selected to represent the company at events or with associates that would require travel.”

I take all this in and nod slowly. “That doesn’t seem so strange. I’m sure he has traveled for the company more times than either of us can count. As a matter of fact, I know he travels extensively for business and has frequently incorporated his own personal humanitarian efforts into those travels in an effort to offset the impact.”

“Yes, he does travel for work. But that—”

“I’m right here,” Sebastian cuts in. “You don’t have to talk about me like I’m not in the room.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m just not understanding why finding plans for you to go on business trips is all that unusual. Have you recently told your mother that you aren’t going to travel anymore?”

Dad shakes his head. “That’s not the point. It isn’t that the company was planning to send Sebastian as a representative. It’s how.”

“They were arranging for private flights on a small aircraft,” Sebastian says. “I never fly on private flights. And it is extremely rare for me to be sent on any kind of networking or deal-closing trip by myself. Even if it’s just a small team, I always have support staff with me. The only times I have ever traveled alone, it was for the kinds of personal events that rich, powerful people like to invite each other to because it makes them look good. Massive weddings. Retirement parties. Even the occasional funeral. Opportunities for powerful people to make connections with other powerful people and pretend they have more meaningful connections than just the business contracts sitting on their desks. My mom can’t stand those events, so she sends me. But even when I do go to these kinds of events, Lavinia always comes along.”

“You think they were planning on getting you on a plane and then having that plane crash?” I ask. “Didn’t you just tell me that someone else died like that recently? Wouldn’t it seem a little outrageous for two people associated with the same business to mysteriously die in small aircraft crashes? I’d think they would know people would see that and think it was suspicious.”

“Which is exactly why they would want to do it,” Dad says. “Think about it, Emma. You know this. The simplest answer is usually the right one. Why would a company that had just sabotaged an aircraft to cause a crash and kill someone plan another trip on that type of aircraft to kill someone? They wouldn’t. It would be too obvious. But that man booked the flight himself. It wasn’t a business trip. So why would the company not use that kind of aircraft for future trips? It would be suspicious if they didn’t.”

I nod. “It’s so obvious it stops being obvious.”

“Exactly. When I uncovered that Sebastian was likely being targeted, I made contact with him, and he’s been providing information for my investigation,” Dad says.

“But then things took a turn. Your father told me about things happening in the company I didn’t even know about. They were making moves and not involving me. My name came up associated with one of the money laundering operations,” Sebastian tells me.

“Your name came up?” I ask. “Like they were trying to pin the blame on you?”

“That’s the only explanation. That particular money laundering operation has links to at least one suspicious death and possible… domestic servitude issues.”

“You mean slavery. They were trying to set you up. If you wouldn’t get on the plane so they could make sure it crashed and you died, presumably with the pilot being collateral damage, they would just make sure the information was leaked that you were behind the corruption. But even then, if you were caught, you would just end up in prison. Unlikely even that. You would have no information to give them, and they couldn’t conclusively link you to any of the activities. Why would they even bother with that?” I ask.

“Considering the extensive level of deception and cover-ups already in place within the company, I wouldn’t put it past them to construct enough of a case against Sebastian that he would actually end up in prison if it came to that. But I don’t think that was the intention. I think that was a piece of evidence rather than a plan. I believe the plan was for him to be killed and for it to look like it was part of these unscrupulous dealings gone wrong,” my father explains. “After his death, the investigation would look into his work, and they would uncover what seemed like his criminal activities. It would look like he had crossed the wrong people and ended up dead because of it.”

“Which means Lavinia would be in danger too. It wouldn’t make sense to think that I had been involved in this deep of a criminal network without my wife knowing about it. Because the investigation would go directly to her, she would need to be eliminated as well. So I had to get away,” Sebastian adds.

“I told him he should remove himself from the equation until I had enough to end this. They were getting too close to him, and I couldn’t risk either of them being in danger. Without him as a target, Lavinia would be safe.”

“How could you possibly think that?” I ask, horrified that they willingly left her behind when they thought her husband was close enough to assassination to justify disappearing. “You just said that she would be a target because the authorities would assume she had knowledge of what was going on.”

“If I was killed,” Sebastian insists. “If I was killed, they would have to eliminate her too because she could tell the authorities there was no way I had anything to do with any of it. If it looked like I had already been kidnapped…”

“They would know she was cooperating with an investigation,” I point out. “And it was only a matter of time before the investigation started digging into the company and what you were doing. I knew from the second I got involved that something wasn’t right. The only question I had was whether your wife was a part of it.”

“She wasn’t,” he says quickly. “Lavinia doesn’t know anything. I didn’t want to put that on her. I didn’t want her to worry.”

“You didn’t want her to worry?” I snap incredulously. “You didn’t want your wife to worry about you, so you disabled your home’s security system, disappeared without telling her anything, and didn’t respond to her when she was trying to reach you.”

“I didn’t want her to know about what’s happening with my mother and that I was scared about what might happen to me,” Sebastian says.

“Right. Because why would you want to make sure that your wife is properly aware of what is happening around her and can make informed decisions regarding her own safety? And obviously, automatically you thought the way to ensure your wife isn’t terrified that something horrible has happened to the husband she hasn’t heard from is to send creepy, nonsensical notes to her,” I say.

His eyes widen, and he shakes his head. “No, that was supposed to reassure her.”

“Reassure her?” I ask. “They didn’t make any sense. And they came from five different places, plus the ones that just showed up in the mailbox. How is that supposed to be comforting in any way?”

“They were sent from places near properties my father owns,” he points out. “She’s been to all those properties. If she had looked up where the notes were sent from, she would have noticed that. And the notes weren’t nonsensical. They were a message to her. I’ve always told her that no matter where I go, I’m thinking about her. That I love her more than anything in the entire world, no matter what it is that I’m doing or how far away I am, I am always thinking of her and always love her, and I would do more and go further for her than I would for anything else. That I would go to the top of every mountain and the bottom of every ocean…”

I do my best not to roll my eyes at him, but I don’t think I succeed. I can’t believe what I’m hearing.

“You think that she’s going to process that? She was terrified that someone had taken you and that you were dead. There was never any ransom call or anybody taking credit for it, so she figured that you just died. That the notes were meant to taunt her. Her mind was nowhere near a place where she would think of taking out a map and trying to plot the locations of these notes. And even if she did, why would she then think to pinpoint places in the general area where she had been and that your father owned?

“But suspending my disbelief that you actually thought she would go through that process—actually think about that for a second. She was convinced that her husband had been abducted because of his wealth and power. She started receiving notes from several different locations. If she did decide that she was going to play detective and try to crack the code of where these notes were sent from so that she could connect the dots and find you, and she did realize that they were from locations near your father’s properties, why would that be reassuring to her?

“Because I can tell you that my first thought would be that whoever had abducted you was sending them from those locations as a sign of control over you or as a message that they want the money they know the family has access to because of those properties. And the fact that some of those notes were just left in her mailbox made her feel like the people were getting closer to her. At no point did she read that cryptic-ass message and think back on conversations she’d had with you, do some mental gymnastics, and decide that you were sending her a message. What you did do was scare the living hell out of her and make her worry that she was going to spend the rest of her life a widow.”

“That’s not what I meant to do. I wanted to make her feel better,” Sebastian says.

“What would have made her feel better is if you had been honest with her. She’s not a child, Sebastian. She’s your wife. If you were so worried about what’s going to happen to you because of what you found out, you should have been worried about her too. If you thought you needed to escape, she should have been a part of that. How did you even get the notes into the mailbox and also send them from all those different locations?”

His eyes slide over to my father, and I look at him in disbelief.

“You did this? You were actually a part of this nonsense?”

“I told you, I’ve been investigating what’s going on in that company, and I’m getting close to shutting it down. But I can’t act until everything is in place, or it could all crumble. Making sure that Sebastian was safe was top priority,” Dad says.

I throw my hands up. “So both of you concocted this asinine plan? Rather than putting him in a safe house? Making sure he was properly guarded? And as soon as you found out I was investigating his disappearance, why didn’t you contact me? You should have called me immediately. I know you were investigating that company, but I was investigating him. You needed to tell me what was happening. You wasted my time and my energy, and you put Sebastian, Lavinia, and quite possibly many other people in serious danger. And for what?”

“I did what I thought I needed to do,” Dad says.

“That’s what you always say. That’s what you’ve always said. I’m an adult now. I have been for a long time, and this is my career. It’s what I do. And I take it very seriously. You can’t interfere like this.”

“I didn’t think I was interfering. I was protecting the integrity of my investigation.”

“No, you weren’t. If it had been any other agent, would you have done the same thing? If it had been Eric or Gage, would you have kept it from them for as long as you kept it from me? No. You wouldn’t have. You would have gotten in touch with them and cooperated. You would have seen it as an oversight that the Bureau wasn’t running an investigation into the white-collar crime and fraud happening within the company, not to mention the probability of slavery and murder, and would immediately rectify it. Because you respect them.”

“I respect you too, Emma. You’re my daughter.” His voice is getting louder, his tone angrier.

I’m crossing way over the line that has existed between us for so many years. The one I myself drew. I spent so long trying to understand what happened to him and to my mother. I searched, and I grieved. When he came back, it was one of the greatest moments of my life. But gradually, the shimmer faded.

He’d always been there. He was working deep undercover in an effort to dig out the core of an insidious, dangerous organization intrinsically linked to our family, to my mother’s death, to me. He should have come to me. He should never have left without telling me what I needed to know. This is my life, and I deserved to know the truth about who I am. I deserved the respect of being a part of standing up for myself and taking down the man who tried to dismantle my family and my existence piece by piece.

“I’m an FBI agent,” I tell him. “You can’t keep me from my work. You can’t run around behind me like I’m a toddler trying to learn to walk. I know what I’m doing. After all this time, you should know that. You should have more faith in me and more respect for what I do. The corruption within the company might be your investigation, but Sebastian’s disappearance was mine. If you had just been honest with me, all this could have been resolved.

“You said you just wanted to remove him from the equation. Then why the messages to his mother? Why disconnect his security system? You put so much energy into something that had no purpose. And you’ve had me dangling at the end of a string for weeks. Then you brought him here—for what? Why would you take the risk of transporting him?”

Dad stands up. “I’m sorry, Emma. I didn’t realize my wanting to protect you had caused so much of a problem. I’m going to go.”

Sebastian hesitates. He looks like there’s something else he wants to say, but my father is walking out of the office toward the front door. There’s a part of me that thinks I should follow him. But I can’t bring myself to do it. Not right now.

He stands up and walks to the door, turning around to look at me again.

“What are you going to do?” he asks.

“I’m going to give you the chance to do the right thing. I don’t want to get in the way of what my father and his team are doing, but I can’t just sit by and let this keep happening to your wife. If you genuinely believe there is a risk, she should be in protective custody. I will give you the opportunity to contact her yourself, but I will be calling her tomorrow.”

He again looks like he wants to say something, then walks away. I hear Sam and Dean talking in front of the house and my father responding, but they’re talking in muffled tones, and I don’t understand what they are saying. I gather the dirty dishes and carry them into the kitchen. Sam comes in and busies himself getting ice cream out of the freezer. He steps back and acts like he’s searching for something eluding him on the four shelves of frozen food. He’s just stalling.

“Something you want to say?” I ask, rinsing off the last plate and putting it in the dishwasher.

The freezer door closes, and Sam carries the ice cream over to the counter near me. He reaches into the cabinet in front of him to take out bowls.

“You were pretty harsh on Ian,” he says.

I give my husband a disbelieving look. “Harsh? You think I was harsh?”

“Babe…”

I snap the little door over the dishwasher detergent pod and close the door hard.

“Please… don’t.”

“Hey,” he says as I try to walk away. “Don’t do that. We don’t do that.”

I stop and run my fingers back through my hair, taking a breath. Turning back to face him, I lift my eyebrows as an invitation for him to say more. When he doesn’t, I take my turn.

“My father knew I was investigating Sebastian’s disappearance, and he didn’t say a word to me about it. He just kept up with the idiotic charade they came up with. And rather than just facing up to what was going on, Sebastian strung his wife along and let her be terrified. This is bullshit, Sam. And it’s just like my father. It’s the same thing he’s been pulling my whole life. He decides what he thinks is best, and it doesn’t matter what anyone else is going through or how it will impact them. He makes unilateral decisions and just drags everybody along with him.”

“Emma, you moved around so much because of the work your mother did. Not him.”

“But he’s the one who decided to keep it all from me. I understand that I was really young and couldn’t possibly comprehend what was happening. But he manipulated me. He made it so that I could never trust what I thought I knew about my life. I didn’t even know for sure where my mother died, much less how. He drugged me so I would be easier to move at night. I never knew what was going on in my own life or what was going to come next. Again, when I was really young, I can understand him not wanting to scare me or for things to be more difficult than they already were. I get that he couldn’t tell me about Jonah. But I’m not a little girl anymore. I haven’t been for a long time. I had to find out for myself who my parents were and how it all started. Instead of him just sitting me down and being honest with me, he left. He decided he was going to take it into his own hands, like he always did, and fix it the way he thought it needed to be fixed. But where did that leave me? I was eighteen years old and didn’t have parents anymore. At eighteen years old, I was trying to cope with being alone and having no idea what had happened to my father.

“But it isn’t just that. It isn’t that he felt like he was the one who could take Jonah down because he knew him better than anybody. I understand that. I know why he did it. But why did he leave me? If he was so worried about me, if he thought I was in so much danger that he needed to erase his existence, how could he just leave me? How could he know I was going to be safe?”

“Are you angry with him for not protecting you enough or for protecting you too much?” Sam asks.

“I don’t know! I’m angry at all of it. I’ve carried it with me for years, and I’ve done my best not to dwell on it. I’ve tried to live in the moment rather than going back and spending time thinking about things I can’t change. But you know what, Sam? I’m not fucking perfect.”

“No one is asking you to be,” he says, taking a step closer to me. “What’s going on with you?”

Closing my eyes, I stretch my neck side to side, trying to release the tension built up in my muscles.

“Every step of my life, the people around me have always been one step ahead of me. They have filtered what I knew and how I understood my world. I didn’t get to know who my mother really was or the incredible things she did. No one ever told me where I was born or what I survived when I was just a little girl. They hid everything from me. And I know that everyone thinks they did what they should have done. That they were trying to keep me safe and shield me from horrible things. But it was my life. My story. And they didn’t even give me the option to know it.

“My life was constant questions and constant wondering, but it was also constant risk. I was always in danger, and I didn’t even have the ability to protect myself because I didn’t know what was happening. How many times did he get so close to me that I was one different movement, one breath away from dying?”

“But you didn’t,” Sam says.

“Eli did. His life was devoted to taking care of me and watching over me when I didn’t know I needed to be watched. I put him in danger constantly, and I had no choice about it because I didn’t know he was there. He died filling a role he should have walked away from a long time before. And all these years later, my father is still lying to me. He’s still holding things back from me. He’s still making decisions that aren’t his to make because he won’t let me be an adult,” I say.

“He’s doing it because he loves you. Maybe he’s not doing it in the right way. I’ll give it to you, it’s pretty messed up what you went through. And Dean. I’m not discounting that the way everything went down affected him too. But try for a second to think about it from his perspective.”

“Sam, I’ve been through enough therapy. I don’t need to role-play and practice empathy,” I say.

“I think you do. You’re condemning a man who had been forced to fear for his only child’s life from before she was born. Whose wife was stalked and tormented and then brutally murdered. He has always carried guilt for that, Emma. He has always felt like there was something else he should have done to protect her that night.”

“I know that he went through a lot too. And I’m sure it scared the hell out of him. But it doesn’t change that I spent my life with him controlling what I was going to know and the amount of power I had over my own existence. Don’t forget, he knew Dean’s mother. He watched over Dean. He knew the hell he went through. We never had the opportunity to have each other because of how my father controlled everything.

“And he’s still doing it. He stays away for months on end, never talking about his work, never letting anyone get too close. But he keeps tabs on me. He knows what I’m doing. And when it suits him, he stands in my way. He says he’s protecting me, but he’s just trying to keep hold of me.

“I know I lashed out at him. But you don’t know what it’s like to always wonder. I’ve come a long way. I’ve built a life I love and that I never thought I was going to have. I have a career that I am immensely proud of and that feels like a part of me. I have a husband I love more than anything. I have a family. And I have so much ahead of me. I’m far from done. And yet, there’s always that question in the back of my mind. I’m always wondering what I don’t know. What is being kept from me? What is happening that I don’t know about?

“This is even more than that. This isn’t just my life he was manipulating. He put his own investigation in front of mine. He let me spin my wheels. And while he was doing that, my efforts were taken away from other cases and things that I could have done. I could have put more into my cases. I could have acted faster when Lisa called and saved Nadia from what she went through. I could have been more focused on Mike…”

Suddenly, I stop. The tips of my fingers tingle, and my lips feel numb.

“What? What is it?” Sam asks.

I turn and take long strides into the living room.

“Hey, Xavier?”

“The guy doing this true crime podcast just said ‘I am really surprised by how often searches are called off because the dogs can’t find a trail. Fortunately, today’s sponsor will give you a scent that will help you stand out. Scent Journey.’”

“Xavier…”

“What the hell kind of segue is that? When did we, as a society, collectively decide we are so resigned to the current abysmal state of the world that we are all just going to prepare ourselves to be corpses?”

“X…”

“Scent Journey… Pick your favorite custom fragrance so the tracking dogs can find your body more easily. Available in convenient monthly subscriptions so you’re always ready to be a beacon to your own demise.”

“Xavier…”

“This morning I think I’ll go with sandalwood and pineapple rind. That will definitely contrast with the boggy swamp where my mangled remains will end up.”

“Xavier!”

He turns to look at me like he didn’t even realize I was standing here.

“Hi, Emma,” he says.

“Hi. I need you to think about when we were at the beginning of the investigation into Mike Morris’s disappearance. We were going over all the different organizations he has been a part of and the chairs he’s held.”

“We were trying to figure out if any of those had to do with why he would have been chosen by the Game Master,” Xavier says.

“Exactly,” I say. “There was one that really caught your attention. Do you remember?”

“Bannon-Shrug,” he says without hesitation. “When I first saw it, I thought it said ‘banana slug.’ It was a group that facilitated education outreach in underserved countries.”

“Yes,” I say. “Thank you.”

I head for my office with Sam right behind me. I could have dug through all my notes about Mike Morris to find the name, but I knew that going to Xavier was much more efficient. Sitting back down where the information my father and Sebastian McDonnell gave me is still spread out, I sift through the papers until I find what I am looking for.

Sam shows up at the door.

“What’s that?” he asks.

“When I was going over everything with Dad and Sebastian, this popped out at me, but I didn’t put it together at that second. There was just something about the name that was so familiar, and it didn’t occur to me until we were in the kitchen talking. But I remember Xavier latching on to it when we were first investigating Mike Morris. He just couldn’t get over it, so it was stuck in my head too. Bannon-Shrug. They are the last names of the two people who founded this organization.

“They try to improve educational access in countries where it’s difficult for children to get to school or that have barriers in place for specific students, such as girls. They collect books and supplies to send over with representatives. They’ve even worked in an entire library of video lessons and have curriculums set up on small educational tablets. It’s a really impressive group, and Mike Morris gives a tremendous amount of time and money to it. He has been on the board of directors for years and even spearheaded a program that linked the children’s hospital to this organization by establishing pen pal relationships for the children,” I explain.

“I mean, that all sounds amazing, but what does it have to do with anything?” Sam asks.

“Anita McDonnell had a brief partnership with the group. A corporate sponsorship that raised funds and even provided some of the materials. Mike was in direct contact with Anita throughout that time. But then it ended.”

“Do you think that Mike might have been involved in some of the corruption?”

“No, the opposite. It doesn’t look like he was a part of any of it. It looks like he walked away. It wasn’t something that Dad had on his radar during his investigation, so I don’t have any details about how it went down, but if I just look at the timing of some of the things Dad did point out to me, it looks… convenient.”

“So you think Mike knew what was going on and decided to separate himself from Anita McDonnell.”

“At the very least, he had suspicions that there was something going on, and he decided to distance himself. But it’s more than that. Just looking over this information, I can see at least two other connections to Game Master victims.”

“Could Anita…”

I cut him off before he finishes his thought. “I don’t think there’s any possibility that McDonnell is the Game Master. I will look further into it, of course, but things just don’t line up with it being her. But it certainly looks like the corruption within her company has created a hunting ground for him. Which means she could be in serious danger. I need to talk to Sebastian again. And my father.”

Usually, when my father is in town, he just stays with Sam and me, but since he had Sebastian with him, he decided to book a room at the hotel in town instead. I don’t know how long he intended to stay or what exactly he envisioned for this meeting. I don’t ask. I need to focus on the cases at hand.

Now that I know Sebastian was not abducted or killed, and I can confirm his location, this is no longer my case. I’m not going to try to wade out into the investigation already being done into Anita McDonnell. My father and his team have already done enough work on that to arrive at a resolution without my involvement.

As far as I’m concerned, the only thing I need from Sebastian now is information about his mother and the possibility that the Game Master could have her in his sights.

I’m not surprised when my father answers the phone. I’m not one to hem and haw over calling somebody just because I have a conflict with them. If I need something, especially when it comes to something as urgent as this case, I’m going to make contact. This is business, pure and simple. Anything else can be put aside and dealt with at another time.

I meet them at Pearl’s Diner. It’s the only place in Sherwood that’s still open at this time of night. The ubiquitous white coffee mugs appear in front of us as soon as we sit down, and I allow the waitress to fill mine to the brim with full octane brew.

“I’m going to preface this by saying that I am not getting involved with anything relating to investigating your mother’s company or everything that’s going on with it. That is a separate issue, and it will be handled according to the plan that has already been established.”

“Then why are we here?” Sebastian asks. “You already know that I left on my own. And you said I just needed to tell my wife. Ian and I have talked about moving Lavinia and me into a safe house or going to another property where we can be protected until everything is settled.”

“That’s exactly what should be happening,” I tell him. “But that’s not why I’m here. It isn’t just you who needs protection. Arrangements need to be made for your mother too.”

“My mother?” Sebastian asks, sounding confused.

“Anita?” Dad asks. “She’s the one being investigated. Why would we need to protect her?”

“She doesn’t need to be protected from what’s going on in her company exactly. That still needs to be thoroughly investigated, and she should be brought up on as many charges as are necessary. But it’s possible she could be in very serious danger. I didn’t notice it at first because it wasn’t part of the investigation you were telling me about, but when I looked at it further, I noticed several links to my investigation into the Game Master case.”

“The Game Master. That’s the guy choosing players and putting them through challenges. Most of them are dead,” Sebastian says.

“Yes.”

“What does that have to do with my mother? She hasn’t had any contact from anybody like that.”

“You don’t know that. The reality is most of the victims we have encountered have kept their correspondence with the Game Master away from even their closest family and friends for weeks or even months. Many of them hadn’t ever mentioned it, and the only way that anybody became aware that they were a part of it was because of the circumstances of their deaths. I can’t get into the details of my investigation or what I know about him, but I can tell you that your mother absolutely fits the demographic of the players being chosen. And looking more into what the two of you uncovered about the company, I found multiple links to known victims. It seems that what’s going on there is making the associated people targets.

“Your mother is right at the top of it. And like I said, you don’t know that she hasn’t already had contact with him. You said yourself that she started behaving differently recently. She started getting in touch with you more often and showing you more affection. Spending more time with your wife?”

“Yeah,” Sebastian says. “Like she was keeping tabs on me. Or maybe trying to manipulate me by making me feel bad for wanting to do anything that could put her at risk. Like telling the police about the things she’s done and allowed to happen.”

“That’s possible. She could be trying to close ranks and figure out what it is that you know. Or be trying to appeal to your sense of loyalty. She may even be trying to get you to see the possibilities of what you could gain from cooperating with her. That’s all possible. But it’s also possible she could have been selected as a player and knows that she is in danger. Having your life at risk, whether that means thinking you are going to die imminently or just knowing you’re probably going to end up in prison, can dramatically change how a person sees the world.

“She could very well be worried about what’s going to come next, whether she decides to cooperate with the Game Master or not, and thinking about what really matters to her in life. As her only child, she might be feeling a strong longing to connect with you and get as much time with you as possible. This would not be the first instance of one of the players showing changes in their personality or regular behavior in the early stages of communication with the Game Master,” I tell him.

“How are we supposed to know?”

“Unfortunately, that isn’t an answer I can give you. It isn’t as simple as following a basic pattern. Each one of the victims seems to be approached very individually. How they receive their communication, what they are asked to do, and how long they interact with this person before something serious happens varies greatly from person to person. There are few constants. One of them is the symbol that seems to be the Game Master’s trademark.”

“I saw a picture of it on the news,” Sebastian says.

“Then you would recognize it if you saw it anywhere else? You would know if you saw it on anything your mother has sent out or had around her house recently?”

“I’d recognize it. I haven’t seen it.”

“Emma, do you really think that she could be targeted next?” my father asks.

“I think it’s a strong possibility.”

“Then we need to act. Sebastian, we’ll stay with the plan as it is. I’ll get things in motion, and we should have a place for you by tomorrow. Maybe the day after. We will get in touch with Lavinia and find a way to tell her what’s going on and have her prepare without calling anybody’s attention. All this needs to be done separately from anything having to do with your mother. Nobody can know that the two situations are connected.” He looks over at me. “What do you think?”

He’s still doing it. He’s still trying to take absolute control. But he stopped himself. And for right now, that’s enough. My focus is on the case, and in this instance, I agree with him.

“Yes, I think that’s the best way to approach it for the sake of both situations. You handle getting Sebastian and Lavinia safe so that you can close your investigation. I’ll approach Anita.”

“She’s going to be suspicious,” Sebastian warns. “You’ve already talked to her about me. Isn’t it going to seem strange to her that suddenly you are pivoting and want to focus on her?”

“No, I’m sure she already knows about the Game Master. Even if she hasn’t already been selected, she has to have heard about the case on the news or been aware of people in her circle who have been affected. She might not have put together that I’m heading up that investigation, but the truth is the simplest explanation here. She doesn’t need to know where I got the names or why. All she needs to know is that in the course of my investigation into your disappearance, it came to my attention that she could be targeted and it’s important that she be placed in protective custody for her own safety.

“We’ll see how she reacts. If she has already been selected, she could give it away with how she responds just to the mention of the Game Master. She is very good at controlling her emotions though, so she might hold it in. Either way, it will be up to her whether she accepts the help. We can’t force her into it. Proximity alone isn’t enough of a threat to justify compelling her into protection,” I say.

“And if she doesn’t accept it?” Sebastian asks.

It’s difficult to tell the exact motivation behind the question. Part of it seems to come from a place of worry for himself. If Anita chooses not to go into protective custody, that would mean she would still be at the helm of the company he thinks is threatening his life. But there’s also this sense that even with his knowledge about what his mother has done, he is still worried about her. I can understand that. Her actions don’t change the fact that she is his mother. He can have disdain for what she has done and has allowed to happen and still maintain love for her. It may be difficult to wrap one’s head around the idea that he would still care about a woman he thinks is perfectly willing to sacrifice him in order to keep her own illegal activities out of public knowledge, but it happens often. People don’t like to let go of love.

It seems to be that very reluctance to completely disconnect that motivates Anita McDonnell’s reaction to me the next day when I go to meet with her. The timing is very deliberate. I am in her office at exactly the same time that my father is making contact with Lavinia.

His part in this is extremely delicate. He has to connect with her, give her the details about what’s going on, and transfer her to a safe location where he will reunite her with Sebastian—all without calling any attention to himself or making their movements known. I know he’s more than capable of it. And later he will tell me the details so I stay informed.

My part is both urgent and inherently duplicitous. I want to keep Anita out of the clutches of the Game Master and prevent further tragedies for herself or for anyone else who could be impacted by the challenges presented to her. I’m hopeful for any information that might be gleaned out of her if she has been in contact with him. At the same time, putting her into protection is also a way of keeping an eye on her. It means she can’t catch wind of the bigger investigation and try to get away.

“Agent Griffin,” she says by way of greeting, walking around her massive mahogany desk to shake my hand.

“Good afternoon. Thank you for being willing to see me without an appointment,” I say.

“Of course. Would you like to have a seat?”

The furniture placed around a coffee table on the far side of the office doesn’t look welcoming or comfortable. It’s essentially an extension of the display of power and wealth that is her entire office. The couch and two chairs are unquestionably expensive. They give off the impression that they are there for decoration more than comfort. But sitting there is better than being across the desk from her like I’m in the principal’s office again.

“I don’t want to waste any time,” I tell her. “A very serious situation has come to my attention, and immediate action needs to be taken.”

Her face falls slightly. “A serious situation? What’s happened?”

“This is not the time or the place to get into details about it. It is potentially very sensitive in nature and also extremely urgent. I need you to tell your assistant, the executives, and whoever you trust within the company and who can act in your place or put those measures into place that you will be taking some time away from work and come with me,” I say.

I don’t expect her to immediately comply. It’s not in her nature. This is a woman accustomed to control. Even when her husband was alive, she would have had power and leadership. She is not the kind of person who easily takes direction, especially when she’s not given any reason.

Her face twists in concern. “Taking time away from work? Why would I do that? I need to be here for my company.”

“I understand that, but these are extenuating circumstances,” I tell her.

“I need to know what’s happening.”

“There is another case I have been actively leading for some time now, and I believe I have found a significant thread. Are you familiar with the Game Master?”

Anita draws in a sharp breath, the tips of her fingers going to the center of her chest where a pendant sits against her crisp blouse. She touches it like it offers her strength and grounding. I wonder if her husband gave her that necklace. It’s the same kind of compulsion I have toward touching my wedding ring.

“Is that what happened to Sebastian?” she asks, her tone now hushed. “Was my son targeted?”

The reaction seems genuine. Anita looks shocked and horrified, instantly jumping to the thought that Sebastian is the one who was selected by the Game Master and that’s why I’m here.

It’s not something I’d considered. I didn’t think that was where her mind would go, and seeing her immediately respond that way gives me reason to believe she has not been in communication with the twisted killer. I could be wrong. She’s already known to be reserved in her emotions. She holds them in tight control and doles them out when and how she sees fit. It’s entirely possible she’s using them to manipulate me now. It’s not anything others haven’t done.

But I don’t see that from her. I think she’s sincerely thinking that I came here to tell her that I found out Sebastian was chosen as a player by the Game Master. Maybe she thinks one of his challenges involved hurting her. Whatever the reason, her reasoning didn’t jump to herself as the target. It went to her missing son. Which means she doesn’t know what happened to him and she wants to find him… whatever the true motivation.

“I can’t get into any specifics about this right now, but I’m here because it is my belief that you could be a target and we need to get you somewhere safe.”

“Me? Why would this person want anything to do with me?”

It’s a dual-purpose question. There’s the meaning right on the surface, but she also wants to know what information I have about her. At this point, the media coverage of the ongoing Game Master case has become a frenzy. Even though I am working as hard as I can to keep as many of the details out of public knowledge as possible, every news outlet in existence is churning out coverage as often as they can. They recycle what they already know and call in people who think of themselves as experts to conjecture on the meaning of the case and who could be behind it.

I have very purposely not released the specific detail that the Game Master is holding personal, sensitive information over the heads of the players that he chooses, but it hasn’t taken a lot of armchair sleuthing for people to come to that conclusion themselves. They already know the people who have been chosen. They know what has become of other people who feared being chosen. It doesn’t take much to get to the conclusion that people are being chosen and punished for dark secrets in their lives. I won’t confirm it. I’m not going to give that much access or purposely take on the burden of responsibility for anyone who takes the piece of information and decides that it is a valid reason for them to preventively end their own lives.

It also hasn’t escaped my mind that there is always the possibility of a copycat or a vigilante. Crime stories this big and sensationalized can draw out intense reactions from people. Some crave the fame, attention, and twisted, morbid validation they perceive as being showered on the culprit and want to take it for themselves, so they mimic the crimes. Others are so infuriated by the actions of the criminal and convinced of their own righteousness that they feel entitled to take matters into their own hands.

These are all reasons to walk the very fine line between making sure that the public is properly informed and preserving the integrity of the investigation by preventing certain details from becoming known by the general public. But in the context of this case, Anita is not really a part of the general public. She is a member of a sphere of focus that has gone from a glittering throne to a rat cage.

Like Baron Johnson, she is surrounded by people who know this case and the implications it could have for them and the people like them. They are paying far closer attention to the torment and death of wealthy, influential people with hordes of skeletons in their closets than the average person needs to. For the latter, it’s just an intriguing and disturbing story. For the former, it’s a looming threat.

And that tells me Anita knows, or at least suspects, what goes into the selection of the players. And she wants to know which of her many potential reasons I know about.

“I can give you more information when I know that you are safe,” I tell her.

What information that will be is up to my discretion.

“When can I contact everyone again? Surely, I can work remotely or at least communicate with certain people about the company,” she says.

This isn’t a request or even an actual inquiry. It’s a subtle, finishing school-flavored command. She is informing me that this is the situation and fully expecting me to go along with it without question. In her mind, this is my opportunity to tell her what she wants to hear, to reassure her she is still fully in control. She is going to be disappointed.

“No,” I say flatly. “That isn’t an option. Because we don’t know who this person is or who might have a connection with them, it isn’t possible to choose even just a few people to trust. If you are to be safe, you need to be fully out of communication with everyone, and your location cannot be known.”

“How am I possibly supposed to explain that to everybody? Even with my son missing, I haven’t taken a leave of absence from the company. I am always here, and I do what I need to do on a daily basis. Any time that I have taken off to handle my personal matters has been very abbreviated, and I have kept my trusted employees fully aware. That’s a part of good leadership. If I am expected to maintain the trust and respect of the people around me, I have to show transparency.”

It takes effort not to blatantly laugh at that statement. Considering the things I know about her and her company, she’s about as transparent as a slab of concrete.

“That may be the case, but this is a different situation. You aren’t just stepping away for your personal needs. At this point, giving too much information to the wrong person could be detrimental. Not just for you, but for many other people. You, as you have already made clear, are in charge here. That means you don’t have to provide justification for or explanation to anyone. You can make your own decisions. But if you feel that you have to tell them something, you tell them what I told you. Something has come up in the investigation, and you need to take some time. This needs to happen now.”

“I can’t have until the end of the day?”

“No. Arrangements have already been made, and I need to get you out of here within the next ten minutes.”

I escort Anita to her house to pack some things. I can’t give her an honest answer when she asks how long she is going to be away, and as she goes through her closet, I realize she hasn’t asked anything else about Sebastian. Since confirming that he wasn’t targeted, she hasn’t made any other inquiries about the investigation or any evidence that’s already been gathered. She hasn’t asked about her daughter-in-law or made any effort to find out if there has been any sort of headway in finding Sebastian. I don’t offer any information.

Once she has packed what she thinks she needs, I bring Anita to a meeting point just out of town, where another agent is waiting. He’s driving a nondescript SUV that looks like it has seen better days and is wearing jeans, a worn T-shirt, and dark sunglasses under a deeply folded baseball cap. It’s a far cry from the immediate image most people have of an FBI agent on a mission like this. The popular conception is that he should be in a sleek, black car that matches his tailored suit.

That makes for a dramatic image in a TV show or movie, but obviously, in actual practice, it is far too obvious and attention-grabbing to be effective and safe. That kind of vehicle alone would be out of place and be too noticeable. Shuffling a woman into it would just look ominous.

Instead, I make an effort to look casual and relaxed as I get out of the car with Anita and chat with Agent Murphy Lincoln. For anyone who might be around and have taken note of the interaction, I don’t want it to look like either of us is in any hurry or has any concerns. It’s just a casual conversation at a convenient meeting place. The fact that Anita gets out of my car with her luggage and transfers over to his is an afterthought. If we don’t pay attention to it and make it look like something out of the ordinary, no one else will either.

Once she is on her way to the safe house location, I get back in my car and head for the police station. I want to check in on the Denise Stein investigation and see if there has been any further development. Since the discovery of the sticker on the storm door of the house, I haven’t heard anything else. I mobilized officers in the area to look for her, and the news is still showing images of the stickers to let people know to keep their eye out for them. It has worked, but it’s also a bit of a crap shoot. While they come together to create the ominous symbol of the Game Master, each of the individual pieces is so generic-looking it’s easy to overlook them completely.

Detective Melton is standing in the conference room leaning back against the table, his ankles crossed and one hand supporting him as he chats with an officer. The cup of coffee in his hand smells amazing, and I try to think of how long it’s been since I’ve had a cup. Or eaten. Many hours at this point.

“Hey, Agent,” Melton says when he notices me. He looks at the officer again. “Go ahead and run that search with a different spelling of the name and see if it comes up with anything. Let me know.”

The officer gives an acknowledging nod and leaves the room.

“Something to do with Denise Stein?” I ask.

“No, a possible gang situation. All the witnesses we’ve rounded up are giving us different variations of a street name, and we haven’t yet nailed down who we’re actually looking for.”

“Ah.” I put my bag down on the table. “How about Denise then? Anything new?”

“Not since we last talked. No other stickers have been reported, and there haven’t been any sightings of her.”

I let out a breath and lean over the table to look at the notes spread out across it. “All right. Then we just keep digging.”

“This last piece was found on a house less than twenty minutes away from where she lives, right?” Melton asks.

“Yeah.”

“And you pointed out that it seems she is moving closer to her house with each new piece.”

“Except for the first ones,” I point out. “She went from the airport to the mountain and then to a different state. Now she’s making her way back.”

“Which means she’s probably going to end up right back at her house. There’s only three pieces left. Rather than going out of our way like this to track her down, why don’t we just let her finish the challenge? Wait for her at her house?”

I look at him dumbfounded. I can’t believe that is his actual suggestion for how to handle this search.

“You want to just let her continue to wander around without any idea of what she is going through or who is controlling her and just wait for her to eventually make it back to her house?” I ask.

“That’s where she’s going,” Melton says. “At least we know where that is.”

“But we don’t actually know that’s where she’s going or, even if it is, what else she might encounter on the way there. Like you said, there are three more stickers left. Assuming the last one is found at her house or in the immediate area, that’s still two more in between. We don’t know where she’s going to end up. She’s already been on private property twice. That could have ended with her being shot. She could have fallen and hurt herself on that mountain. We need to find her, not just assume she’ll wander into our waiting arms.”

He holds up his hands in surrender. “All right. I was just trying to save time and give us some sort of direction since we don’t know why she is putting the stickers in those places, so we don’t know where she’s going to go next.”

I think about that for a second. “Again… if she is putting them there. We still haven’t conclusively determined whether Denise herself is putting those stickers in the places they’ve been found or if they were already put there and she was sent to find them. The other ones found in her house tell me this is only the first step of this challenge. I think it’s likely that she was tasked with finding each of these stickers and sending some sort of proof to the Game Master. She will then have to place the next set for another player.

“That’s why they were in her living room. She didn’t put them there. Remember, her son said she would never do something like that. They were put there for her to find. And that makes me think the last one isn’t actually going to be at her house.”

“Why?”

“Impact. She will have gone through all this, and when she finds the final piece, she will think she’s finished the challenge. She did what she was told. So she’ll think she can go home and maybe everything will be fine. But then when she gets there, she finds the stickers. She knows she’s not done. It’s all about emotional control. The torment. That sense that even when she does everything she’s told to do, he’s still right there and can keep her doing his bidding,” I say.

“But what’s the point of the stickers? Why have her wandering around looking for them and then have her put them in other places for someone else to find?”

“It isn’t really about the stickers. It’s the humiliation. The degradation of doing something so simplistic and inane. But it’s also the underlying message. Essentially, ‘If I can make you do this, I can make you do anything. Just wait until you see what’s next.’ It’s to show his dominance and ability to fully operate her life for as long as he wants to. If she wants her secret to be kept, she’s going to have to do whatever he says, no matter how ridiculous. It’s a different kind of control than the violence inflicted on some of the other players, but for someone like Denise, it’s extremely effective.

“She is so used to living her own life. She doesn’t have anyone around to tell her where she should go or what she should do. She has spent decades just jetting off when the mood struck her and going on whatever adventure suited her. She’s always the one who makes the decisions, who creates the plans, who establishes the relationship dynamics. Keep in mind, her daughter-in-law talked about it not being unusual for her to be out of touch for long stretches but that they always got together at the holidays,” I say.

“So?” he asks.

“So the expectation was set by Denise Stein. She established those guidelines. The time they spend together as a family and what they do together is seen as non-negotiable, but that’s only because it’s what she determined. Now the Game Master has her under his power. He’s the one deciding what she should do, where she should go. She doesn’t get to decide. She doesn’t get to just say she’s finished and go home. Unless she is willing to give up.”

“All right. So if she is looking for these stickers and sending proof of them to the Game Master, who is putting them there? And why those specific places?” he asks.

I shake my head, not knowing the answer to that question. I think for a few seconds, then it dawns on me.

“We do it again,” I say.

“Do what again?”

I sit down and move everything but the timeline of images out of the way. I point to the one I believe was the first one placed, though it wasn’t the first one we knew about.

“All of it. We start from the beginning.”

“But we already know Denise was at these locations,” he says.

“Exactly. We’ve been looking for Denise. Confirming she was at each of these places. This time we’re not looking for her. We’re looking for someone else who just happens to show up. The locations for each of these stickers don’t follow any kind of logical map or route that we know of. Not only does that mean we can’t predict where the next one is going to be. It also means that the likelihood of someone else showing up in those locations around the same times is very slim, unless they were sent there intentionally.”

“So if we can look through all these locations again and pinpoint someone showing up at more than one of them, maybe we’re on a trail.”

“That’s what I’m thinking. And if we can identify that person, then either we have the Game Master himself or, more likely, we have another one of his players. They may not realize that they have been instructed to go through this challenge alongside Denise. It’s entirely possible they were just told to put the stickers in specific places and don’t have any idea as to why. But they might also know exactly what the plans are. And if we can get to them, we could get more information that we’ve been looking for,” I explain.

In a way, it’s frustrating going right back to what feels like the beginning of the investigation into Denise Stein’s disappearance. It took a lot of work to unravel what happened and find each of the instances of her location. Now I’m back to square one.

At least I’m not entirely without direction this time though. Knowing where I’m looking gives me a bit more focus. The problem is, we don’t really know when most of these stickers were placed. We only know when she found them. And that is assuming I’m right about this not being a challenge just for her but something involving another person as well. What I have to go on is the same techniques I used to find Denise each step of the way.

I know I will probably be here for a good while, so I order lunch and go to the lounge to get some coffee.

Back in the war room, I open the computer Detective Melton provided and start searching. At first, I don’t have much luck. Because I don’t know who I’m looking for, it’s difficult to compare the footage and pictures that we have. But then I realize I’ve missed an important step. I have to narrow down when those stickers were placed. I can’t just assume it was right before Denise got to each of those locations.

Starting again, I use image searches and trawl through social media. Checking back on the trail cam footage, finally, I find it.

“Right there,” I say to Melton, putting down my third cup of coffee so I can point to the screen.

“What am I looking at?” he asks.

“It’s kind of hard to see. The picture was taken from a strange angle. You have to kind of imagine that you are in the parking lot and have turned to face the fireworks store rather than the gas station. Remember the video taken by the travel influencer where we saw Denise in the background? That’s how we know that she was at the tourist stop where the sticker was found in the bathroom stall. That was taken from the opposite direction of where we are now. Which means that the bathrooms are behind us to the left. Now look.”

I show him the picture again and point out the figure that caught my attention. It looks like nothing more than a man walking toward the restrooms, but looking closely, we can see he’s holding something white in his hand.

“That looks like it could be the sticker,” Melton says.

“Very well could be. And then there’s this. If you look over here, in the direction he’s walking from, you can see this car. There’s a tag on the front window and a dent in the driver’s side door. It’s too far away to see what the tag says, but you can see its position. Now look at the footage from a security camera at a gas station a couple of miles from the trail where Denise’s phone pinged.

“The most heavily used road to access the area that then leads to the place the sticker was found is right beside that gas station. It’s extremely difficult to access that area any other way. And if somebody did know how to use the private road going up the other side of the mountain, it would have taken them right past the owner’s house, which she would have immediately noticed and also captured on her home’s security camera. So I looked through the footage, and I found this.”

I show him a still from the camera footage. It has a blue subcompact going past the gas station.

“That looks like the same car.”

“Same dent in the door and everything. And then this.”

I bring up the footage of the teenage girl doing her rendition of the viral dance. Previously, what caught our attention was Denise in the background. But now I point out the front of a car just visible at the edge of the frame.

“You can only see part of it,” Melton says.

“I know. But it’s enough to see the tag on the windshield. And you can see the first three characters on the license plate. G-R-A. Go back to the first time we see this car. There is a post blocking most of the plate, but you can see a G. This is the same car. This means Denise was there at the same time as the person who put the sticker there. Either she was moving faster than they anticipated, or the timeline was getting closer and closer to overlapping, and that could mean a really bad outcome.”

“So what we have is a general description of a car with specific damage characteristics, the first three characters of a license plate, and an image of a man whose face you can’t fully see,” Melton says.

“I’ve worked with a lot less,” I say.

“Darian Cooper,” Melton says a few hours later as he sets a picture down on the table in front of me.

I pull the image closer and look down at the face. “You’re sure?”

“About as sure as I can be without getting a sworn affidavit that it was him. Put the other pictures you found, the other footage of the car, getting the make and model identified… Everything narrowed it down, and this is what came out of it.”

“All right, Darian Cooper. Talk to me.”

“Forty-one years old. Married. Father of one. Owns a chain of car washes.”

“Do you find it as ironic as I do that he owns a business dedicated to caring for vehicles but his is damaged?” I ask.

“Is that ironic? Is that what it means?” he asks.

“I’m pretty sure it is,” I say.

His head tilts slightly to the side like he’s thinking and hoping the incline will help the correct stored information roll down into his consciousness.

“It doesn’t seem right. Wait… irony is when you think something… No. It’s… Shit… I know this.”

“I don’t really think you do. But you know what? Xavier isn’t here to correct us. Let’s just throw caution to the wind and play fast and loose with grammatical principles for this conversation.”

His experiences with Xavier are limited, but he can sense the importance of the statement. He contemplates it and gives a single nod.

“I can live with that.”

“Fantastic. Making progress. All right, back to Darian Cooper and his dented car.”

“Right. So this particular car has been registered to him for fifteen years. That’s two years longer than he has owned his first car wash. He also has two sports cars and a luxury SUV.”

“So this is his throwback,” I say. “The tie to his early years to keep him humble.”

“And the perfect unassuming car to take for clandestine activities,” Melton says.

“Probably not something he had in mind when he made the decision to keep the car, but I guess a convenient thing to have in his back pocket. Okay, we know who he is. So what’s the rest of his story? What does he have to do with all this?”

“That’s for you to figure out. There’s no missing persons report out on him. No arrest warrant. It doesn’t look like anything unusual is going on in his world.”

“Other than driving all over creation to plant stickers for a serial killer,” I say.

“Other than that.”

“What time is it?” I ask. I pick my phone up from the table and check the screen. “Not too late. But probably the time of night when a wife would expect her executive-level husband home.”

“What are you going to do?” Detective Melton asks.

“I’m going to call them,” I say. “I’m not just going to drive up to the house and kick down a door.” I open the search on my phone to look up Cooper’s contact information. “Yet.”

The website Dean turned me onto after it became one of his go-to resources when investigating cases comes through for me. It only takes a couple of minutes and clicking through a few pages to get to a full profile of Darian Cooper. I jot down his and his wife’s phone numbers and social media links so I can reference them again later.

I dial the number for Darian and listen through several rings before the voicemail message picks up. I don’t leave a message but hang up and immediately try to call again. I give it a third try before turning to his wife, Lacey.

She answers on the second ring. “Hello?”

Her voice has the distinctive uptick of someone who didn’t recognize the number that showed up on their screen but was too curious to just let it ring.

“Lacey Cooper?”

“This is she.”

“Is your husband Darian Cooper?”

“He is,” she says, the curiosity now causing the words to slide downward as she tries to figure out why I’m calling.

“My name is Special Agent Emma Griffin. I am with the FBI.”

I hear a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line. “FBI? Oh no. Where’s Darian? What happened to him?”

She already sounds on the brink of panic. This tells me she is expecting her husband to be home at this time and is unsure of what is going on with him.

“There’s no need to be concerned right now. I’m not calling to give you bad news.”

Not this time.

She lets out a heavy sigh. “Thank goodness. I’m sorry, I’m just feeling a little jumpy. I really hate being home at night by myself. Darian should have been home a couple of hours ago.”

“Have you heard from him?” I ask.

“Yeah, he called me a while ago to tell me that there were some problems at one of the locations and he needed to go see what was going on and figure out if he had to call a repair company. This happens sometimes. I’m sorry, I’m making it sound like he vanished or something. He didn’t. I just don’t like it when he’s out late. That’s all. I’m sorry about being so emotional.”

“You don’t need to apologize. Would it be possible for me to meet with you? I just have a couple of questions you might be able to help me with.”

“Me? Sure, I guess. But I’m here with my daughter. I can’t leave her alone. Would you come here?”

“That’s fine. I’m at the police station right now. I will leave in just a few minutes and head that way.”

I end the call, and Melton lifts an eyebrow.

“Apparently, Darian should have been home quite a bit ago but called to tell her he had to go to one of the car washes to deal with a maintenance issue.”

“That sounds like a manager thing, not an owner-of-the-entire-chain thing,” Melton says.

“This is something that happens sometimes, and she really hates it,” I emphasize. “She’s willing to talk to me, but since she’s alone with their daughter, I’m going over to their place. I’ll keep you updated.”

“The BOLO for Denise is still out. I’ll let you know if anyone sees anything.”

“Good. Amend it to include Darian’s car. Get in touch with surrounding areas, and ask for them to keep an eye out too.”

Grabbing my bag, I head for the door.

As I’m walking to the car, I twist my hair onto the back of my head and secure it in place with the black elastic that ends up around my wrist more often than any kind of jewelry. My hair started as the pale blonde my mother’s Russian lineage gave me when I was young and darkened to a richer blonde as I got older. Over the years, it has deepened even more. I never got to see my mother get old enough for her hair to go white and my grandmother’s hair always was, as far as I can remember, so I don’t know what’s going to happen to mine with age. We’ll see. Right now it’s sticking to the back of my neck and bothering me, so I need it out of the way.

I have the address to the Cooper home from Darian’s profile on the person search website and put it into the GPS. The house is about fifteen minutes away. I start the drive, wondering about the possibility of Darian getting home before I do and how I will navigate the conversation if he’s there.

Turns out, I don’t need to worry about that.

The house the GPS brings me to is modest compared to what I was expecting considering the list of cars Darian has collected. The massive garage that probably houses those cars sits back from the main house, complete with its own patio and outdoor kitchen setup attached at the side. It looks like that is probably Darian’s personal domain. I feel an involuntary gag just thinking about using the term “man cave” with any kind of seriousness, but if ever there was one, this is it.

I’m thinking about what kinds of features are likely inside that structure, along with his display of cars, as I walk up the half-circle river stone steps to the front porch. It’s just a small porch, something that might be called a stoop if it was on a smaller, older house. An elaborate sconce on either side of the door shines enough light to fully illuminate down the steps and onto the front walkway. More light pools at my feet when the black front door opens and a small woman already dressed for bed looks out at me.

“Hi, I’m Agent Griffin,” I say.

“Lacey. Come on in,” she says, opening the door and stepping back to let me in.

As soon as I’m inside, she seems to become suddenly aware of her pink cotton sleeping set and thin, white robe hanging open with the belt dangling at her sides. She grabs at the sides of the robe and pulls them closed, tying the belt around a midsection I notice has a distinctive little bump.

“Jeez, look at me. I can’t believe I didn’t go put clothes on when you said you were coming over. I’m sorry.”

I smile and shake my head. “You look really comfortable. I love the color. If I were home right now, I’d have a very similar look going on.”

This seems to put her a bit more at ease, and she sweeps her hand back over strands of honey-brown hair that have escaped from her ponytail. She gestures vaguely into the house, and I follow her into the living room. She curls her legs under her and settles into the corner of a plush, gray couch. Beside her on the side table is a baby monitor. She picks it up and glances at it before setting it down. When she looks back at me, she gives an almost apologetic smile.

“Darian says Layla doesn’t need the monitor anymore. She’s almost four. But her bedroom is up on the second floor. If I’m down here, I want to be able to check in on her.”

“Makes sense to me,” I tell her. “I don’t have any children, but I think if I did, it would be reassuring to be able to just look at a little box and see them. I mean, isn’t that essentially what video calls are? Grown-up monitors?”

She chuckles. “I agree. He asked what I’m going to do when the new baby comes. He’s going to have his own nursery, so Darian wanted to know if I’m going to have two monitors and just double fist them when I walk around the house. Imagine his surprise when I told him they make monitor systems that can actually show a split screen. Both babies at the same time.” She laughs again and runs her hand along her belly.

“Congratulations on the new baby,” I tell her.

“Thank you. We’ll have our boy and our girl. Now all we need is a dog so we can have the two-point-three children, and we’ll have the perfect American family.” She gives a grin and a little sideways pop of her head that tells me the words don’t go any deeper than her mouth.

Each exchange of this small talk is feeling a little heavier. It’s that weight that comes to a conversation when people are clearly trying to dance around actually getting to the point. For me, I’m trying to decide exactly what I’m going to ask her to get the most information without sending her on another emotional spiral like I did over the phone. For her, it seems more that she just doesn’t want to hear what it is that I have to tell her. Even though I reassured her nothing happened to Darian, I have a feeling she doesn’t believe me. And the truth is I don’t really know that for sure. It’s true that I didn’t call her because something happened to her husband, but without any idea where he is or what he’s been doing, I can’t guarantee he’s still okay.

Her eyes keep moving in the direction of the door. She’s still waiting for him. This isn’t just a woman who doesn’t like to be home alone at night or who wants her husband there with her. I can see the gears turning behind her eyes. I know she doesn’t really believe that he went to one of the car washes to deal with a mechanical issue. Like the detective said, that’s more of something that the manager of a location would handle. Even if Darian is an extremely hands-on owner who likes to be in the midst of everything, I can’t imagine he is actually rolling up his sleeves and helping out with repairing the equipment at a moment’s notice. And that would be the only real explanation for him taking so long to get home.

“I appreciate you letting me come by to talk to you,” I say to pull her attention back from the door. “I know it’s a little late and your daughter is already in bed and everything. There are probably plenty more things that you would like to be doing with your evening than sitting here talking to me.”

It’s meant to keep up the casual rapport, but somehow it seems to put her on edge even more. Lacey shifts, pulling her legs up closer to her body and tugging the robe more tightly around her. It’s like she’s folding in on herself. She’s creating a shell to protect her from whatever it is I want to say to her.

“Honestly, right now, what I’m thinking about is why an FBI agent would want to come talk to me about Darian. You said nothing happened to him, but why would the FBI even know he exists? He’s never been in any trouble. I don’t even think he’s ever had a parking ticket.”

I resist the urge to dispense the same wisdom to her that Xavier once did to me. Everyone starts out having never done anything wrong. Even the most vicious serial killer once had no history of violence.

It isn’t just because I don’t think this woman needs anything else to agitate her. It’s because I know for a fact she’s telling the truth. Darian Cooper has absolutely no history of criminal activity, even down to the pickiest detail of traffic infractions. I can’t check library book records, but if I could, I would probably find that he’s never even had a late fee.

Unfortunately for him, in this particular situation, that isn’t as much of a positive as it would be in other situations. Nothing motivates a person to do anything they can to keep a dirty little secret like everyone around them thinking they have none.

“I’m going to warn you that this could be an unsettling conversation. It will probably be confusing, and I might talk about things that are upsetting or things you don’t know about. What I need you to understand first and foremost is that I am not trying to go after or hurt your husband in any way.”

Her face falls. “Oh. This sounds really bad. I don’t know how I’m going to help you. I’m serious when I say that he has never done anything wrong. I’m not just trying to cover for him or anything. I’m being totally honest with you.”

“I believe you. The thing is, what I need to talk to you about is probably something you aren’t even aware of. And that’s why I’m asking you to be totally honest with me moving forward too. Just answer my questions to the best of your ability. Give me all the information you can. Some of the questions will sound strange, and you might not understand what they have to do with each other. But I’m asking you to trust me and know that this is extremely important. Not just for your family, but for a lot of other people too,” I say.

Lacey looks anxious and unsure of whether she did the right thing by saying I could come talk to her. There’s tension in her posture that says at any second she could change her mind and tell me to leave. She is completely within her rights to do that. I’m not here with a warrant. I can’t arrest her or Darian. At this moment, I am sitting here solely by her permission, and if she decides to revoke that or not answer my questions, there’s nothing I can do to compel her tonight. I can only hope she will be willing to understand the incredible importance of this conversation and answer my questions.

“I’ll do the best I can,” she says.

“Thank you. First, have you noticed any kind of strange or uncharacteristic behavior from Darian in the last few weeks or even months?”

“What kind of uncharacteristic behavior? What do you mean?” she asks.

“I don’t mean this in a rude way, but it isn’t meant to be a trick question. I’m not asking for any kind of deep analysis. I just want you to think about your day-to-day life with your husband over the last few months and tell me if anything has changed. You know him better than anybody else in the world. You know him as a person. You know his personality and his idiosyncrasies. You know his routines and habits. You know how he interacts with you, your daughter, the people around you. I know that things aren’t always exact from day to day for anybody. All I want to know is if there has been anything that you have specifically taken note of that seems unusual for Darian. Good or bad. Significant or just passing.”

“No,” she says without hesitation. But then she pauses. “Well, I guess it is different that he’s been called to a few different locations for help with maintenance issues over the last couple of weeks.”

“That’s not something he usually does? Fixing equipment?”

“It is. He likes to be as involved as he can in the business. He started it on his own. I know he wasn’t some kind of teenage prodigy or anything. He was an adult. He was at a perfectly reasonable age to start a business. But he didn’t have the kind of help a lot of successful business owners do. Like a lot of the people we know now. Our neighbors, the kinds of people in what I guess you would call our social circle, come from wealth. A lot of them owned businesses, but they had the benefit of family money to help them get started. They could bank on the power of their last names to give them credibility, raise capital, or gain a customer base if they needed it.

“Darian didn’t have any of that. He always dreamed of having his own business, ever since he was young, and worked hard to save money and put himself in a position where he could achieve that dream. Then he put in even more work to make the business successful. Everything we have is thanks to his grit and determination, and he’s never forgotten that. He did basically everything by himself at the first location. So he keeps himself really involved at every level.”

“Is that why he kept his car? Even with the damage to the driver’s door?”

“Yeah,” she says with a bit of a laugh. “He has always had that thing. It’s like his best friend. Even when he really started making money and could afford the other cars he keeps in the garage, he wouldn’t give that one up. It gives him a lot of comfort.”

Her face contorts slightly as she seems to finally process the exchange we just had.

“Wait. How did you know about that car? He never drives that. Not unless we’re going camping. It’s been in the garage for probably a year except for when he gets it out to do routine maintenance on it.”

“I’m going to come back to that,” I tell her. “I just want to ask a couple more questions. He’s been going out to other locations more frequently recently, right?”

“Yes,” she says, still looking a bit bewildered.

“Is it common for him to go do these checks at night after he leaves the office?” I ask.

“Well, he doesn’t really have one office. He has offices at each of the locations, and he rotates working at each of them so he can keep up with how everything is going. He wants to make sure they all stay up to his standards, and he believes the only way he can really do that is by actually being present at each shop a few days at a time.”

I think about this carefully before I continue.

“Would it be reasonable to think that multiple different locations experience emergency breakdowns of their equipment within a couple of weeks of each other? I understand this is machinery, which means that at some point or another, it is going to malfunction and require repair. But if he was going to those shops at night, that would tell me they weren’t aware of the problems until they suddenly happened during the day. Is that something that happens regularly?”

“No, but it does happen sometimes. For the most part, issues happen fairly gradually, and he can set up his schedule to deal with normal maintenance. He doesn’t want any of the locations open for an entire day with equipment that isn’t working or that can’t give the best service if at all possible.”

“So that’s why you found it strange that he had to deal with these maintenance issues after hours so many times recently.”

“Yes,” Lacey says.

“Okay, have you ever suspected your husband of having an affair?”

She swallows. “It has crossed my mind.”

“Recently?”

“Yes. This pregnancy has been really hard on me, and things haven’t been the best between us. I have worried that he’s been telling me that he needs to go to work late for the same reason that men have been telling their wives they are working late for decades. Probably centuries.”

“Is it only because he’s been coming home late?” I ask. “Has he done anything else that has made you think that?”

“I found a phone,” she says. “Not his usual one. Darian might have held on to his humble beginnings in some ways, but he does love his toys. Just like he has those two sports cars, he always wants to have the newest and most advanced phone. The one he has now does all kinds of things I don’t even think he knows how to work. But he loves it. This phone that I found is nothing like that. It’s just one of those basic things you can get hanging on display at a big box store. The ones you can buy and get cards for rather than actually signing up for any kind of plan or anything.”

“A burner,” I say.

“Is that really what they’re called? I thought that was just on TV.”

“It’s really what they’re called. I guess most people don’t refer to them that way if they are just buying them like that because it’s how they want to have their regular phone. But if they are using it because they don’t want anyone knowing they have it or don’t want their communications tracked, that’s what it is.”

Lacey nods solemnly, almost like this information has just further confirmed her suspicions.

“I think that’s exactly why he had it. So I wouldn’t know he was talking to somebody. I mean, why else would he have a different phone and have it hidden in his drawer? The only reason I found it is because he was taking a shower and I wanted a pair of his boxers. I know that probably sounds weird. But I’m just really getting to the point where my clothes are uncomfortable, and I was having a day where I just felt completely overheated the whole day. Everything felt like too much, and my clothes were too tight. So I decided I would put on a pair of his boxers. Usually, I would just ask him to get them for me, but since he was in the shower, I went to grab them. That’s when I found the phone.”

“You never noticed it before?” I ask.

“No. We each do our own laundry most of the time, so I don’t really have any reason to go in that drawer. It’s not like he ever told me not to or that we have any sort of agreement that we aren’t going to touch each other’s dressers or anything. It’s just not something that we usually do.”

“What did you do when you found it?”

“I tried to open it, but it had a passcode. I was going to try to figure it out, but I heard the water stop, so I put it back where I found it and closed the drawer. When he got out of the shower, I showed him the boxers that I took, and he didn’t seem bothered by it at all. I guess he figured if I found the phone, I would have said something about it, so he wasn’t going to act like anything was wrong. But the next day, I wanted to look at it more, and when I looked in the drawer, it was gone. I haven’t seen it since.”

“Do you and your husband have shared finances?” I ask.

“Yes, we always have. I do some online work now, but before our daughter was born, I had a full-time job, and everything always went into our joint accounts.”

“And you have access to them?” I ask.

“Absolutely. Both our names are on the accounts. I have all the passwords. I see the statements when they come in.”

“Do you have someone who handles any of it for you? Like paying bills or anything?”

“No, I actually handle most of the bills. I can’t stand the idea of automatic payments for things. I know that puts me in the minority since most people like the convenience, but it really makes me anxious. We briefly had a couple of utilities on automatic draft, and it was awful. I ended up checking it constantly just to make sure that the charge went through properly according to my bank and then would call the company to make sure that they had actually received the payment on time. It was overwhelming and didn’t actually save any time or effort. So I started taking care of it myself.”

“So you would notice if there was a large purchase or a major inconsistency in the amount of money in your accounts or how much he was bringing in,” I say.

“Definitely. He gets a regular paycheck just like any other employee, and I see it when it goes into the account,” she says. “And that’s the thing. It’s part of why I kind of question my suspicion about him. If he was having an affair, wouldn’t I see suspicious charges? He would have to be spending money on this woman, and I would know about it. Unless he was embezzling, which I just don’t see him doing.”

“Okay, this is where I’m going to get back to his car. It’s why I came here to talk to you tonight.”

I reach into my bag and take out one of the stills of the car linked to the locations where the stickers were found.

“Is this your husband’s car?”

Lacey looks stunned and confused. She takes the picture from my hand and pulls it closer to her face to get a better look at it. She opens her mouth slightly, then nods.

“It looks like it. I can’t see the whole license plate, but that definitely looks like his car. But how is that possible? I could have sworn he hasn’t used it in months. It’s been just sitting in the garage.”

“Is it there now?” I ask.

“I’m sure it is,” she says.

“Can we check?”

“I don’t want to leave my daughter in the house alone,” she says. “But you’re welcome to look. There’s a key hanging by the back door.”

“Thanks.”

She instructs me how to get to the back door, and I find the key hanging beside it. Letting myself out through the door, I follow a slate footpath to the side door of the garage. The window on the door is covered with a curtain, so I can’t see inside. I use the key to let myself in and take a step inside. Suddenly, from behind me, I hear the door to the house open.

“Agent Griffin!”

Before Lacey can say anything else, there’s a sudden piercing sound around me. It takes a second for me to process that it is an alarm. She didn’t warn me about it or give me a code to disarm it. I step back out of the garage, and she shouts the code to me. I input it on the keypad, and the sound silences.

It takes only a few seconds to glance around the garage and see that there’s no sign of the blue car. His other vehicles sit on display on what looks like a very expensive custom epoxy floor, and there is open space further to the back, near a secondary bay door.

I leave the garage, close and lock the door, then go back into the house. Lacey stands just inside the door. As soon as I step in, she reaches a hand out to me like she’s trying to comfort me.

“I am so sorry, I completely forgot to say anything about the alarm code. I never go in there, so it just skipped my mind.”

“It’s all right. I guess the fact that you never go in there makes it understandable that you thought that car was parked inside.”

“It’s not there?”

I shake my head. “No. There are two sports cars and an SUV, but not the car that’s in these pictures. Is there anyone that your husband would let drive that car? Or any reason he might have given it away or gotten rid of it?”

“No, I can’t think of anybody. I can’t think of anybody who would want to drive it. Can you please tell me what’s going on? This is really starting to scare me.”

“Let’s go inside.”

We go back into the house, and Lacey heads for the kitchen. She takes out a teapot and fills it with water before setting it on the stove. She opens a cabinet and reaches high above her head, feeling with her fingertips. She tugs down a white paper bag and sets it on the island, then gets a plate from another cabinet.

She listens as I try to explain the situation to her in the simplest and most straightforward way. I don’t want to confuse her with extra details and conjecture, but I want to make sure she knows exactly why I’m here. As she nibbles her way through the cookies she put on the plate and pours us cups of tea, she silently takes in everything I’m saying. When I’m finished, I wait a few seconds for her to respond.

“But you don’t know, right? You don’t know for sure it’s Darian. I mean, you can’t even be completely positive that’s his car. And even if it is, you can’t see who’s in it. Like you said, he could have lent it to someone else. Somebody else could be driving it.”

“It’s possible. I can’t tell you with absolute certainty that Darian is involved. But I need you to understand that this isn’t a guess. We didn’t just come up with your husband’s name. This car showed up in several pieces of footage and pictures, and there is an image of a man walking away from the car that does look like Darian,” I say.

“You’re telling me that this story I’ve heard about on the news has something to do with my husband? This person has killed people, right? Or… caused people to be killed… or…”

“Yes,” I say, stopping the spiral. “Yes, it is a very serious situation. And also very complex. What I know is that the people who have been selected as players have been put through a wide variety of challenges and tests. Each one seems to get more intense, and there is no set of rules. The players I’ve had the opportunity to talk to have told me that they are not promised anything. They aren’t told that if they complete a certain number of tasks or if they achieve something specific, they will be let off the hook, so to speak. Each of these people just keeps following along with what they’re told.”

“But why? Why are they doing this? If Darian was being threatened, he would tell me. He wouldn’t let me and our daughter be in any kind of danger,” Lacey insists.

This is a moment that I frequently come to in my investigations. Just like I have to carefully decide what information is given to the media to be disseminated to the public, I have to balance the confidentiality of the investigation with my need to provide the right details to witnesses. Without this information, they might not know that their knowledge is important, or they might not have the motivation to tell everything they know.

In this situation, I decide that she needs to really understand exactly why I am so focused on Darian and what his involvement could mean.

“The threats to the selected players aren’t physical,” I say. “The players are put through physical challenges and have experienced brutal situations, but they aren’t going through with these challenges because of the physical element. Each of the players is being blackmailed.”

“Blackmail?”

“Yes. Whoever the Game Master is, he has something on each of these people. Something serious enough that they are willing to put themselves through deprivation, humiliation, pain, and even potential death to keep it from being released. I’m sure you have heard the scandals associated with people who have been chosen, or even the people who thought they might be chosen.”

She nods. “Someone we know. Someone at our daughter’s Mommy and Me class. She told me her sister wrote letters to everybody in the family and her friends telling them that she was leaving and just disappeared. She’d drained her bank accounts and left. Just a few days later, we found out she had been coercing the young interns she oversaw into sleeping with her. Her husband—now her ex-husband—was a pastor.”

“Because of the very mild nature of what we think Darian has been doing and the fact that you haven’t noticed anything blatant like large amounts of missing money or physical and personality changes, I am leaning toward this being very early on in his involvement with the Game Master. It’s likely he was only recently selected. This could be his first challenge. But that means it could get much worse.”

“You don’t know that it’s him,” she says, shaking. “It could be someone else. You don’t know.”

The sound of a door being thrown open at the front of the house catches both of our attention. We turn sharply and see Darian run into the kitchen. His eyes are wild, and he rushes to Lacey.

“Babe, come on what’s going on? I got a notification that the alarm in my garage was triggered. What’s happening?” He looks at me and extends his hand. “Darian Cooper. Thank you for coming, Officer.”

“Agent,” I correct him grimly, showing my badge.

“FBI?” Darian looks immediately more uncomfortable. “I don’t understand. What’s going on?”

“Which car were you driving today?” Lacey asks.

Darian looks at her in confusion. “What car? Why do you care what car I was driving?”

“What car were you driving?” she repeats.

“The green one,” he says. He shoots me a smile I’m sure is meant to disarm me. “She doesn’t actually know what any of them are. We just differentiate them by color.”

“I’m sure she can tell the difference between a sports car and a twenty-year-old subcompact,” I tell him flatly.

Darian’s face goes still and dark. He looks at his wife again. “Lacey, what’s going on?”

Without saying a word, Lacey heads for the back door. I know where she’s going. If Darian does, he makes no move to follow her. I hear the door close, and moments later, it opens again, and Lacey storms back into the kitchen.

“What did you do?” she demands. “What did you do?”

She is within inches of her husband now, staring up at him defiantly. He reaches for her, but she ducks away from his hands.

“Lacey…”

“Don’t touch me.” She looks at me. “It’s in there. That car is in the garage now. Parked right where it always is. Or at least, right where I always thought it was.”

“What are you talking about?” Darian asks.

“I set off the alarm in the garage,” I explain. “I went into it to check and see if your car was there, like your wife told me it would be. Even though I already knew it wasn’t. Because you were driving it.”

He shakes his head, but his weight shifts backward like he’s trying to escape. He knows there’s nothing he can say at this point. But he’s going to keep trying.

“No, I wasn’t. I was driving…”

“Both sports cars were in there when I went in,” I tell him. “I don’t know what either of them are nor do I give half a damn, but I recognize my colors really well. The green one was sitting right there. The subcompact wasn’t.”

“What did you do?” Lacey asks again, this time her voice rising to a near scream as she lunges toward her husband. “Why were you chosen? What did you bring onto this family?”

“Darian, I’m investigating the Game Master case,” I tell him.

Darian looks broken. He’s not arguing anymore. He leans against the refrigerator, his head dropping back and his eyes first going up to the ceiling, then squeezing closed.

“I didn’t want you to know,” he says, tears starting to build in his eyes. “I didn’t want you to know.”

“Let’s go into the living room and talk,” I say. “I need to know everything.”

Though my motivation in coming here is to find out everything I can about the Game Master himself, I know that this situation goes beyond that. This isn’t just about the case or even about the other people. Right now both Darian and Lacey are grappling with the fallout from his selection and his decision to go forward with the game rather than talk to the police. Together they have to face the reality of this situation and figure out how to move forward.

There are unknowns. Neither of them knows exactly what’s going to happen now that his involvement has come to light. But we can only take one step at a time, and it starts with him being honest with his wife.

Darian takes her hands in his and stares into her eyes for a few moments. There is a sense of heaviness in that stare. Like he is both trying to connect with her and also memorize every bit of her so that if this goes completely wrong and she is out of his life, he can still think of her. I can still see the anger and fear in Lacey’s face, but I also see the gentle way she rests her hands against his and the slight lean of her body toward him.

“When I was a teenager, I got my girlfriend pregnant. She was younger than me, and our parents had forbidden us from seeing each other. We didn’t know what to do. Right from the beginning, she wanted to run away together. She saw us being together and raising a family. But I didn’t. I didn’t want to tell her that I had never seen a future with her. I had never taken our relationship very seriously. I knew she did. I knew she was really wrapped up in me, and that’s why I went for her.”

“Because she was easy and could be manipulated,” I say.

“Darian,” Lacey says, her disgust and shock obvious.

“I’m sorry,” he pleads. “I know it makes me sound like a piece of trash. Not ‘sound like’—it makes me a piece of trash. I never should have even agreed to go out with her. But I wanted the attention, and I was a slimy teenage guy. So I kept stringing her along. I went out with other girls. I did anything I wanted, but she stayed right there with me. She was loyal to a fault.

“And then our parents found out we were sleeping together, and her dad completely melted down. I was almost three years older than her and about to turn eighteen. He called my parents, and they agreed that our relationship was completely inappropriate and we were not to see each other anymore. I should have taken that as my out. It could have been my escape hatch. Instead, I somehow let it become a challenge. It was a rebellion. She saw it as this star-crossed love situation and thought it was so much more romantic. I just saw it as a way to stick it to my father, who I never got along with. He didn’t want me to be with her, so I was going to just to spite him.

“But then she got pregnant. I was shocked. And that sounds stupid because, obviously, I know how it works. I knew it was a possibility. But I guess, like every teenager, I didn’t think it could possibly happen to me. I didn’t love this girl. I didn’t see any kind of future with her. I couldn’t possibly have a kid with her. I told her I didn’t want anything to do with a baby. That she needed to get rid of it and that was the only option. She didn’t have to tell her parents. We would figure that out, and it could just be done. She wouldn’t agree to it. She just kept talking about us running off together. All I could think about was the fact that I had already turned eighteen and I could go to jail, but then also the shock of raising a baby with this girl.

“She just kept pushing, and I told her I didn’t want to be with her anymore. She decided to try to kill herself. She ended up in the hospital, and that’s how her parents found out. Her father kicked her out right then. He didn’t care that she was in the hospital. He didn’t care that she had just tried to kill herself. Even if it wasn’t a legitimate attempt but was only a ploy to try to get my attention, he should have cared. But he told her she wasn’t allowed to come home, and her mother did nothing to protect her.

“By this point it was summer. We weren’t in school, so no one knew what was going on. I was just waiting to be arrested. All I could think was that if there was no baby, there would be no proof. They might be able to show that she had been pregnant, but they couldn’t prove that I was the father, so they couldn’t arrest me. I kept pushing her and pushing her to have an abortion. But she wouldn’t do it. She ended up at a shelter. My parents didn’t even care. They wanted nothing to do with it. I told the girl if she told anybody, I would deny it and ruin her.”

“Oh my god,” Lacey said, hanging her head and putting her face in her hand.

“I can stop,” he tells her.

I can hear in his voice how much he hopes she’ll take him up on this offer. He doesn’t want to keep telling the story. But Lacey isn’t going to let him off that easily. He already started. She was going to hear every bitter second of it.

“No. I need to hear it. I need to understand what could possibly be so bad that you were willing to go along with this psycho,” she says.

“Lacey, please…”

“Tell me. It’s not like no one knows. Whoever this person is knows enough of it to hold it over you. To control you with it. Someone knows my husband better than I do. I want to know.” She sounds strong. Stronger than I would have expected from her when I first saw her at the door, wispy and afraid.

A hand presses to the underside of her belly. Touching her son. It’s a painfully private moment I have the distinct feeling I shouldn’t be witnessing. But I have to. This is what I came here for. I need every detail. I need to understand what motivates the Game Master, and now that I have someone willing to talk, I need to make sure he doesn’t stop.

Darian fights tears, trying to maintain his composure. A shuddering breath slides in and out of his lungs. He keeps going.

“I was doing everything I could to try to convince her that I wanted no part of that fairy-tale future she somehow concocted in her head.”

“‘Somehow concocted in her head’?” Lacey repeats incredulously. “Are you going to try to convince me that you had no idea what you were doing? That at no point did you feel like you were leading her on? You just admitted that you never really had true feelings for her. That you only had a relationship with her because you could get her in bed and it made you feel good to have somebody so obsessed with you. You went along with it. You fed into every bit of that fantasy she conjured up.

“If I don’t miss my guess, you took her virginity and never once bothered to be honest with her. To tell her how you genuinely felt. Until you had already gotten her pregnant and torn her away from everything else in her life that mattered. You were everything to her, and you knew it. Whether you’re going to admit it to yourself or not, you encouraged that. You took every bit of her adoration for you and used it to your absolute advantage without a single thought as to how it was actually impacting her. It didn’t matter until it was your ass was on the line.”

“I know that! I know what I did. I didn’t tell her we were going to be together forever. I didn’t promise her anything. She decided that for herself. But I could have done more. And it will haunt me.”

“It will haunt you? That you tattered that girl’s life and pushed her into an abortion? It should haunt you. I’m sure it haunts her.”

“She’s dead.”

The words burst out of Darian like they’ve been pressing against the backs of his lips for years, held back until this moment. I glance over at Lacey, who’s barely keeping the tears from falling. But she doesn’t say anything. She stares her husband down, forcing him to continue.

“Her parents never let her back into the house. She told me I didn’t have to worry about any of it anymore and she was going to stay at the shelter until her parents changed their minds. I just kept going with my life. I barely even thought about her. Then I got a call from the hospital. Something had gone wrong, and she didn’t make it through the delivery. I was the only contact she gave them.

“I didn’t know she’d continued the pregnancy. I thought when she said I didn’t have to worry about any of it, that meant she was going to end it and that she finally dealt with us not being together. Because her parents didn’t want her at home, she was just going to stay at the shelter. In my completely self-centered teenage brain, that was good enough. It was perfectly fine. She was making that decision, and I wasn’t going to tell her what to do. I think part of me felt like if I told her that I thought she should go back home or tried to figure out something else for her, it would only make her think I’d changed my mind about my feelings for her.

“When the hospital called me, I didn’t know what to do. I panicked and hung up. I never spoke to her parents or did anything else for her. I didn’t acknowledge the baby. I never knew if it was a boy or a girl. When rumors started going around about her, I just let them happen. It was months later that I realized her parents didn’t go back for her. They didn’t go back for the baby. She was completely disowned, and the baby was put up for adoption.”

His head hangs now. “I have a child out there somewhere. My child. That’s what haunts me, Lacey. It’s hung over me all this time. I never let myself think about it that way. And now I have to live with the fact that I thought those things about my child. I wished it gone. And instead, its mother died, and it was sent away.

“That was my child. It is my child. I wasn’t on the birth certificate. It was a closed adoption. There’s no way for me to ever know what happened to that baby. I will never know if I have a son or daughter. I’ll never see its face.” He chokes back another wave of emotion. “And I will always wonder. It only got worse when…”

That’s enough to break the dam for Lacey. Something in those words cracks through the ice that came over her when the story started unfolding, and now she grips her husband’s hands again, tears flowing. She moves closer to him on the couch and leans forward to touch her forehead to his. He puts his hand on her belly, and she presses hers over it, like she’s giving him the same connection she feels. After a few long seconds, she looks at me.

“Darian can’t have children. We conceived through in vitro with a donor.”

“I don’t understand,” I say.

“I got sick,” Darian explained. “When I was twenty. I ended up in the hospital for weeks, and when they finally got me well again, I thought everything was fine. I didn’t know just how much the illness had affected my body. Not until Lacey and I were married and decided we wanted to start a family. We tried it for a year with no luck. That’s what the doctors make you do. Young, healthy couples, according to them, shouldn’t be concerned at all until they can’t conceive in a full year. So we went the full year. And another six months. And then, finally, we did the testing and found out the problem was mine, and it came from that illness.

“All I could think about was that baby. I just cast it aside, not realizing less than two years later, I would lose my ability to ever have my own children again. It felt like a punishment. One I wholeheartedly believed I deserved. I caused a girl’s death. I broke apart a family. And I lost my child. I didn’t tell any of this to Lacey. I didn’t want to risk losing the most incredible person I had ever met. Or even just having her change the way she looked at me. And it would have. I know it would have. Anybody would look at me differently. I believed I deserved to suffer alone.”

I exhale. “That is horrifying, and I am deeply sorry you had to go through any of that. You made some really horrible decisions, but you were a kid yourself. You did things that countless other teenage boys did and will continue to do. That doesn’t make it right. It doesn’t make it okay. But it doesn’t speak to who you are now. And I know the outcome of those decisions that you made was more horrible and traumatic than it is for most guys, but I don’t understand. I don’t see how this is enough for you to be targeted.

“I know what you went through was incredibly hard and that you’re not proud of it. I can understand why you wouldn’t want people to know those details about your life. But you aren’t the only person to have ever made a really bad decision as a teenager. Or who experienced an unplanned pregnancy and didn’t react to it well. I don’t understand why you would be willing to give yourself over to this game just to keep that a secret. Is it because people don’t know your children aren’t yours?”

As soon as I say it, I know I’ve made a mistake. The words feel wrong coming out of my mouth, and I see the bitter impact they make on both Lacey and Darian.

“They are mine. They are my children. Just because we don’t have a biological link doesn’t mean I’m not their father or don’t love them. I love both of my children with every fiber of my being. I don’t think they are less than. I don’t wish they were any different. My daughter is who she is because of how she came into this world, and I can’t wait to see who my son is. They are both incredible gifts.

“Lacey and I have been open and honest with everybody we know, and frankly, quite a few people we don’t know, about the particular path we took to parenthood. People know that we used a donor. We even kept the information he provided the agency so we can show our children when they get older and can fully understand.”

“Then what?” I ask. “Why let him take control of you just because he found out about your past? You haven’t lied to anyone about your children. Your wife knows the full truth now. What would be the harm other than some people judging you for decisions you made when you were a teenager?”

“That’s just it. That wouldn’t be the only harm. When I say that I am open and straightforward about how we came to be parents, I don’t just mean that our families and close friends know. Lacey and I are actively involved with groups dedicated to adoption issues, including specific situations involving IVF utilizing donated eggs or sperm. We established our own local chapter and work with the hospital and local foundations to provide support for families going through this process.

“There’s a lot more to building a family with these options than a lot of people know. There’s so many people out there dealing with a whole range of struggles about fertility issues, but that’s why we’ve involved ourselves in this community. I am well-known in those circles. I make myself known. I speak at events. I write. I do fundraisers through my car washes every year that benefit fertility treatments for people whose insurance won’t cover it and who can’t afford further treatment.”

“And if the people who have looked up to you and trusted you found out that you conceived a child as a teenager and never even laid eyes on it, then became infertile because of an illness later, it would be a major blow,” I say.

“Yes. These are people who have trusted me. They see me as another person who fully understands what they have gone through. And even though I believe I do, this would destroy me. It would discredit all the work I’ve done. Everything Lacey’s done. It would hurt so many people. And even though I know the chances are very slim that my baby knows anything about where they came from, I can’t let go of the possibility that they might figure it out. They might have been told enough about the story that they could piece it together. And then what would they think?

“How would they feel knowing that I just abandoned their mother and let them get taken away, but then I go to such incredible lengths to have two more children? I can’t imagine the pain and the confusion. I don’t regret for a single second either of my children. And I don’t regret the work that I’ve done. But I can’t bear the thought of hurting the baby I had when I was young. I could never fully explain what was going through my head or why I did what I did.

“I thought all that was buried in my past. I didn’t think there was anyone who knew the full truth. I don’t know how it came out and how this guy knows about it. But I will do anything I have to do to stop anyone else from finding out.”

“And he has no idea who he is?” Sam asks later when I video call him from the hotel where I’m staying.

“No. He told me that one day the burner phone showed up at one of his car washes. It was in a nondescript manila mailer with no return address. The only thing in the envelope with the phone was a note instructing him to turn it on and check his text messages. Of course, he found that bizarre as hell, but he had also seen the news coverage. He knew what it could have been. So he followed the instructions, and it turned out to be just what he feared. There was a text message from the Game Master telling him that he had been selected.

“He told me it’s been going on for about a month. The first several challenges were riddles and cryptic puzzles. Then the assignment to hide the sticker pieces. He said he was given very specific locations to put each, and he had to send proof that they were there. He has only had communication with the Game Master over the burner phone and through packages delivered to different locations of his car washes. He got the stickers and maps at one point, and more detailed instructions about exactly what he needed to do—and the threat of what would happen if he didn’t, along with a detailed written narrative of what he went through.

“He said he has no idea who it is. He has only spoken to the person on the phone once, and they used a voice modifier. There was nothing familiar about the voice or the speech patterns. All the written communications were typed, so there was no handwriting to recognize. And he insists that he has never told that full story to anybody, so he does not understand how it was found out.”

“Does he have any connection to Denise Stein?” Sam asks.

“No, he’s never met her. He doesn’t know anything about her. He also says he was the one who went into Denise Stein’s house and left the other stickers, but he doesn’t know why. He doesn’t know the plan for those.”

“Why do you look like you are so far away?”

“I just can’t stop thinking…”

“That is pretty much your natural state,” Sam says.

“I mean about Darian Cooper’s dark secret,” I partially whisper the last two words to get my point across.

“What about it?”

“It just doesn’t seem like that much of a dark secret to me. Not compared to some of the other things I’ve heard come out of this case. I get it. I understand where he’s coming from. Not specifically. I’ve obviously never been through any of what he has. But I know what he told me and how emotional he was when he was talking about it. I understand that this situation is a really big deal to him, and I’m not discounting the fact that it would cause a lot of trouble for people to find out.

“He has built this entire brand of being a man who can’t father children and helping others deal with the emotional impact of that and the whole in vitro journey. That’s a big deal. It’s a massive part of people’s lives, and it becomes an intensely personal and emotional element of themselves. So it’s not that I don’t think he’s being rational in believing that there would be backlash. I think people would be hurt and angry to find out the truth about him. It seems to me, though, that there’s an opportunity in this for him to step up, be honest, and just add another layer to what he already does.

“Like I told him, he’s not the only person by far who has experienced something similar. I just don’t see how any potential fallout from him coming clean would be worth dealing with the Game Master.”

“So you’re confused as to why Darian made the decision to try to keep his secret… just like all the other players have?” Sam asks.

“No, that’s not my point. Like I said, I get it. I understand his choice. I’m surprised that he was selected as a player at all. That’s where my disconnect is happening. I questioned him and questioned him. I tried to get him to admit that there was some other layer to this. I felt like there had to be another detail, something he wasn’t telling me because it was so bad. But he insisted that there isn’t. That this is really all it is. It makes me feel like the Game Master is starting to spiral. He’s losing focus.

“All the players at the beginning of this had really intense secrets. But now it seems like people are being chosen much more arbitrarily. For much smaller transgressions. That means it’s getting more dangerous. Far more people are at risk now. But it could also mean that he is going to get sloppy.”

“What’s happening with Denise Stein?” he asks. “Did he tell you where she’s going next?”

“Yes. He gave me the map of the locations for the last three pieces. He says he’s not expecting her to get to the next one until the morning. I thought them being at that location at the same time meant they were going to encounter each other at some point and there was going to be violence, but apparently, that wasn’t intentional. She was never supposed to see him or find out who he was and what he was doing. It’s part of the challenge.

“He told me he doesn’t know the details of what she is being told or how she is finding each of these spots, but he doesn’t think she was given a map with all the locations at the beginning. She’s being guided somehow. Maybe with clues or instructions being sent to her after each piece is found. I’ll be in the area waiting, and hopefully, I’ll find her,” I tell him.

“What about Darian and his wife?” Sam asks. “He betrayed the Game Master now.”

“Eric assigned a team to watch over the family while they get some loose ends tied up, then they are going to stay with Lacey’s family with protection in place. If there are any direct threats or he feels like their location has been uncovered, I will just have to put them in protective custody as well.” I let out a sigh. “I feel like I’ve put three-quarters of the people I have interacted with over the last year in protective custody. All of the FBI safe houses are going to be full of people associated with this case.”

Sam chuckles. “I don’t think it’s quite that extensive. You have had to protect quite a few people, but this is a far-reaching case. You have to make sure the people are safe. Not knowing who this person is or how they are infiltrating these people’s lives makes it too dangerous for them to just keep going on with their day-to-day routine without safety measures. It won’t be much longer. You’re going to figure this out.”

“Thank you for having so much faith in me,” I say. “And for listening. And for… not being tired of all my nonsense.”

“Of course. I always do. And I’ll never get tired of your nonsense.”

“I’m going to try to get some sleep. I have to be up early to try to get to Denise Stein, and then the first stage of the wider excavation at the fire pit in the park is starting tomorrow. I want to be there for it so we can see if that’s where Mike is.”

“That’s a lot to pack into a day. If you can’t make it to the excavation, just let me know. I will go,” Sam says.

“Thank you, babe. I love you. Good night.”

I only get a couple of hours of sleep before I need to be up so I can be in place to wait for Denise Stein. I get ready in my hotel room, and before I go down to the lobby for breakfast, I make contact with the head of the team watching Darian and his family. I want to make sure nothing happened overnight and that everything is still going according to plan. Reassured that everything was quiet and that two agents will be in place when Darian goes to work today as he gets things covered while he is away, I go downstairs.

It’s still early enough that I’m the only person in the breakfast area. But I don’t take that as an opportunity to do a leisurely stroll around the buffet. I go right for the big machine at the end of the buffet that makes far better coffee than what is available in the room. I brew two cups and then grab several easily transportable foods to bring with me. Not knowing how long I’m going to be waiting, I want to have something with me so I don’t need to leave before Denise arrives. I pile two biscuits with scrambled eggs, shredded cheese, and bacon, hold them between two paper plates, and juggle the entire thing with me back to my room.

I pour the coffee into my travel cup and pack the bagel, fruit, and little containers of peanut butter into my bag, then take everything to the car. With my sandwiches sitting on the passenger seat beside me, I follow the directions Darian gave me to the next sticker’s location. This one is more obscure, hidden in an outdoor stairwell at the back of an abandoned elementary school. I know I have to be cautious when approaching the building. I can’t just park in the lot and stroll up to it. If Denise sees me, she might not get anywhere near the stairwell.

And if the Game Master is lurking somewhere nearby to make sure she goes through with her task, that could put both of us in severe danger.

Instead, I study an overhead image of the school and the surrounding areas to find a place where I can park and approach the school with less chance of being detected. I want to give myself as much of a window as possible, so I walk up to the school a little more than an hour before the estimated time Darian gave me. I find the stairwell first and confirm the sticker is there. Then I look around to find somewhere to wait.

The stairwell where he put the sticker leads from the ground level down into a well where I see a door, likely leading into a basement. On one side, a partial wall made up of bricks arranged in alternating open spaces borders more stairs leading up. I climb them onto a second-floor terrace likely put in place as a fire escape. There are still remnants of features added to the terrace to make it more appealing, including raised planters and a round concrete picnic table. The decorative open spaces in the bricks of the wall allow me to sit on the ground and look out over the grounds, offering me a vantage point that lets me see the entire area around the stairwell. If Denise comes, I will see her.

I take out my phone and make sure that it is set to silent. I don’t want any risk of Denise being alerted that I’m here.

While I wait, I reread the email I got about the start of the widened excavation today. It isn’t a full-scale effort yet. It will still take quite a bit of time and logistics to get those kinds of permissions and access to equipment. The hope is that it won’t come to that. That kind of operation could be detrimental to the park, not to mention extremely costly and disruptive. This isn’t a newly uncovered settlement or large graveyard. Right now the only information we have about the burn pit is that it appears to contain human remains, but more is needed to determine if these could belong to Mike Morris.

Although I won’t be directly involved with the excavation itself, I want to be there while it’s happening. I at least want to see the beginning of the work. It feels like a sign of respect, but it’s also just my own desire to stay as closely connected as possible to every step of my investigations. I want to get a better look at the pit and the surrounding area. I want to know exactly what’s found there. If something in that mound of debris does turn out to be the remains of Mike Morris, I want to be as familiar as I can be with the surroundings so I can try to piece together what happened in his last moments.

The time drifts by. It’s a fairly chilly morning, and my muscles start to feel stiff from being in one place and closing in on myself to keep warm. I check the time. It’s still several minutes before Denise is likely to get here. Then those minutes pass. And another five. Then another ten.

The next time I check, it’s an hour beyond when she should have been here. I don’t know if I should worry. Darian did say that his time range was just an estimate. It was just his guess for when she would be there based on the map and instructions he was given.

But I’m also all too aware of the fact that by this point, the Game Master may already know that he has been given up by Darian. He seems always a step ahead, oddly familiar with the details of the investigation. I don’t put it past him to already know that I was with Darian and Lacey last night and that Darian is no longer under his control. That isn’t just a slight to the Game Master. He won’t just be frustrated that Darian will no longer be taking orders or even that he spoke with an FBI agent. Darian was part of a larger, more complex plan. And without that piece, the whole thing might start to fall apart.

It’s very possible the entire plan has been changed already and Denise won’t be coming here. I can only hope he hasn’t decided to hold her accountable and punish her for what he would see as disobedience from another of his players.

I shift positions to relieve some pressure on my hips. I’m about to call Darian to see if he has any idea of where she could have gone if not here. But then I notice movement out of the corner of my eye. Leaning closer to the wall, I look through the gap in the bricks and see a woman in jeans and a purple sweatshirt jacket hurrying across the grounds at the back of the school.

Her head is ducked down, but as she gets closer, she lifts it to look around, and I see her face. It is Denise Stein.

From everything I’ve seen of Denise Stein, these aren’t clothes she would usually wear. Her short hair looks disheveled, and her face is starting to show signs of stress and exhaustion. It’s a contrast to her appearance in the trail cam footage on the mountain. Then she was just getting started. She probably thought this was going to be easy and not a big deal for somebody as accustomed to adventure as she is. But now it’s obvious the time and the uncertainty are wearing her down. Just the fact that she is in clothes that clearly aren’t hers shows that she isn’t under her own control.

Not for the first time, I wonder what this woman is hiding. Especially in this outfit and with her sallow complexion and tired bags under her eyes, she doesn’t look like somebody who would have a scandal in her background. But I learned a long time ago not to create expectations based just on how someone looks. Humans are capable of shocking, horrific things. Factors like age, frailty, or beauty don’t preclude anyone from that.

I watch Denise slow down as she gets closer to the stairwell and continue to look around. I wonder if she’s looking for people who might be at the school and catch her in the act, or if she thinks she might be being monitored by the Game Master. She seems to decide that it’s safe and goes down the steps and out of view. I immediately jump and hurry down the other steps to the top of the stairwell, making sure my footfalls are silent. I’m not pursuing a criminal suspect, and as of right now, there’s no reason to suspect Denise has been involved in anything violent, so I don’t take my gun out. But I’m very aware of its presence. Just in case.

At the bottom of the well, Denise is taking a picture of the sticker attached to the side wall. She looks at the screen of the phone in her hand to check the image and takes another one. As she is typing something on the phone, I step down onto the first cement step.

“Denise Stein?”

Her head snaps up with a little gasp, and the phone slips from her hand into a pile of dry leaves gathered in the corner of the well. She immediately crouches down and searches through the leaves to find it, muttering to herself as she does. I go down a few more steps to get closer to her. She finds the phone and stays bent down as she examines it to make sure it isn’t broken. Standing, she turns to look at me again and takes a step back when she realizes I’m closer.

“Who are you?” she asks.

I slowly reach for the credentials hanging around my neck and hold them out to her.

“Agent Emma Griffin. I’m with the FBI. I am here to help you,” I say.

Her bloodshot eyes dart around. Her body is tense, her hand gripping the phone so hard her knuckles lose their color.

“Who are you really?” she asks. “Who sent you?”

“I am really an FBI agent,” I assure her. “Look. This is my ID. Denise, you’re safe. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m here to help you. Your family is worried about you.”

“My family?” she asks.

Tears glaze over her eyes. She looks like she wants to give up.

“Yes, they reported you missing. They are really worried. I’ve been looking for you. Denise, I know what’s happening with you.”

She shakes her head, backing up more and turning from side to side like she’s looking for a way to escape without having to go past me up the steps.

“I do. I know you are being controlled by someone. Right?”

She meets my eyes. Tears cling to her lashes and pool in the wrinkles that weren’t there before the Game Master got her in his grasp.

“He will kill me,” she whispers.

“I’m not going to let that happen. I have officers waiting, and I can have them out here in just a couple of minutes. We’ll bring you to the hospital, and we’ll figure it out from there.”

“No,” she says. “No. He’ll know. He knows where I am. He knows how long I’ve been here. If I don’t do what he wants…”

“Then come with me. My car is just beyond the grounds. I will bring you to the hospital myself.” I show her the gun on my hip. “I won’t let anything happen to you. You are safe now.”

Denise hesitates. She’s caught between desperately wanting to get out of this and being terrified of what might happen to her if she does. But finally, the exhaustion wins out. She nods, and I swoop forward to put my arm around her and help her up the steps. When we get to the top, I step ahead first and look around to show her that I am paying attention to our surroundings. I want her to feel as comfortable as she possibly can in this moment.

I reach for her. “Come on.”

Together we hurry across the grounds of the school. I doubt she has the energy to run, but this can’t be a casual lumber. We have to move. The path to my car seems longer with her at my side and the feeling of eyes on the back of my neck. But we get there. I make sure that she is in first before going around to my door and climbing in. I make a show of locking the doors, hoping the deep click will give her a sense of reassurance.

The engine rumbles beneath us, and as soon as the wheels start turning and the car pulls ahead, Denise’s head drops back against the seat, and she begins to sob.

I’m not going to make it to the excavation.

I bring Denise straight to the nearest emergency room to get checked out, and the doctors immediately usher her back to a room. I can’t go back with her immediately, so I stay in the waiting room. My nervous energy stops me from sitting down and relaxing even a little. I pace back and forth for several minutes until a nurse appears at the door and beckons me over.

“Are you Agent Griffin?” she asks.

“Yes.”

“The woman who was just brought in wants you back in the room with her. She says she doesn’t feel safe unless you are there.”

I nod and follow the nurse through the doors and down the hallway. We come to one of the curtained sliding glass doors leading into an individual emergency room cubby. I still remember the days of emergency rooms being lined with little sections separated from each other by nothing more than curtains. Some of the small hospitals I’ve visited still have that setup, so this never ceases to feel luxurious.

Denise is now wearing a hospital gown, and the blanket is pulled up high over her chest. One hand tightly grips the mattress at her side while the other clings to the phone.

“We need to put in an IV, but she said that she won’t consent to any form of treatment unless you are here,” the nurse inside says.

“You won’t let them hurt me.” It isn’t a statement. It’s a plea.

“Of course not. I’ll be right here.”

I walk over to the side of the bed and rest my hand next to her. I don’t want to touch her. I don’t know how she’s feeling about contact at this moment. But I want her to sense my presence and feel comforted and strengthened.

It might seem strange that she went from being afraid of and not trusting me when I told her I was an FBI agent to now needing me at her side just to trust the doctors doing their job. But to me it’s completely logical. The terror she’s experienced is palpable. Though she didn’t look excessively concerned in the first footage, it almost seems like the fact that she was calmer and more in control at the beginning has made the crash down into fear and hopelessness even harsher.

I very well could be the only person other than the Game Master that she has interacted with in weeks. I took her away from immediate danger and brought her exactly where I told her I was going to bring her. She doesn’t know me, and at some point, the true magnitude of all this will settle in. But for now, I am all she has to hold on to.

The nurse collects the supplies to put in the IV and comes to the side of the bed. She looks at the phone in Denise’s hand.

“You’re going to have to put that down,” she says.

Denise is reluctant. She doesn’t want to be without that phone. There isn’t a single bit of me that believes it is her personal phone and that if I flipped through the contacts, I would find her children or old business associates. That phone was inflicted on her. It’s the technological tether between her and the Game Master. Whatever he is threatening her with, whatever he has done to her already, it has convinced her not to want to be far from that phone.

“I’ll hold it,” I offer. “It’ll be right here.”

She hands the phone over to me, and I take it. There are scratches and dents on the screen and body. It has obviously been through quite a bit.

“It looks like you are pretty dehydrated, so this might be more difficult,” the nurse says. “I’m sorry.”

Just like the nurse expected, it takes some time to cajole the needle into Denise’s withered vein so she can start pumping fluids into her. A doctor comes in and gives me a suspicious look.

“Are you family?”

“No.”

“Then I’m going to have to ask you to leave. We are going to be discussing medical information and…”

“I want her here,” Denise says, getting worked up. “I’m not going to let you touch me if she is not here.”

The doctor agrees and pulls a rolling stool out from under the edge of the counter along one wall. He drags it over to beside Denise’s bed and sits down, his feet propped on the metal bars and his knees spread wide.

“Tell me what happened,” he says. “What brings you in today?”

The question seems almost laughable considering we know what’s going on. But without any context, he has no idea why she would come into the emergency room only to refuse even an examination without me. Other than her generally exhausted appearance, Denise shows no outward sign of injury. But the damage has been done.

When Denise doesn’t start talking, I do it for her. I explain to the doctor that she had been abducted and I’ve only just recovered her. A look of shock flickers across the doctor’s face at that declaration. It’s probably the last thing he was considering.

“Are you injured?” he asks Denise. “Did this person do something to you?”

Those are really two completely different questions, but it’s easy to blur that line.

Denise shakes her head. “I’m just tired. I haven’t eaten much.”

“We’re going to give you a few bags of fluids, and I’d like to do a full examination to make sure there aren’t any problems. Are you sure that nothing hurts? There wasn’t any… You haven’t been hurt?” He’s stumbling over his words. He doesn’t know how to handle this situation.

It’s one of those things that people who dream of being in the medical profession envision themselves doing. Swooping in during an emergency or a tragic event and being that source of comfort and strength. Being able to handle everything, stay calm, and make everything better. But not many ever actually encounter things like this.

Emergency room doctors live an existence of chaos. They handle urgent situations on a daily basis. But for many, those urgent situations are limited to serious illnesses, heart attacks, or broken bones. They might treat car crash victims. They don’t expect someone who has just survived a crime. It might happen a handful of times in any given career. For some, never.

I can tell he wants to help. He wants to do anything he can for Denise. But he’s struggling to know exactly what to say. He’s dancing around the question that is first to pop into the mind of anyone dealing with a woman who has just escaped an abductor: Did he sexually assault you?

“I never saw him,” Denise says.

The doctor looks at me.

“She did not have any physical contact with the abductor,” I tell him. “She is dehydrated, hungry, and exhausted. It is extremely important that I talk to her as soon as possible. I understand you need to examine her and make sure that she is going to be all right, but if we could move along…”

I’m not intentionally being so sharp and pushy. I know the doctor has a job to do, and that’s the entire reason I brought Denise here. Though she didn’t have any actual contact with the Game Master, so he didn’t injure her directly, I still don’t know everything that she went through. She may be dealing with effects beyond just her dehydration and trauma. But I can’t help my sense of urgency. If the doctor uncovers something that needs additional treatment, obviously, I’ll step back to let him do his work. But I need to get the information from Denise as soon as she can give it to me. The sooner I have it, the sooner I can act on it.

Again Denise asks that I be allowed to stay in the room while the doctor does his work, but I’m ushered out into the hallway. I reassure her that she is safe and I’ll be right outside, then I step out as the doctor slides the door firmly closed behind me. Standing in the hallway is frustrating, so I decide to fill the time with the calls I need to make.

First is to Detective Melton. He needs to know I’ve found Denise alive and have her safe at the hospital. Next, I call Sam, letting him know I’m not going to make it to the excavation. He says he’s still willing to step in for me, and I agree. It’s not like he’s going to get involved, but at least he’ll be there to witness what happens, and somehow that makes me feel better.

My last call is to Rhys and Vivica Stein.

Rhys sounds tense and almost breathless when he answers. He’s obviously saved my contact information into his phone, because he already knows it’s me.

“Hi, Agent Griffin,” he says.

“Hi, Rhys. Is Vivica there with you?” I ask.

“She… yes. Yes, she is. Why? Do you need to talk to her?”

He almost sounds hopeful, but at the same time, it’s tempered.

“No, I don’t need to talk to her. I need to talk to you. It’s just best if she’s there,” I say.

“Honey? Vivica?” Rhys shouts away from the phone.

“Yeah?” I hear in the background, muffled like she’s in another room.

“Can you come here?”

“What do you need?” she says a few seconds later, her voice louder as she comes into the room.

“Agent Griffin is on the phone,” he says to her, then his voice lifts as he speaks to me again. “She’s here.”

“I found your mother.”

There’s no reason for any more buildup or to beat around the bush. I need to be clear and straightforward to keep this moving.

Rhys draws in a sharp breath. Vivica murmurs something beside him.

“You found her? Is she…”

“She’s alive,” I say without forcing him to continue the question. “I’m at the hospital with her. The doctor is giving her an examination right now to make sure there aren’t any internal injuries or anything, and she’s getting fluids.”

“So she’s all right? Nothing… serious?”

“That’s what the doctor is checking, but as far as I can tell, she’s in good condition. Obviously exhausted and stressed. Dehydrated. But she isn’t injured. I’ve already notified the detective. I wanted to make sure you knew before it hits the media.”

“We’ll be there as soon as we can get there,” he says.

“I need to talk to her before you see her.”

“My mother has been missing. I didn’t know if she was still alive,” he protests.

“I know, I understand what you are going through…”

“No, you don’t. Don’t say that,” he says.

“Yes,” I say firmly. “I do.”

The conversation falls silent for a brief moment. I hear the breath slide out of his lungs.

“Look, Rhys, I know this is a really difficult situation. But you have to understand that it’s not over. Just because your mother has been found and is safe now doesn’t mean this is over. I still need to find out exactly what was happening with her and if she can give me any information that’s going to help me with my investigation. We can’t just pretend that this didn’t happen the way it did or that she isn’t involved in something much bigger,” I say.

“So you were right? She was selected as a player?” Vivica asks like she has pressed herself to her husband’s side so she can listen in to the conversation.

“Yes, I was already sure of that. Those stickers were not a coincidence. That symbol is not by chance. As soon as I figured out that’s what they were, I knew that was what we were dealing with. I haven’t had a chance to talk to her in-depth about it, but I did confirm it with her. I can tell you that she is very afraid. Even though she says she had no physical contact with this person, she believes they have the capacity for serious violence toward her. I don’t know if there has been a direct threat or if she just knows what has happened before and is scared that it’s going to happen to her too. That’s what I need to find out. You can come. I know she will want to see you. But please be patient.”

It’s more than an hour later when I finally walk out into the waiting room and see Rhys and Vivica. They’re sitting close together, their hands grasped between them, their heads leaned close almost like they could be in prayer. Rhys is the first to notice me. He jumps to his feet, followed closely by his wife.

“How is she?” he asks.

“As good as can be expected, I think,” I say. “Physically at least. No serious injuries or anything. Just really dehydrated and dealing with not eating much. The doctor wants to keep her for observation for at least a day. They’re moving her up to a room where she can shower and settle in, and then you can go see her.”

“Did you talk to her?” Vivica asks.

“I did,” I tell her.

“And?” Rhys’s voice lifts with expectation.

“I can’t get into the details with you. What I can tell you is that she did confirm she was selected as a player and has been in contact with the Game Master for at least a month. She got a burner phone in her PO box but decided she was going to ignore it,” I say.

“She has gotten strange things in that box before,” Vivica tells me. “She got it so that people wouldn’t know her home address, but ever since she got it, people have been sending her strange letters, postcards, pictures…”

“That’s what she said,” I confirm. “She said she regularly gets weird things. A lot of the time she has no idea who they are from. Sometimes they come from people she’s met on her trips.”

“I’ve told her she shouldn’t be telling the people she meets who she is or giving them any contact information,” Rhys says. “I’ve told her it’s dangerous. That’s probably what got her into this mess.”

“We don’t know exactly how the Game Master got her PO box information. What we do know is that she got that burner phone in the box and decided she was going to ignore it. But then she got a note at the house, and she realized it was much more serious than she had originally thought. She had heard about the case, obviously. She knew that there were people who had been hurt or even killed and other people who were panicking because of the whole situation and their lives were imploding because of it. According to her, she thought about contacting the authorities but then changed her mind.”

“Why?” Vivica asks. “If she knew how dangerous this guy could be, why would she change her mind? Why would she go ahead with doing his bidding?”

“His initial demand of her wasn’t that intense. He told her that she needed to reach out to everyone who had sent her a postcard over the last year and personally respond to them.”

“How could she possibly do that? She threw them away as soon as she got them,” Rhy says.

“No,” I say, shaking my head. “She kept them.”

He looks shocked. “Why would she keep them? She never responded to them, and she said the whole reason she had a PO box was so no one could get to her. They were getting too close.”

“And yet she gave out her mailing information,” I point out to him. “The only reason any of these people knew how to send her anything was because she gave them her PO box address. Either personally or they saw it listed on her travel posts. She didn’t try to keep it a secret. If she really didn’t want anyone trying to get in touch with her, she would have just not gotten a box or she would keep the address to herself.”

“You’re saying she wanted the attention,” Rhys says.

There’s a defensive edge to his voice, like he’s offended at the very idea that I would say his mother was seeking out the validation of the people who wrote to her. But it’s the reality of the situation. He always admired his mother for her intense independence and how she lived a life of adventure that wasn’t defined by anyone or anything beyond her own desires. I’m chipping away at that, showing him a different side to his mother he never knew… and doesn’t want to.

“This is a conversation you’ll need to have with her,” I tell him. “It’s not my place to tell you everything. There’s a reason she never told you about those cards and that she’s been willing to do as the Game Master said. Like I said, I can’t get into the details of it. I can’t tell you everything she told me. But I can tell you that you need to brace yourself. I can’t guarantee what’s going to happen. I don’t know for sure that anything is going to happen. But the chances of everything your mother has been keeping from you staying a secret for much longer aren’t good. You’re going to need to make a choice.”

“A choice?” he asks.

“Whether you’re going to stand beside her or not.”

“I don’t understand…”

“I want to know more about what she’s been going through,” Vivica interjects, cutting her husband off and detouring the conversation away from the gritty details I’m not going to tell them.

Like I said, they aren’t mine to tell. At least not to Rhys.

This is where my career becomes a tightrope. It’s easy to think of Denise Stein only in the context of the Game Master. To see her as a victim drawn into his twisted game or as a participant, continuing the trail of terror by not coming forward. But that’s not all she is. I have to also think of her as completely detached from that definition. Who she was before the game. Who’ll she be now that it’s over.

Rhys’s mother. A friend. A person wholly separate from any of that.

I have to see her as both. I have to respect her as both.

And that means knowing when to keep the two separate. I could tell them how what she has revealed to me impacts my investigation of the Game Master. How it influences my understanding of his game and why he selects his victims. And that matters. But it’s not the reason it will matter as much to Rhys. And it’s not how Denise would want him to find out.

So I’m thankful to Vivica for bringing the focus of the conversation back to my investigation and what I can tell them about that.

“She decided she needed to take the communications seriously after the note arrived at her house. So she followed the instructions to show she was going to cooperate and went through the first challenge. She thought it would end there, but it didn’t. That turned into redirecting donations from the foundation to a different group.”

“I don’t understand. What do you mean?”

“You do know about her foundation, right?”

“She’s talked about setting up funds that would support wildlife and environmental causes and promote world exploration for solo female travelers. She doesn’t exactly keep us in the loop about things like that. We don’t share the same types of passions, so she does what she does with her money.”

I can hear the bitterness in his voice. It’s not something I expected. From what I understood about the family dynamic, Denise’s children were content with the way things were. They lived separate lives because that was how they wanted it. But now it sounds like there’s an underlying simmer of resentment. I can’t tell if it’s because Rhys feels entitled to more of his mother’s money than he has access to, or because he feels slighted by her feeling comfortable making all the decisions on her own.

Either way, it sounds like the thought of his mother using her extensive wealth for the benefit of other people doesn’t sit well with him.

“Well, I can tell you that she did set up both of those funds. They have been fully active and quite productive for a few years now. She has a pretty considerable following on her video-sharing channel and blog. Did you know that?” I ask.

“Like I said, there’s a lot about my mother’s life that I don’t know. And I’m getting the feeling that there is a lot more that I don’t even realize,” Rhys says.

“What happened with her funds?” Vivica asks.

“The Game Master required her to filter all of the money from those funds through a shell corporation. Essentially, it still looks like any donations to those funds are still going to them, but the money is actually going to a separate organization. Unfortunately, she doesn’t have any information about it. I’m going to have the tech department do as much digging as they can to see if they can find who created the shell and where the money is going.”

“And after that?” Rhys asks. “Why was she wandering around with these stickers?”

“That’s where I have to stop giving you details. What I can tell you is that it was another challenge and she does not believe that it was the end of what was expected of her. But it does provide some further information that I hope will be useful in narrowing down who is responsible for this.”

“So what are we supposed to do now? This guy’s still out there. And now he knows that not only did my mother not finish what he wanted her to do, but she was picked up by the FBI. How are we possibly supposed to keep her safe?” Rhys asks.

“As of right now, we are really only assuming that he knows I am the one who took her. She’s under the assumption that he was watching her at all times, and that is entirely possible. I’m not going to say that it’s out of the realm of reality that he could have been supervising her at each movement. Whatever the case, he does know things are not turning out the way he planned. This does put her at risk, though I can’t tell you what that risk is.

“What has happened to the individual players who have not fulfilled the challenges set forth for them has covered a wide range. Some are dead. Some are missing. Others haven’t heard from the Game Master again. That doesn’t mean he is not going to come for them at some point. And we don’t know what he has planned for your mother. So it is critical at this point to keep her safe. I’m going to talk to the hospital administrator to make sure no one is allowed anywhere near your mother’s room except for the detective and me. Once she is discharged, something will need to be done,” I say.

“That’s it? You’re just going to say something will need to be done, and that’s supposed to be enough?”

“I can’t force her into anything,” I point out to him. “I can provide certain services to protect her, but they are up to her to comply. And this is if the detective decides not to press charges against her.”

Rhys’s eyebrows shoot up. “Press charges? What would he possibly press charges for?”

A nurse approaches us.

“Are you Rhys Stein?” she asks.

“Yes,” he says.

“I’m Melanie. I’m on your mother’s care team. She’s been transferred to her room and wants to see you. If you’re ready, I can bring you up to her room,” she says.

He meets my eyes.

I nod. “You should go.”

“We’ll talk more later,” he says.

I don’t acknowledge it.

“Sex tourism?” Melton asks, his expression one of complete disbelief.

“Yeah. I really wish there was a better way to describe it, but that’s exactly what it is. Denise Stein’s family thought she was just going on these adventures to fill her life with excitement and because she has a passion for the environment, but it turns out she was not exactly promoting zip-lining tours through the rainforests.”

The detective’s eyes close, and he shakes his head slightly. “I need more details. I don’t think I fully understand what you’re telling me.”

“Unfortunately, I think you understand exactly what I’m telling you. Denise has spent decades traveling the world and supposedly encouraging others to take up a life of solo travel. She has made a really big deal of going on these eco mission trips where she helps out at animal sanctuaries or participates in reforestation efforts. All of those are legit. She really has done those things. But she has also built up essentially a stable of prostitutes in several different countries and organizes vacations for exceptionally high-paying clients to go… let’s call it sightseeing.”

“Would it be completely out in left field for me to assume that she herself is an…”

“Optional excursion?” I offer.

“Yeah, thanks. I’m having a lot of trouble with this.”

“I noticed. I don’t blame you though. This isn’t exactly something that you encounter on a regular basis. But to answer your question, yes. She does offer herself as one of the most expensive options on these trips. That’s part of why she travels so much. Clients who have arranged for these tours can request her company in any of the countries they’re going to visit, and she provides a long list of services. Fully customizable to the location, I might add,” I say. “I’m not going to knock her for that. She is a grown-ass adult, and she can do whatever she wants with her own body as far as I’m concerned. As long as it’s consensual and she’s not being held or offered against her will, more power to her.”

Melton gives me a questioning look. “You’re serious?”

“Absolutely. Setting aside the legality of the situation, all we’re wading through is the muck of moral control in this kind of circumstance. It’s wrong because people say it’s wrong, and then when you ask for some kind of justification for that, it turns into a conversation of religious dogma or constructed social mores. But not everyone subscribes to the same beliefs. If they aren’t hurting anyone else in the process of what they are doing, really, who are we to force moral restrictions on competent adults?

“We live in a time where people are in this weird balance of touting bodily autonomy, sex positivity, and individual self-expression while also arguing that anyone who takes those concepts and applies them to sex work is being oppressed and objectified so they should be shamed or punished. It’s infantilizing. Either an adult is an adult who is capable of making their own decisions about their body and what they do with it, or everybody needs to be forced into the same box crafted by a particular construct of expectation and sense of right and wrong, then monitored and controlled by nameless, faceless people. Who gives those people the right to determine for another adult what’s right for them and what they should be allowed to do?”

“The law, Emma. The law gives them that right.”

“But that’s my point,” I counter. “Again, setting the law aside. Ignoring completely that it is illegal, why should she be shamed? Why should anybody be allowed to tell her that she is not allowed to do what she wants with her body or that she is being hurt in some way? That’s nobody else’s business.

“Denise Stein is very much an adult, and if she chooses to advertise herself as a tourist attraction, then that’s on her. It’s not my style. I wouldn’t do it. But I wouldn’t do a lot of things. That doesn’t mean other people shouldn’t do them. But this is a whole philosophical question that’s taking us away from the point. Denise’s little side hustle started with adults who made the clear and conscious decision to make this their career.”

“That transition leads me to believe that wasn’t so much the case anymore,” Melton says.

“No, it wasn’t. She couldn’t confirm all the details because, unfortunately, she started outsourcing a lot of this, but we’re pretty certain that some of the people being sent to hotels to fill orders by these tourists or attending the mixers were underage and possibly being coerced.”

He gives a shudder. “The whole idea of a mixer is really disturbing to me. It’s like a pet adoption meet and greet.”

“I was going to go with going to a farmers’ market to shop for produce, but I guess both of those analogies are inherently problematic in their own way. Anyway, she admitted to setting up these tours for years. Hundreds of clients. And that’s what the Game Master is holding over her.”

My phone rings in my bag at the end of the table, and I move toward it.

“I’ve already contacted my boss at the Bureau to get some more resources applied to unpacking this whole thing. It’s going to take some work.” I take out my phone and answer it.

“Agent Griffin.”

“Emma?”

The voice sounds familiar, but I can’t place it. The voice is shaky, and the woman on the other end of the line sounds nervous and like she’s been crying.

“This is Special Agent Emma Griffin, I say.

“It’s Skye. Skye Malloy. Do you remember me?”

Of course I remember her. She was involved in the ill-fated TV series meant to tell the story of slain celebrity activist Lakyn Monroe a few years ago. We kept up for a little while, but it’s been a long time since I’ve spoken with her.

“I do. How are you doing, Skye?”

“Well, not great. That’s why I’m calling you. I need your help. I’ve been arrested for murder.”

The case of Lakyn Monroe is what first brought me to Harlan. It’s how I met Xavier. It’s also one of the most horrifying cases of my career, one that has continued to haunt me. The attempt at a TV adaptation of her story only led to more gruesome death, and her legacy in my life seems to linger on.

It’s tangential this time, bringing me back into contact with Skye, but I can’t help but think about the vivacious young woman who met her brutal end when she was trying to make a difference in the world beyond just her music and acting.

I didn’t get a lot of details from Skye on the call, but she made it very clear that the situation was urgent. She isn’t in Harlan. Instead, the drive takes me a couple of hours past Sherwood deeper into the mountains. I pull into the lot of the jail where she is being held and go inside.

They’re expecting me, but I’m surprised by the face that greets me just inside.

“Noah,” I say grinning as the detective opens his arms to me for a hug.

Detective Noah White was involved in the original investigation into Lakyn’s disappearance and murder, as well as the series of horrific events that unfolded around it and the discovery of The Order. It’s been a long while since I’ve had the chance to reunite with him.

“Hey, Emma,” he says, stepping back from the hug to look me over. “You look fantastic.”

“I look like I’ve been running myself ragged for weeks because that’s exactly what’s going on,” I say. “You look great though. I like the mustache.”

“Trying something new.”

“What are you doing here?”

He glances around the lobby like I’m specifically asking him about the building itself.

“I moved out of Harlan. It felt like I needed something new, and I’d been seeing someone online for a while who lived in the area, so I thought I’d make the leap,” he says.

“Congratulations,” I say.

“Well, not exactly. We broke up about fourteen minutes after I got here. Turns out the romantic fantasy was a whole lot more appealing than the reality.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I say.

“It’s fine. It wasn’t for a bit there, but I’m on the other side. I had already signed a lease on a new place and cut off everything in Harlan, so I decided to stick it out. I landed the detective position here, and I actually really like it. It wasn’t what I imagined when I first planned on coming here, but it’s worked out for the best. How about you? How have you been? How’s Sam? Dean, Xavier?”

“Everything’s good. Everybody’s good. As nice as it is to catch up with you, I’m here because I got a really concerning phone call.”

He nods. “Skye Malloy.”

“Right.”

“Yeah, she was brought in this morning. I was pretty shocked to see her, especially considering the charges. As soon as I talked to her, she decided she needed to talk to you. She insisted on calling you rather than a lawyer.”

“She hasn’t spoken to counsel?”

“I think that’s you.”

“Great,” I mutter. “All right, where is she?”

“I’ll have her transferred up. Come on, I’ll get you in a room.”

He heads for a door leading into the back and looks over his shoulder at me.

“Want some coffee?”

“Always.”

Noah sets me up in a remarkably tiny room with nothing but a table and three flimsy chairs. The walls, carpet, and furniture are all the same shade of bleak gray. It’s nothing short of psychological warfare in here. This room is designed to be devoid of all stimulation and hope. You come here, you know you’re alone. All you have to give respite from the emptiness of the room is the human connection with the person who comes in to question you. For many who end up here, that by itself is enough to create desperation and draw out what the interrogator wants to know.

But I’m not an interrogator, and I’m not here to question Skye. I’m here because she called me, and I’m getting more curious about it by the second.

“It’s going to be a few minutes until she gets here,” he tells me. “They’re short-staffed, so they have to find somebody who can get her here.”

“Tell me what’s going on,” I say. “She didn’t give me many details when she called. She just said she was arrested on suspicion of murder and I needed to get here.”

“And that was enough to get you to drop whatever case you’re working on to come?” he asks.

Noah sits down with his own cup of coffee and leans back against the metal frame of the chair. The casual posture and slow way he sips his coffee tells me the few minutes he quoted me for Skye’s arrival is probably going to stretch longer than he’s suggesting.

“Most of the time, it wouldn’t. I’m deep in a really complex case right now. And this isn’t the first time I’ve had somebody call me to tell me they were in trouble. But I needed to come up for air from the case I’m working, and honestly, I felt like I owed Skye.”

“You owed her?” he asks. “What do you mean?”

“You didn’t interact with her as much during the filming as I did. She was really helpful. And she took good care of us when there was all that upheaval. She was there to help us stand up to the producer, and when everything happened, she made sure I had everything I needed to investigate. She wasn’t doing it for the glory or the attention. A lot of people involved with the project probably don’t even remember she was there. She was literally doing it because she knew it was the right thing to do and wanted to be as helpful as possible,” I say. “Now she’s dealing with something. The least I can do is find out what’s going on.”

He nods his understanding. Whether he really does understand my logic or not isn’t really the issue here. The truth is, Skye’s call came just at the right time.

Finding Denise and getting the details she gave me was like releasing a pressure valve. It didn’t give me everything. There is still a mountain of questions I need to dismantle, but I feel like I cracked through the stone and am working my way into burrowing to the core. I just have to be patient. There are some things I can’t do on my own. Tests I can’t run, systems I don’t have access to. I have to rely on others to get me that information so I can continue building my theory.

Until then, I need to take the space to breathe. I know myself well enough to know if I stay there while I’m waiting for the results of the more extensive investigation, I’m going to drive myself to the ground. I need the separation. I need the chance to take a step back and focus on something else. I just need to know what that is.

“Skye was here helping with another production,” Noah tells me.

“Another documentary?” I ask.

“No, a horror movie,” he tells me.

For a second, I think it might be sarcasm. Or that he’s trying to be funny. But Noah is looking directly at me without a shift in his emotion, and I realize he’s being absolutely serious.

“A horror movie?” I ask. “I didn’t realize there was anything being filmed around here.”

“It isn’t a big production. It’s an independent film. B horror. At least it was. I don’t think the production is going to pan out.”

“Why?” I ask.

“Because the director was murdered,” he tells me. “And Skye was found with the body.”

And there it is. It took some wandering, but we finally made it to the reason I’m here.

“All right. Give me the details,” I say.

“Just a second.”

He walks out of the room and comes back a few moments later with a folder. He drops it onto the table in front of me. It gives off a loud, radiating sound I’m pretty sure tables like this were designed to make when folders were dropped on them purely for the purpose of intimidating the suspects and witnesses shut in the rooms.

“Howard Spade. Forty-five years old. Independent screenwriter, movie producer, and director,” he says.

I reach for the folder and pull it closer, flipping it open so I can see the picture of the victim at the top of the few enclosed documents.

“Sounds busy,” I say. “What was Skye doing?”

“Something on the crew, and she had a small role. I’m not sure of the specifics. The actual production hasn’t been going on for very long. They’ve only been on set for about five days. Howard was found dead late last night. His throat was slit, and a piece of a costume was shoved so far in his mouth it would have choked him if he hadn’t already bled out.”

“What kind of piece of costume?”

“A bra,” he says.

I lift my eyes to him. “A bra?”

“The one Skye is wearing in the film.”

“Fantastic. So her bra was found stuffed in the victim’s mouth, and she was with the body,” I say.

“She wasn’t just with the body. She was holding the knife and had blood all over her.”

“Shit.” I let out a heavy breath. “If this happened last night, why did she just get brought in this morning?”

“The camera operator found her. He said he didn’t know if Howard was dead or not, so he ran to help him, by which time Skye was already gone. She’d left the set, and it took until this morning to find her. She insists she didn’t do it. She said she ran because she was scared. But she found him dead and tried to help him. That’s how she got the blood on her, and that’s why she was holding the knife.”

“And her bra in his throat?” I ask.

“We didn’t know about that until the medical examiner did his initial review of the body. When we asked about it, she just said she didn’t have any idea what we were talking about. But that’s exactly what someone wanting to seem like they weren’t involved in a murder would say.”

“Other than the obvious unfortunate circumstances of finding the body and her running, what else makes her a suspect? You said the production has only been going on for a few days. Did something happen during that time that makes her suspicious?” I ask.

“It’s still really early in trying to sift this whole situation, to be honest with you. We’ve been talking to people from the set, and according to them, Howard Spade wasn’t exactly everybody’s favorite person. This particular production has only been going on for a few days, but Skye has worked with him before, and there has been some contention between them.”

“I think it’s a pretty big leap from some contention between them to her shoving her bra down his throat and then slitting it,” I point out.

“It definitely is, but you and I both know murders are committed for less. Maybe things got heated. He said the wrong thing one too many times, and she snapped,” Noah suggests.

“That’s what you’re going with? That was enough to arrest her?”

“Right now, she’s just being held. We took her into custody, but she hasn’t had any charges officially filed against her. We can hold her until tomorrow morning.”

There’s a quick knock on the door, and we both look up to see an officer leaning in toward us.

“Detective, that girl you asked for is here.”

“Perfect. Bring her in.”

The officer disappears, and a few seconds later, Skye comes into the room. Her hands are cuffed in front of her, and her face is red and puffy from crying. Her eyes get wide when she sees me, and a fresh veil of tears glistens on them.

“Emma,” she gushes.

She tries to rush toward me, but the chains keep her from moving too quickly, and she can’t lift her arms to hug me. I stand up and step closer, touching my hands to hers. They are shaking, and I look at Noah.

“Does she have to be chained?” I ask. “This is me. I think I can handle her.”

“Sit down,” he instructs her.

Skye does as he says, and he releases the cuffs around her wrists. He leaves the chains on her ankles in place, but just having her arms free visibly releases some of the tension in Skye. She rests both arms on the table, stretching her hands flat for a second before coiling them back in toward herself. Her eyes flicker over to Noah and then back to me. She knows him. Not as well as she knows me, but there’s enough familiarity there that he was able to arrange her to contact me. But that doesn’t matter at this moment.

Right now he isn’t Noah, the consultant who worked with her on the documentary series. He is the detective who is holding her on potential murder charges. There’s no trust. No sense of relaxation or ease. I know she wants to talk to me, but she’s not going to do it while he’s standing in the room with us.

“Noah, can you give us a minute?” I ask.

He looks slightly put out by the request but doesn’t say anything. He walks out of the room and shuts the door behind him. As soon as it clicks into place, Skye’s head drops down toward the table, and her shoulders rock as she starts sobbing.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” she says.

“Talk to me,” I say. “Why am I here? Why didn’t you call a lawyer?”

“Because I wanted you,” she says, sitting up and looking at me. “I know you. I trust you. And I know if there’s anybody who can get me out of this, it’s going to be you.”

“Skye, I’m not a lawyer.”

“I know that. I don’t need a lawyer right now. I’m refusing to speak to them, and I know enough to know that unless they have enough evidence to bring me to trial right now, they aren’t going to keep me beyond the twenty-four-hour mark. And they definitely don’t have enough for that.”

“How do you know?” I ask.

She looks shocked at the question. “Because I didn’t do it, Emma. I didn’t kill Howard Spade. They don’t have enough evidence because there isn’t any evidence.”

“Well, unfortunately, that isn’t exactly true. From what I hear from Detective White, you were found with the body, covered in blood, holding the murder weapon, then you ran. Not to mention the fact that your bra was in his throat and you are known to have a difficult relationship with him. All that is evidence, Skye. Whether it’s evidence you actually did it really isn’t relevant at this moment,” I say.

“Isn’t relevant? How could it possibly not be relevant? This is my life we’re talking about.” Her hand goes to the center of her chest, pressing in toward her heart with enough force to make her shoulders curve inward.

“I understand that. It’s the only reason I’m here. But I’m not going to sugarcoat any of this for you. You called me here to help you, and it won’t help you if I sit here and pretend everything is going to work out perfectly just because you say you didn’t do anything wrong. Here’s the thing. People lie. They lie through their freaking teeth because they think there’s a chance they are smarter than everybody investigating the case and can trick everyone into thinking they are innocent. They lie because they don’t want people to know the nitty gritty truth about them.

“Detectives can show someone a video of them shooting another person directly in the face, and they will still lie. So you saying that you didn’t do it doesn’t hold any real weight. And because of that, people get convicted of things they didn’t do far too often. And it’s all because of how investigators and prosecutors can interpret what they see as evidence. So like I said, the fact that what they have isn’t actually evidence that you did anything doesn’t mean anything. The only thing that matters right now is breaking down that evidence and finding proof that it wasn’t you. Again, I’m not going to sweet-talk you. What they have is damning. I’ve seen people go down on that much.”

“Are you serious?” she asks, her voice cracking.

“Skye, listen to me. Separate yourself from this situation. If it weren’t you, what would you think? A woman who is known to have been in conflict with a man before is found standing over his dead body holding the knife that presumably killed him, covered in his blood. She runs off and hides from the police, who find out that not only was this man’s throat slit, but he had a bra stuffed down his throat that turns out to belong to her. Does any of that sound good to you?” I ask.

Skye claws her fingers back through her hair and looks at me with wide, desperate eyes. “What am I going to do, Emma? What the hell am I going to do?”

“You’re going to start by telling me everything. We’ll go from there.”

“I met Howard Spade a couple of years ago. After everything that happened on the set of the Lakyn Monroe documentary series, I struggled to find a project. Even though I wasn’t a huge part of it, somehow everyone who was doing anything knew my name was attached to it. If I expressed any type of interest in doing a project, as soon as they found out I was attached to that, I was shut out.

“After a while, I managed to find a few small things and started working my way back up, but I got really frustrated. It felt like all the work I had already put into my career was being wasted all because I happened to be a part of a project that went admittedly very, very wrong.

“I was even thinking about getting out of the industry completely. I didn’t really have a backup plan. But I felt like I needed something to happen in my life to show me what direction I should be going.

“Then I met Howard. A friend of mine wanted to go to this horror convention in Philadelphia, and she asked if I wanted to go with her. I’d never done something like that, but it sounded like fun, so I took her up on it. We ended up catching a screening of one of Howard’s projects, and he was there doing a Q-and-A session.

“My friend asked a couple of questions, and it just seemed like he was lingering for a little while when he looked our way. Later that night, there was a party, you know, in the ballrooms, and he actually showed up. By the time he did, I had been drinking a bit and was feeling frustrated and down on myself, but also too confident and without any of those pesky inhibitions that come with being sober.”

“That’s generally not a great combination,” I say.

“Sometimes it works out. And I genuinely thought it did that night. I walked right up to him and told him who I was and what I had been dealing with. He looked right at me and said he didn’t care. Right then and there, he asked if I wanted to come be crew on his next project, and I accepted without thinking twice. I worked a few projects with him on crew, and then he asked if I might be interested in being in front of the camera. Just an extra at first and then work my way up if I wanted to. It sounded like fun, so I did it.”

“Okay. So now I know how you got to know him. How did we get where we are now?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what happened to him. Yes, we had some conflicts in the past. It hasn’t always been great between us. But that’s kind of how it is with Howard. It’s how it is with a lot of people in the industry. It doesn’t mean I wanted him dead. If I was that mad at him, I wouldn’t have agreed to do this project. This was the most important thing he had ever undertaken, and I was one of the first people he asked to be a part of it.

“We’ve been working on it for months and had been on set for a few days. It was a really rough day. Everything was going wrong. Everybody was at each other’s throats.” She cringes but doesn’t backpedal. “Things just weren’t going how he wanted them to go. Like I said, this was a really big deal to him, and he had built it up in his head. When it started going a little sideways, it got heated. We ended up taking a break to kind of give everybody a chance to calm down and recenter. The next scenes needed to be done late, so we had a little bit of time.

“But then Howard didn’t show back up on set. We were all waiting around for him, we called him, but nobody could find him. I went looking for him and found him at one of the outbuildings we were planning on using as a set.”

“An outbuilding?” I ask.

“The film is being shot on an old ranch. It was actually a movie set years ago. There’s a main house and then a bunch of other buildings. Barns, sheds, a lodge. There’s a cabin out in the woods where he planned on filming.”

“That sounds pretty remote.”

“It isn’t close,” she says. “There wouldn’t be much point in having a cabin close to the main house. Cabins by nature tend to be a bit remote.”

“Yes, I’m familiar with the concept,” I tell her. “And that’s the point. Why would you think to go out somewhere that far to look for him?”

“Because everybody else was already looking around the main house and all the places nearby. It didn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense for me to stay there. The last time he and I talked, we were planning the shoot for the cabin. He was giving me notes about how exactly he wanted it set up and his vision for the space. Because it was so important to him, I thought if he was feeling frustrated and angry about the project, maybe he went out there to clear his head and remind himself why he was doing this.”

“And that’s where you found him,” I say.

“Yeah, I got to the cabin and noticed light coming from inside. There’s no electricity out there, so I figured it was probably a flashlight. I called his name, but he didn’t respond, so I went inside. He was on the floor, curled on his side with his back toward the door. He’s had some health problems, and I was worried he might have passed out, so I ran over to him and grabbed him to flip him over on his back. That’s when I saw the blood all over him. I noticed the knife beside him, and I grabbed it. I can’t even believe I did that.

“Every time I watch a crime show and somebody sees a murder weapon and immediately grabs it up, I yell at the screen. I tell them that they’re an idiot. Why in the living hell would you touch a weapon you know just killed somebody? And yet, that’s what I did. Saw the knife on the floor, and I picked it up. I tried to take his pulse, but I couldn’t feel it, so then I leaned down to see if I could hear him breathing. I’m sure that’s how I got blood all over me. When Curtis walked in, I was still holding the knife, and I don’t know what came over me. I just panicked. He was looking at me like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing, and I just lost it. I ran.”

“You can’t just say you don’t know what came over you. That may be the answer in your head, but it’s not going to be good enough. If you walked into this cabin and saw him dead on the floor, why did you not call for help? And then when somebody else came in, why was it your first instinct to take off running rather than stay there and explain what was going on?” I ask.

“I knew how bad it looked. And I knew that people had heard us arguing. I just had to get out of there. It was the stupidest thing I have ever done. And now I’m here.”

“Let me see what I can do about that,” I say. I get up and head for the door, but I pause and look back at her. “What about your bra? How did it end up in Howard Spade’s throat?”

“I’m guessing somebody put it there. And it was part of my costume. It was with all the other costumes. Anybody could have grabbed it.”

“Okay. Hang tight. I’ll be right back.”

I leave the room and step outside in the hallway.

“So?”

“So you know you don’t have enough to charge her. It doesn’t look great, I’ll give you that, but at this point, you have circumstantial evidence and poor judgment. You’re not going to bring that to the DA. There’s no point in keeping her tonight. Unless you plan on coming up with some really impressive evidence to further your case, you don’t have anything to go on. It’s going to take a whole lot more investigation and something much more compelling than what you have to get a conviction, and you know that. And the last thing you want is to arrest her and not have the charges go through. That just causes hassle and headache, and you don’t want either,” I say.

“And you want me to release her,” he says.

“Yes, I got some of the story out of her, but I know there’s more. And it’s not doing anybody any good for her to be locked up in a cell.”

“Are you sticking around?”

“What do you mean?”

“Around here. She called you because she wants your help. Are you going to stay and look into this for her?” Noah asks.

“This isn’t my case, and as far as I can tell, there isn’t anything about it that puts it under the jurisdiction of the Bureau,” I say.

“What if I ask for your help?”

“From me personally or in an official capacity?” I ask.

“Either. Whichever one you’re more comfortable with. I just know that I could use the help in this. I am already up to my neck in an investigation that is becoming more difficult by the second, it seems. And I know you are well versed in that… and probably have all kinds of things going on right now, so it’s ridiculous for me to ask you,” he says.

“It isn’t ridiculous. I’m willing to look into it. You’re right. I am in the middle of a very big investigation, and if there are any developments in that case, I have to act on them. That’s going to take precedence over anything else.”

“I completely understand,” he says. “I don’t expect you to put anything on the back burner to accommodate this. But any help you can give would be greatly appreciated.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thank you. I’ll get the process started to get her out. It shouldn’t take long. Where are you staying in town?” Noah asks.

“I hadn’t actually thought about that. I just came straight here. But I guess I will need to get a room somewhere. At least for the night.”

“Well, the one recommendation I can give you is to avoid the other hotels too close to campus. The university here is definitely quieter than a lot of the college towns I’ve visited, but it is still a college. Being surrounded by a bunch of kids who are still coming off their spring break might not be the best thing for thinking. Unless that’s your thing, then go for it.”

I laugh. “Definitely not my thing. I will take your recommendation. Since I’m assuming Skye was brought in here by way of the most public of public transportation, complete with a uniformed personal driver, I’m going to wait out front and see if she wants a ride back to her place.”

“I’ll get her out of here as quickly as I can.”

I’ve called Sam and am on my phone making a reservation at a local hotel when the door opens again and Skye comes out. She’s out of the awkward orange jumpsuit they had her in, but the plain gray sweatpants and white T-shirt she’s wearing don’t strike me as her style. She sees me eyeing the outfit and wraps her arms tightly around herself.

“They took my clothes,” she says. “They had blood on them.”

“Let’s go ahead and get you out of here. My car is right outside. I can bring you home. Or are you hungry? We could grab something to eat and keep talking.”

I know this is probably the moment when I should be supportive and tell her we can talk about anything she wants, but I’m not in that place. If we’re talking, it’s going to be about this murder and how she ended up right in the crosshairs of the investigation.

She nods, and I assume that means she’s hungry. We go outside to my car, and I let her direct me to a tiny Indian restaurant tucked in the far corner of a strip mall. She walks inside like she’s been here a thousand times and heads directly for a table against the wall. A plastic sign in the middle of the table displays a QR code and the table number. Skye immediately fishes her phone out of the pocket of her sweatpants and holds it toward the sign.

“You order from here,” she explains. “You put in the table number, order, and pay, and they’ll bring the food here when it’s ready.”

“That’s… convenient,” I say.

She half shrugs. “It’s streamlined, I guess.”

We spend a few silent moments going through the menu and putting in our order. After a waiter appears at the table and leaves our drinks, I put the focus back on the case.

“When we were talking about Howard, you said this movie meant so much to him. That it was the most important thing he had ever done. Why is that?” I ask.

Her body sags as the breath leaves her lungs. Holding the glass tumbler of soda between her fingertips, she stares at the condensation rolling down the side as she twists the glass back and forth.

“Remember I said that the ranch we were filming on was used as a movie set a few years ago?” she asks.

“Yeah.”

“Blood Crop. It was the pet project of a director named Astor Barrett. He’s similar to Howard, just on a slightly bigger scale. That particular movie was something he had been talking about for years. When he could finally do it, it became his complete obsession. According to what Howard told me about the whole thing, that movie was Astor’s whole life. It was all that he thought about and talked about. He poured every bit of his time, energy, and resources into that movie. He thought it was going to be his big break.

“Unfortunately, things didn’t go exactly as he had planned. There was a lot of trouble on that set. It is actually low-key legendary among indie filmmakers and actors. He made all sorts of promises about the amenities that were going to be available to the cast and crew, how much everybody was going to get paid, everything. It sounded amazing. But when they actually showed up to start filming, it was nothing like they thought.

“They found out the pay was going to be cut down to next to nothing, and several of the actors were getting pressured to essentially sign contracts saying they weren’t going to accept any payment up front in exchange for a percentage of what the movie made once it earned out the investment. They were all sleeping in the main house, which had no electricity or running water. There was a portable toilet and an outdoor shower. They had a couple of generators. It just wasn’t what anybody thought it was going to be.

“Then they found out that Astor had actually bought the ranch where they were filming. He said he was going to rent it, but they found out that he had bought the entire thing, and that was why there wasn’t any money left to do the things he had promised. But that was only part of it. The main actor went missing while they were filming.”

“He went missing?” I ask. “What do you mean?”

“Just that. He went missing. He got into an argument with Astor about creative differences, and the whole thing escalated to the point that James Delaney quit the production. He was a big draw, even though he was known to be a bit hotheaded and egotistical. Astor was going to try to talk him down later, but when he went to talk to him after they finished filming for the night, James was gone.

“None of his stuff was there, so they figured he had just decided he wasn’t going to hang around and hear what the director had to say and left. A couple of days later, they found out that his car was still sitting at Astor’s house where he had left it when they went to the ranch. He hasn’t been seen or heard from since,” Skye says.

“And how long ago was this?”

“Ten years,” she says.

“I’m guessing that movie never saw the light of day,” I say.

“Actually, it did. You would think that with all the trouble they had, they would just call off production and try to move on, but that’s not what happened. Instead, Astor decided to capitalize on all the attention surrounding James going missing and release a modified version of the film. It wasn’t the story as he had originally envisioned it, but he was able to cobble together enough of the footage that James had already shot along with new scenes to have a movie. Of course, everybody knew what happened, and it developed a bit of a cult following.

“There have been a lot of rumors over the years about what could have happened to James. People have said that other people died on set but it wasn’t reported or that there was a serial killer in the area and he was a victim. All the mysterious things that would just appeal to the audience wanting films like this.”

“So what does any of that have to do with Howard?” I ask.

“Blood Crop was really successful for Astor, but it didn’t last. People were focused on the film itself and all the lore surrounding it, not really him. So he ended up fading into obscurity fairly quickly. He still does some stuff, but he could never really climb out from under the notoriety of that incident. Howard has been obsessed with that movie since it came out. He thinks it’s brilliant, and all the stories surrounding its production only made it more appealing to him. He said that from the very first time that he saw the movie, he knew that there was more to the story and it could continue into an entire film franchise.

“So that’s what he decided he was going to do. He was going to write the continuation of the story. Not a true sequel, but more a spiritual successor. And it was his absolute dream to film on the actual site the original was filmed on. He found out that after that project wrapped, Astor abandoned the site and never used it again. There have been people who have snuck in to do their own little things, but it is monitored.”

“If this… Bloody Crop was so important to Astor, why did he just walk away from the set and the possibility of continuing the story?”

“Nobody really knows. He took all the attention that he got from that movie and tried to put it into other projects, but he would never consider revisiting that story. And he never wanted to go back to the ranch. Howard assumed, like everybody else, that he sold it. If he wasn’t going to be using it, it didn’t make sense for him to hold on to it. But he found out that Astor still owns the ranch and has only given very few people permission to use parts of it. But no one has been allowed to access some areas, they are completely off-limits. Anybody who is going to be filming on the ranch has to have a representative from Astor’s inner circle. It’s been years since anything has been filmed there.

“Howard made it his mission to get close to Astor and convince him to let him take up the story and have full access to the ranch. He wanted to not only tell the story that Astor wanted to tell originally but continue it and expand on it, and also integrate some of the legends that have come up around it. It was a really lofty goal. He got wrapped up in looking into stories about the other deaths and trying to find out if people really did go missing from the cast or crew who were never reported. Finally, Astor got wind of him, and they started to communicate.

“Howard hadn’t meant it to happen that way, but he felt like that was a good sign. That if Astor was approaching him, he was more likely to go along with the plan. It took two years, but he finally got permission for his project. And now he’s dead.”

“Where is everybody who is involved in the movie? Did they leave?” I ask.

“No. The detective is in the area for the investigation. Some people are local and have others staying with them. I think a few are in a hotel. There was some talk about continuing the project as a memorial to Howard, but we’re not allowed to do anything until the police clear the set. And I guess, all of us.”

Our food arrives, and we wait for the server to top up our drinks and walk away before we continue the conversation.

“Is there anybody else who you can think of who we should be looking at? Anybody you can imagine wants to kill Howard?” I ask.

“No.”

“Why don’t I believe you?”

“Look, I don’t want to say anything and hang anybody out to dry. This is hell. This is more than I could ever have imagined. I have done plenty of work around crime documentaries and fictionalized murder. You would think that I would be more comfortable with it, but I’ve never been in a position where I have been forced to face it quite like this. Not even on the Lakyn Monroe series. That was completely different. I knew Howard. Really well. And I found his body. Now people are looking at me and thinking I could be capable of slitting his throat. Now that I have actually been in that moment, I can’t wrap my head around anybody being capable of something like that.

“There isn’t a single person on that set who I can genuinely say I think could kill him like that. But at the same time, somebody did. And as hard as it is for me to admit, there are a lot of people involved in this project who could have reason to want Howard Spade dead. I can tell you what I know, but there’s a lot more that you’ll have to hear from the people who have seen it.”

“Has anybody tracked down the director from the movie ten years ago?”

I finished eating with Skye and brought her back to her house before going and checking into my hotel. I only have my duffel bag I keep packed with me, but fortunately, it has everything that I need for at least a day or two. As I unpack, I talk to Noah on the phone.

“Astor Barrett?” he asks.

“Yeah. Skye told me about the movie that this project was based on, and it sounds like the director was pretty intense about his project. Even though he gave Howard permission to carry on the story and even use the ranch, he’s definitely someone I think we need to have a chat with.”

“I haven’t interviewed him. I got in touch with him, but he’s out of state right now. He has been for a few days.”

“And he can verify that?”

“He is traveling back to town and is willing to come in for a formal interview. I’m sure he’ll provide some sort of proof that he was where he says he was. Do you really think he could have something to do with this?

“Right now, I don’t have enough information to come up with any sort of explanation. All I know is that from what Skye told me, he could be someone who would be interested in creating more sensationalism and buzz around the project.”

“Did you get anything else from Skye?”

“I didn’t take a formal statement from her yet. I just let her tell me about the project and the stories from ten years ago. Apparently, there is a lot of lore and legend swirling around this particular movie and the ranch itself. I’m getting settled into my room right now, and I’m going to review the initial statements from everybody. Skye is getting in touch with everybody, and we’re going to meet up in the morning so I can talk to them,” I tell him.

“Let me know if there’s anything I can do,” he says.

“I will. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

Tossing my phone onto the nightstand, I go to the bathroom and take a hot shower. In my stretchy pajama pants and a T-shirt, I take the slim folder of notes Noah gave me and sit in the middle of the bed to go through them. I came into this early enough that not a lot of work has been done so far.

I’m glad to hear Noah has been in touch with Astor. If he’s out of state, it’s highly unlikely he had anything directly to do with the murder, even though his obsession with the project and fascination with the potential newfound buzz around it make him particularly interesting.

But he isn’t the only one. Eliminating him still leaves me with the other people involved with that project, as well as the friends of still-missing James Delaney, and an essentially endless list of people ravenously attached to Astor’s work and the mysteries surrounding the film. I wouldn’t put it past rabid fans to take things too far in their quest to revive the allure of the ill-fated project.

And then there are the other people Skye mentioned: the trail of disgruntled, angry actors and crew members Howard seemed to have left in his wake everywhere he went.

The stories about those people are at the forefront of the minds of everyone the next morning when I go to the house of one of the local actors. I’m the last to arrive. The driveway and the street in front of the house are cluttered with cars when I get there, and I have to park across the street. I ring the doorbell and knock, but nobody comes to answer it. I ring again before turning the doorknob. It’s unlocked, so I push the door open. I can hear layers of voices coming from the back of the house toward me. I step inside and call out to whoever is there.

“Hello?”

Skye’s face appears around the corner at the end of the hallway.

“Emma, you’re here. Come on back. Everybody is waiting for you.”

I walk down the hallway, and she meets me at the corner. She leads me through a kitchen and living room to a short flight of steps leading down to a partial level comprised seemingly entirely of a single room. The people filling it are as varied as the mismatched furniture scattered around the room.

Conversations stop when I step off the last stair onto the oatmeal-colored carpeting. Everyone turns to look at me.

“Everybody, this is Emma Griffin. She’s with the FBI. She is looking into Howard’s murder.”

“Hi,” I say. “Thank you, everybody, for being willing to speak with me this morning. I’m sorry for what you’re all going through. I know it’s a lot, and I’m going to try to make this as easy for all of you as possible. But I’m gonna tell you the same thing that I told Skye. I’m not going to sugarcoat anything. It’s really important that all of you be completely honest with me. I might ask you questions that are going to make you uncomfortable, and you might feel like something that you’re gonna say will make you sound bad.

“That happens. I need you to answer everything to the best of your ability. Don’t try to frame it in any way that you think I want to hear. Don’t try to cover anything up or justify anything. Just answer my questions and help me understand what’s going on. And in exchange, I will do everything I can to find out what happened to Howard,” I say.

“Are the rest of us safe?” a man asks. “I mean, maybe this wasn’t about Howard. Maybe it’s the project and all of us are in danger.”

“That’s David Richards,” Skye tells me. “He was involved in the original Blood Crop.”

“With Astor Barrett?”

“Yeah,” David says. “And I’m having a pretty unpleasant trip down memory lane at this point.”

“I can understand that. I wish I could give you more solid reassurance, but the truth is, we don’t know what exactly is behind the murder, so I can’t tell you that the rest of you aren’t in danger. That doesn’t mean that you need to panic. There haven’t been any other threats or any other indication that this murder meant anything beyond targeting Howard. Of course, if any other evidence comes up to the contrary, we’ll deal with that immediately. But for right now, I will give you the same kind of warning I would give anyone in close proximity to a murder.

“Be aware of your surroundings. Follow common sense safety measures. Try not to be alone at night anywhere that isn’t fully secure, and trust your instincts. If something seems off, or you feel like you could be in some sort of danger, leave the situation and get in touch with me. Again, though, there is no need for you to feel like you need to change your regular lifestyle drastically because of this. Is there anyone else who was directly involved in the original project ten years ago?”

A few hands go up.

“Howard wanted to honor the first film and inject some extra authenticity into it,” a woman says. “He got in touch with as many of the original cast and crew as he could to ask if we’d be willing to be a part of it. Most people were doing other things or got out of the industry altogether. These are the ones he could get. Except for Curtis.”

“Curtis,” I say. “That is who found you with Howard, right?

I remember the name from when Skye was describing discovering Howard’s body and then being found.

She swallows, obviously not wanting to think about that moment. “Right. He’s a camera operator. He worked on Blood Crop too. He didn’t want to be here today. Perfect. He wouldn’t even answer the phone when I called him. He did send me a message, and it said that he would be willing to speak with you individually, but he wasn’t going to come here. I have a feeling he is not happy about the fact that I am not in jail,” she says.

“That’s fine. I’ll talk to him another time.”

She nods and gestures to the woman who was just talking. “This is Maria. She was in the cast of Blood Crop. That is Lynette, she is a writer and script supervisor. Grant over there is also an actor. This is his house. The rest of us are new to the project.”

She goes through and introduces me to each of the people gathered in the room.

“It’s good to meet all of you. I want to sit down with each of you individually and talk about what happened. I need to find out where everybody was and exactly what you saw and experienced leading up to Howard being discovered and after. This doesn’t mean I am suspicious of you or anybody has said anything about you. I am just trying to put together a clear picture of what was happening at the time. Sounds good?”

A chorus of nods greets me.

“Okay, let’s get started.”

I fill pages of my notebook with notes about what each of the people tell me. The first few conversations I have don’t give me much insight. A couple of them weren’t even on set the night that Howard was found, and they could easily show me where they were with social media posts and time-stamped pictures. One of them, Dara, gives me an interesting insight as she is putting away her phone.

“One thing I was surprised about when I showed up on set was seeing Maria,” she says.

“Why is that?”

She looks like she’s thinking, trying to carefully put together the right words to express her meaning.

“After everything that happened with Blood Crop, Maria’s name was mentioned pretty often as somebody who had had a lot of difficulty with the whole process. It was her first real role, and she was very young… very wide-eyed and innocent, I guess you would say. And that is not the type of movie that these are. I don’t know how familiar you are with horror, but it isn’t family-friendly, so to speak.”

“I’m familiar,” I say. “Not necessarily with small independent films, but I know the horror genre well.”

Just saying it makes my mind drift back to Friday, August 13, not long ago when what was meant to be a fun horror movie marathon with Xavier and Dean became a fight for my life.

“Well, the independent films tend to lean even further into those… more explicit themes. It’s just to be expected.”

“And Maria wasn’t prepared for that?” I ask.

“I think she knew what she was getting into in terms of what it meant to be an actress in one of these movies. She was over eighteen, and the few bits of footage of her that did make it into the final cut had nudity. She knew that aspect of it. But according to whispers swirling around after James Delaney went missing and the project changed, she was really shaken up by the whole experience. She didn’t get along with Astor very well, and she felt like she was being pushed more than she was comfortable with right off the bat. Then when James disappeared, it really messed with her.

“After that, she kind of disappeared. She hasn’t been in anything else. She wasn’t involved in any of the promotion. Never went to any of the conventions or appearances. Not that there was a ton of that. But when the movie came out, there was a lot going on, and she never wanted to be a part of any of it. I figured that was it for her. That one experience was enough to put her off any dreams of being in the movies. At least this type of movie. But then when I got here, there she was.”

Taking those words with me, I go over to Maria where she is sitting near the sliding glass doors of the walkout. She has a book in her lap and isn’t paying attention to anything else happening in the room around her.

“Maria?”

She looks up at me. “Hi.”

“Hey. Sorry to interrupt your reading. Is it good?”

She looks at the book in her hands. “Oh, it’s okay. I always have a book with me. Yeah, it’s pretty good. Haven’t gotten too far into it, but it’s interesting.”

She shows me the cover. It shows a woman running into the woods, her hair flowing behind her and an ominous shadow on the ground at her feet.

“I’m guessing it isn’t a romance,” I say.

A smile jumps at the corners of her lips. “No, not exactly. Not unless you consider unwavering obsession and stalking romance.”

“I do not.” I point at the patio just beyond the glass doors. “There’s a lot going on in here. Would you mind talking outside so I can get some fresh air?”

“Sure.”

She stands and opens the doors. There’s a familiarity to the gesture, like she’s done it many times before. I remember Skye mentioned this house belongs to Grant, who was also on the first film. Maria might not have stayed very involved with the project itself, but it seems she might have kept up with at least one of her former associates.

A set of patio furniture sits in a pool of sunlight on the cement slab, and I sit down, tilting my head back to get a moment of warmth on my skin. Spring is decidedly here, and I’m soaking every bit of it in before it gets too hot and I have to retreat into the air-conditioning until fall.

Maria sits beside me, reaching up to adjust an umbrella that sits askew so that it covers her.

“I burn easily,” she explains.

“I won’t keep you out here too long,” I tell her. “You were on set when Howard was found, right?”

“I was. We were supposed to be filming my first scene later in the night. I got there early so I could hang out with everybody and get into the mindset a bit. But things were already really chaotic when I arrived.”

“What was going on?” I ask.

“It was just a mess. Everybody was arguing. There were problems in the house and with some of the set pieces. New props were added to one of the sets and were getting in the way of one of the shots, but Howard was adamant about using them. They were from the original film’s prop collection, and he wanted them in there as an homage. People were shouting at each other, and two actresses decided to leave. They are totally accounted for, by the way. Howard was shouting after them when they drove off, and they posted a live video from a concert in town that night. They were surrounded by a few thousand of their nearest and dearest at the time Howard was murdered.”

“What did you do?” I ask.

“Well, I was already there, so I figured I’d settle in. I wasn’t involved in any of the arguments or anything, so there was no point in trying to stick myself in. I haven’t been on the ranch in ten years, so I took some time to look around. I put my stuff in the same room I was in back then. That was kind of nice.”

I take note of this but let her keep talking.

“Anyway, everybody decided to take a break and just not do anything until the next set of scenes, which was supposed to be in a few hours. I hung out with the other originals for a while. Lynette, Grant, David. I’ve kept up with Grant the most out of all of them and haven’t really talked to the others in years, so it was good to kind of catch up and see what everybody had been up to. Then I did some reading before starting to get ready. Reading helps me focus.”

“The same book?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “Oh no. It was a different series. I finished up the last of that writer and got a recommendation that this one is similar, so I figured I’d give him a whirl. I can see why people would like both of them, but I like the older stuff better.”

“After you got ready, what did you do?” I ask.

“Well, I got in my costume and started my hair and makeup, but I needed some help, so I went looking for the stylist. That was definitely not something we had back in the day, so it was kind of exciting. Anyway, I went looking for her but couldn’t find her. When I finally did, she was looking for Howard. That’s when I found out everybody was looking for Howard. No one could find him, and we were supposed to get started in half an hour. Everybody started searching and trying to call him. The reception on the ranch is terrible, so I wasn’t surprised they couldn’t get through. We split up and started searching everywhere.”

“Where did you go?” I ask.

“I stayed around the main house. I’m not familiar with the ranch and was honestly a little freaked out about the idea of walking around there that late. I guess I still have James on my mind.”

“I’m actually glad you mentioned that. I’ve heard your time on the original project, especially James’s disappearance, was really hard on you and you haven’t really done anything since. What made you decide to come back to do this?” I ask.

“I guess I wanted to face it head-on,” she says. “I don’t know if that makes any sense. That whole experience really got to me. I was really young and overwhelmed. It was just a lot, and I needed to separate myself from it completely after it all happened. I didn’t want to be associated with it at all. Part of me felt like I was always going to be marked by that experience. Like people would hear that I was the topless girl from Blood Crop, and that would be all that mattered. It was actually really reassuring when I talked to Skye about coming back and doing this project.”

“She was the one who contacted you about being a part of it? Not Howard?”

“Right. I talked to Howard after I agreed to hear more about the project. She told me all about her experience and how good it felt to get back on the horse, so to speak. And I guess you probably already know that my career went nowhere. I was afraid to really jump back in and try anything again. This was my chance to have that redemption, I guess.”

This sounds good, but it isn’t exactly what Dara told me. I decide to push her a little bit further.

“How was your experience on that first film? Other than James going missing? You said you were overwhelmed, but was there a particular reason?”

“It was just a lot. I had never really done anything like that before, and I didn’t really know what to expect. The accommodations and conditions we were in were a lot to try to deal with. The tension was really high, and there was a lot of conflict. It was pretty exhausting.”

“Are you sure there wasn’t anything else?”

Maria looks wary. “What do you mean?”

“I get the impression that there were conditions on the set that might have impacted you more than other people and that you had a very difficult time with them. Possibly having to do with Astor.”

“He paid a lot more attention to me than he did the other actresses. Nothing ever happened. Isn’t anything new.”

“Are you referring to Howard?”

“It’s really easy now that he’s dead for people to focus on his creativity and vision. Or even the depth of his obsession with this project. But the truth is, Howard Spade had very few people in his life who were loyal to him. Those who were, he kept close and tight. But it wasn’t because there was something particularly special about those people. It was because they were the ones who didn’t leave. There are a lot of people mourning the loss of their favorite director and sad about the fact that there won’t be any more of his films. But to be real, there are also a lot of people who didn’t blink an eye when they heard he was dead. Maybe even some that are happy about it. What I went through with Astor was nothing compared to the stories I’ve heard about Howard Spade.”

“But you were willing to work with him?” I ask.

“I’ve learned to stand up for myself. I can hold my own now. I’m not a year out of high school and unsure how the real world works. I wasn’t afraid of Howard Spade. And I’ve also reached the point in my life where I wasn’t afraid to turn my back either. If anything had happened, I was more than willing to walk away.”

“Do you know if there’s anybody else involved in this project who might not have been so understanding?” I ask.

“Agent Griffin?”

I look up and see Lynette standing at the open sliding glass door.

“Yes?”

“I’m really sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt, but I have something I’ve got to get to. I don’t want to leave without having a chance to talk to you.”

“Okay. Give me just one second.” I look at Maria. “One more question. Where were you when you heard about Howard?”

“I was in the backyard. I’d already looked around the house and some of the surrounding area. Like I said, I wasn’t comfortable with the whole grounds and didn’t want to just wander away. I figured there were a lot of other people looking for him and that they’d find him eventually. I was just going to stay there and look over the script, make sure that I was ready for when he finally showed up and we could get started.

“I heard shouting from somewhere in the woods, and then Curtis came running back up to the house. He was yelling about Howard and Skye. It was really hard to understand him. A bunch of other people came toward him, and finally, he settled down enough to tell us what happened.”

“Okay, thank you.”

She gets up and goes back inside. Lynette swaps places with her, coming over and sitting down in the chair beside me. She looks at me for a second, then reaches up to adjust the umbrella again so that the shade falls over my face as well.

“I’m sorry to rush you. I just have to meet my boyfriend. We’re looking at buying our first house and had made an appointment with a real estate agent before you asked us all to get together,” she says.

I smile. “Not a problem. I appreciate you coming and hanging out. Congratulations on the house, by the way.”

“Well, we don’t have one yet. But fingers crossed.”

“I’ll make this as fast as I can. You were on the original project?”

“Yes, I helped with writing and also just kind of in general doing stuff for Astor. Despite his magnificent claims to the contrary, he didn’t have the funding to have as many people on his crew as he wanted, so a lot of us were double dipping.”

“And when you heard about this project, was it something that immediately interested you? Or did you need some convincing?” I ask.

“I needed some convincing, to be honest. It wasn’t that I wasn’t excited about the possibility of working on this story again. It’s great material. I just didn’t want to get wrapped up in all of the craziness surrounding that project again. I didn’t want this to become a publicity stunt. I mean, I understand that part of the draw of doing it was for the built-in audience, but I wanted to make sure that the project stood on its own. I wanted it to be its own creative endeavor that wasn’t going to rely too much on super-contrived plotting or derivative details. I wanted to be a part of something that was going to nod to the original but also be very much its own thing. I honestly wasn’t sure that was going to happen when people first started talking about it.”

“So you heard about the project before Howard approached you?” I ask.

“I heard about the possibility of it, yeah. It wasn’t really a secret that Howard had an obsession with Blood Crop. It kind of made up a big part of his personality. There had been whispers and rumors for years about him wanting to do something with it and actually use the ranch. I heard that something was actually happening maybe six months ago. But it was a little while after that that Skye reached out to me and asked if I would be interested in it. She talked me through my concerns. I told her I needed some time to think about it.

“I wasn’t exactly thrilled at the prospect of working with Howard, but then he got in touch with me personally and managed to convince me that I should step in. He made it sound like I would be an important part of making sure that the original project was properly honored and that the story was told in the best, most effective way possible. He certainly knew how to appeal to the ego and sensitivities of a writer.” She lets out a little bit of a laugh, but the expression on her face turns somber almost as soon as the sound passes her lips.

“You said you weren’t thrilled at the idea of working with Howard. Is that because of his reputation?”

“You heard about that?”

“Well, I heard some. It sounds like he wasn’t the most sensitive to the women in his projects,” I say.

“Honestly, that’s just the beginning of it. He was a misogynist. Let’s just say that most of the women he could get on his films went through the casting couch. Not every one, but a lot of them. And wearing as little clothing as he could convince them to wear. He was handsy and quick to dole out big hugs whether they were wanted or not. I can’t say this with absolute authority because I don’t really know, but rumor has it he liked to take a lot of extra footage of the women during particular scenes and just keep it for himself.

“But again, that wasn’t all. A lot of professionals in the industry had bad things to say about him. Depending on who you listen to, he was dishonest and manipulative with his investors. He’d get into disputes with people who said he ripped them off or stole their story ideas. He’d make sure he got everything he wanted out of projects but never hesitated to accept young talents willing to work without pay because he convinced them he could get them to the top of their career. People were willing to work with him because he did produce popular stuff and was always working on something. But he was very rarely, if ever, a first pick.”

“What do you remember about the night he died?”

She tells me essentially the same thing that everybody else has. Conflict and upheaval on the set. Everybody decided to take a break and wait for the right time to get started filming again. Discovering Howard was missing.

“I had been talking with Maria. I remember her being so sweet during the first movie, and I just wanted to catch up with her. We talked to Grant a bit. Then my boyfriend called. It’s almost impossible to get reception out there on the ranch, so when it actually works, you take it. He’s an early-to-bed type of guy, so he was calling to say good night. It was actually kind of embarrassing.”

“Why would it be embarrassing?”

“Because he is a bit of a show-off himself and decided to burst into song and serenade me. He was so loud I knew everybody could hear it, and then I caught David recording me. He was running around taking some footage to put up on the social media page for the movie and just happened to pick up a good chunk of my boyfriend’s song.

“After I spent a little while chasing David around, trying to convince him to delete it, he went off to get ready to film, and I went over scripts for the night and the next couple of days of shooting. It wasn’t long after that that we realized we couldn’t find Howard,” she says.

“Where did you look for him?”

“I stayed around the main house at first. I looked in all the rooms, hoping that maybe he was just taking a nap or something and couldn’t hear us. But then I couldn’t find him. Grant and I looked in the area surrounding the house for a little bit and then went out into some of the old fields. We ended up kind of losing track of each other, and I made it all the way out to the lodge. We didn’t have any plans for filming out there, but I thought that maybe he had changed his mind or was coming up with some alternatives, so I figured I might as well look around. The lodge itself was locked, but I looked through the windows anyway.

“My flashlight was dying, so I headed back to the main house. By the time I got there, Curtis was telling everybody about Howard, and just a few minutes later, the police showed up.”

“What did you think when you heard that the police were looking for Skye?”

“Shocked, but also not.”

“Why?”

“I felt like I had gotten to know her at least a little bit, and it just blew my mind to think that she might be capable of doing something that gruesome. But also… things weren’t good between the two of them, and the last time I heard them having a conversation, it wasn’t talking—it was screaming.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that you had an argument with Howard the day he was murdered?” I ask Skye the moment she steps into my hotel room.

Her shoulders tense, and she hesitates before turning around to look at me. “Because I knew that it would just make me look worse.”

“What did I say about you being honest with me? Do you not understand how serious this situation is?”

“Of course I do.”

“Then you need to stop lying to me. I vouched for you with the detective. You already look very guilty, and when it comes out that you’ve been lying about your last interaction with the murder victim, you’re going to look even worse. Remember how we talked about people lying and that’s why nobody is trusted? Now you look like that is exactly what you’ve been doing,” I say.

“But it’s not. I didn’t kill him. Yes, we had an argument. And to anyone listening, it probably sounded really intense. That’s all it was. An argument.”

“Then tell me about it. Tell me everything that happened that day. And this time, you need to tell me the truth. Don’t make anything up, and don’t leave anything out.”

Skye walks over to the table next to the window and sits down. She looks out at the slow drizzle that started just after I left Grant’s house.

“I told you I’ve known Howard for a couple of years. And when I first met him, I was in a really bad place. In my life, emotionally, everything. I needed some validation. I needed something to tell me that I was going to accomplish something. That I could still be a part of something that mattered. At that point, I didn’t really care what it was. If I could just get my foot back in the door, I would get somewhere. So I made some bad decisions,” she says.

“What kind of bad decisions?” I ask.

I feel like I already know. I can still hear Lynette’s words in my head.

“I told him that my main focus was behind the camera. Production assistant. Set dressing. Even special effects makeup. I’ve done a little bit of everything, and that was what I figured I would continue doing for him. But he mentioned that I might enjoy actually being on screen. This wasn’t something I even thought about when I approached him. I had been told far too many times that I was not a performer. That I wasn’t the right type to act. And you know what that means. When people tell a woman that she isn’t made to be on-screen, all they’re really saying is she is unattractive. Essentially, I was too ugly to do anything where people would actually see me.

“But Howard didn’t make me feel that way. He told me I would be perfect and that he would show me just how incredible I could look in one of his movies. He ended up taking pictures of me doing what he called an ‘audition’.” She says the last word with a particular note of disgust.

“Were you topless?” I ask.

“And more. Honestly, I never thought that I would do something like that. It was just never me. I mean, I don’t judge anyone who does it. I’ve just never been comfortable with it. I look back on that now, and I honestly don’t know how he convinced me to do it. I don’t know how he managed to put me in a position where I was willing to not only strip down in front of him but let him take pictures of me.

“I do remember him telling me that I didn’t need to worry about it because he was the only person who was ever going to see the pictures. And he didn’t even intend on them staying on his camera. He was only taking the pictures so that I could see what I looked like. He wanted me to appreciate myself. He made it sound like as soon as we were done, he was going to delete everything and it was just an exercise.

“After that, I didn’t end up auditioning for any of his projects as an actress for a little while. I just worked behind the scenes like I always did. But then I decided to go ahead and try. And I had fun. Anyway, none of that actually matters. I’m just stalling. Because I don’t wanna tell you.

“I don’t want to sit here and tell you that the day before he was murdered I found out that not only did he keep the pictures that he took of me, he also had been taking videos. And he had all of it. He had been sharing them with potential investors and other creators.

“As you can imagine, I was furious. I couldn’t believe that he would do something like that. And then I felt like an absolute idiot for not thinking that he would do something like that when I had heard countless times over the years that he did. So I went to confront him. I told him that I knew he had the pictures and that he was showing them to other people. I demanded that he show me every copy he had and destroy them. And he laughed at me. He told me I would never have gotten anywhere if it weren’t for him. At that moment, he completely deleted everything I had ever done before I met him. Like it had never existed.

“He told me I had agreed to take the pictures, so he had every right to have them and do whatever he wanted to with them. I was of age, so I couldn’t put that on him. I was a consenting adult who had modeled for him, and he was perfectly happy to tell and show anybody he wanted. But he would be willing to rethink that particular collection of pictures if I would make something special just for him. And maybe some videos with him as my costar.”

“He propositioned you,” I say.

“Yes, he did. And he promised that if I went along with it, he would even sign a legal document saying he would destroy all evidence of my former pictures and videos and that nothing I made for him after that would be shared with anybody else. He thought that was a great negotiation and I should feel special to be chosen like that. And that’s what got me really mad. Things got really heated, and I know I was screaming at him loud enough that people probably heard.”

“Did you threaten him at any point?” I ask.

“Honestly, I don’t remember. I was so angry at that point that my mind basically went blank. I was just screaming whatever came out of my mouth. Probably. But it was just because I was angry. And scared. I didn’t want other people seeing any of that. And I definitely wasn’t going to sleep with him so that he wouldn’t show anybody. I didn’t actually mean any of it,” she tells me.

“How did the argument end? Because you were still on the set the day he was murdered. So it seems that things straightened out between the two of you.”

“If you’re asking whether I changed my mind and went along with his proposal, no, I didn’t. I eventually told him I would think about it just so that I could get out of that room and feel like everything was kind of on pause for a bit. I felt like maybe if he thought that I was genuinely asking for some time to think it through, he wouldn’t do anything rash. He said I could think about it until the next day, and that was it. That’s where the conversation ended. And that’s the last time I spoke to him outside of a group setting.”

“Is there anything else?” I ask.

“No,” she says. “That’s it.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. That’s it. We argued, but then I walked away. I wasn’t alone in a room with him again until I found his body.”

“And you are being honest with me when you tell me that you had no reason to know that he was going to be in that cabin? He didn’t mention it to you, he didn’t suggest it as some sort of meeting spot? It’s not where you were supposed to get together and talk about what was going on?” I ask.

“No, none of that. I had no idea he was at the cabin other than just thinking about the places where he might have gone on the ranch. Since all the most obvious places had already been checked, I was just expanding the search. And because we were thinking about shooting some scenes there later in the movie, it came to mind..

“Grant looked through the stables and the barn. Lynette went all the way out to the lodge. We were all just trying to figure out where he was so that we could get back on schedule. No one was even really worried about him, I would say.”

“All right,” I say. “There was something else I wanted to ask you about. Several of the people I talked to mentioned all the stories surrounding the original movie. I know you mentioned that to me too. That there were deaths? People saying that James wasn’t the only one to go missing? What is that all about?”

“I don’t know all the details about it. I was never wrapped up in all this. Like I said, I didn’t even get into the whole independent horror scene until just a few years ago. I got more familiar with it over time, and I know that there are a lot of urban legends about the movie. Somehow the urban legends and internet stories made people connect James’s disappearance to other disappearances and murders happening around the same time.

“I’ve seen comments like, supposedly an actress also on the movie disappeared too. She was never mentioned by anybody because everybody thought she just left during the first couple of days of filming, but actually she was murdered and hidden somewhere on the ranch. Or sometimes they say there was serial killer active in the area at the time, and James was killed by him, along with a bunch of other people who were either buried or burned on the ranch.

“But I always figured that was just people exaggerating or making stuff up online. It just adds to the allure of the whole thing. People love conspiracy. They love creepy, morbid stories that seem completely outlandish but they are willing to believe,” Skye says.

After Skye leaves, I call Sam to check in about the excavation.

“They didn’t get a lot done yesterday,” he reports. “The people representing the historic interests of the park are really uncomfortable with all this going on. Obviously, they understand how important it is to find out what was going on in that burn pile and if it has anything to do with Mike Morris, but they are really worried about the damage it could do.

“Apparently, in that area is potential evidence of past settlements there. They’ve located a couple of really small artifacts and some documents that might have historical value. There was possibly a homestead, maybe even a church there once. So they made it a huge pain to conduct the grid search. It definitely seemed like a couple of them were more than happy to just let the burn pit remain a mystery for now because they don’t want to interrupt their research. They’re at it now, so hopefully, you’ll get more of an update from somebody. Sorry I couldn’t tell you any more.”

“No, it’s fine. I knew it was going to be pretty slow going considering the area that the burn pit was found in. I guess I was just hoping for something big.”

“Like what?”

“Like something that will conclusively confirm whose bone fragments are in that pit. Something that would confirm death.”

I haven’t told him the pervasive thoughts that have been distracting me, keeping me up at night. I don’t want to put voice to it yet. Not until I know more. But there are things I can’t find for myself, steps in an investigation I have to rely on other people to do, and that drives me crazy. No matter how much progress I’ve made and how hard I try to be comfortable as a member of a team, I will always want to be independent. I will always wish I could do everything on my own.

“Aren’t you supposed to not be thinking about the Game Master case right now?” Sam asks. “I thought that was the whole point of you deciding to stay and help Noah. With Eric and the IT team dealing with Denise Stein and the excavation still going on, you need to give your brain a break from all of it. You have to wait for those results.”

“I know, and I keep telling myself that.”

“How about what’s going on there? Did you get a chance to talk to everybody who was on the set?”

“I did. Not everybody actually. Curtis, the camera operator who found Skye in the cabin with the body, decided not to come and meet me with everybody else. I think he is uncomfortable being with Skye. I’m going to try to meet up with him tomorrow.”

I tell him what I found out about Howard and the corroboration I got from the crew about each other.

“David even showed me the video Lynette was telling me about. It showed a lot of the people around the house.”

“But that happened before any of them knew Howard was missing, right? While they were still waiting for the time of the filming to start?”

“Yeah, but not too long before,” I say.

“What about the medical examiner’s findings? Shouldn’t that give some indication of how long he had been dead?” Sam asks.

“Rigor hadn’t set in yet, but some of the blood was starting to congeal. Which means he hadn’t just died when Curtis found Skye there.”

“Shouldn’t that clear her then?” Sam asks. “If the crux of their entire argument is that she was over the body with the weapon because she had just killed him, shouldn’t the scientific fact that he had been dead for a while show that isn’t what happened?”

“I mean, yes, it does show that she hadn’t just pulled the knife off his throat. But the problem with all this is that there was time to be accounted for when Curtis ran back to the house and explained to everybody what was going on, then they had to get in touch with emergency services, wait for them to get there, then lead them to the body. All that time adds up too. Besides, Skye was right there with the body and had blood all over her. She also had the weapon in her hand. According to the logic of the investigation, she got the blood on her when she killed him, left, then changed her mind and came back to get the weapon. That’s when, according to them, Curtis found her.

“The problem is, there’s no way to verify any of this. There aren’t cameras out there. Howard wasn’t wearing a fitness tracker that could detect when his heart stopped beating. There are so many questions, and even though it is a slim window, it’s enough to create a lot of ambiguity. I’m going to the ranch a little later to look around. Since I’m not officially on this case and it is technically under Noah’s jurisdiction, he has to be there with me.”

“That makes me feel better,” Sam says.

“I’m sure it does,” I say with a sigh. “But he’s involved in another murder investigation right now, and so I have to wait until later so he can come with me.”

“What are you going to do until then?

“A lot of people are really fixated on all the urban legends and stories that are surrounding this ranch. It isn’t just an old, abandoned movie set. It is the center of a bunch of stories about people getting killed or going missing. I don’t know how many of them are directly related to the movie and the actor going missing or how many existed beforehand. I’m not even sure why the ranch itself was chosen as the place to film the original movie. So I have to figure all that out. I need to know what these stories are, how many of them are anchored in some sort of reality, and if any of it means anything.”

“I’m sure you will. I’m meeting with those donors tonight about the campaign. Wish me luck.”

“You don’t need luck. Sherwood is going to be so lucky to have you as mayor.”

“Not as lucky as I am to be your husband,” he cracks.

“Shut up,” I say. “Love you.”

“Love you too.”

Before taking out my computer, I bring all the notes that I wrote down while talking to the cast and crew of the movie. Spreading them out across the table, I start trying to find similar threads. If I can condense the stories that each one of these people told me they’ve heard, it will make it easier for me to do research into how many of them have some thread of truth.

When I’m done distilling everything I’ve been told into a few basic stories, I open my computer and start my research. By the time Noah calls me to let me know that he is going to come by to pick me up from the hotel in five minutes, I am deep in the mythos of the project and the ranch itself. I scoop up all the papers I have on the table, stuff them into my bag, and go downstairs to meet Noah.

“What’s all that?” he asks when I pull the papers into my lap as he drives out of the parking lot.

“How long a drive is it to the ranch?” I ask.

“About forty-five minutes,” he says.

“Good. That will give me time to explain all this to you.”

I don’t even realize how long I’ve been talking until the tires crunch over the gravel of the driveway leading up to the entrance of the ranch. I’ve explained almost everything that I found out in my research. Noah’s forehead is furrowed with concentration, listening to it all without the benefit of seeing the notes I’ve written.

“It turns out there are at least two murders that happened in the area around the same time as Blood Crop was being filmed. Both were young men right around the same age as James Delaney and of a similar description. They were both found along rarely used roads within half a mile of the ranch. There is also the question that the mysterious actress—whom nobody can pinpoint but everybody believes was murdered rather than actually left the set—existed at all.

“In the brief conversation I had with Astor, he told me that there was an actress who was supposed to play a fairly small role but showed up on set on the first day expecting a much bigger and much more important role. She ended up leaving before a lot of the rest even showed up. He only knew her by the stage name she had chosen: Jillian Renee. Since she had agreed to being paid under the table, he hadn’t had her fill out a contract, so there was no need for him to see her ID or any other proof of her legal name. She only filled out a brief application that included her preferred name for the credits, her weight and measurements, and her previous acting experience, where she wrote down ‘High school plays and some independent films.’ Literally those words. No specifics. No references.

“That scrap of personal information was all Astor had to offer when a woman around her age named Danielle Fox was reported missing a couple of weeks later. Because Danielle only had scant interaction with her family on a regular basis, they hadn’t realized she was missing until her landlord called to let them know that she hadn’t paid her rent and was going to be evicted.”

“But what led them to Astor?” Noah asks. “If he didn’t even know this girl’s name, why would they think he could have had anything to do with her going missing?”

“The last anybody heard of what Danielle was doing, she said that she had finally gotten an opportunity to be a star and people were going to see her name in lights. Her father had heard about the production being done at the ranch and contacted the police. The police then contacted Astor and asked about this girl. Unfortunately, there aren’t really any answers. It just gets weirder from there. They showed him a picture of the girl who was missing, and he said it didn’t look anything like the girl who had been on the set. He told them her stage name, and they said that didn’t sound familiar to them at all. But Danielle’s mother said the handwriting on the information form looked like her daughter’s, but the father said he had a video call with her the day after Astor said she left, and not only was she perfectly calm and happy, but she looked exactly like the picture. Her hair wasn’t different. Nothing.”

“And while he was doing the video call, he didn’t ask Danielle where she was or what she was doing?” Noah asks.

“He did. But she didn’t want to tell him. She said that it was all a surprise and she would tell them as soon as she could share more details. He said that she didn’t seem upset at all. Nothing was bothering her, and she was still talking about this opportunity. If she was Jillian Renee, why would she still talk to her father about it like it was something she was doing?”

“Maybe she was planning on going back?” Noah asks.

“I really doubt it. Astor made it pretty clear that the parting between them was not amicable. There was no open door available to her. I guess it’s possible she was embarrassed because she made a big deal out of this and then it didn’t happen.

“But ultimately, she never showed up again. Not on set. Not at home. She was just gone. Then several days after she went missing, Astor got an email from Jillian demanding compensation for her travel and wasted time. A week or two after that, Danielle was supposedly seen hiking on the Appalachian Trail. Somebody even took a picture of her because they stopped and had lunch together. It was not a great picture, and the girl who could be her was wearing dark sunglasses and had her hair up. But it definitely looked like her.”

“Is that something that her parents said she would do? Would she just run off and decide to hike across several states?” he asks.

“They didn’t really have an answer for that. The best they could do was say that she was sometimes impulsive and had made some very sudden decisions in her past. Since then, Astor has gotten three more emails from that actress. They’re all under that stage name, and none of them give any indication of where she is or what’s going on in her life. They also don’t mention the fact that anybody thinks she’s missing. By now, it would be really clear that Danielle was considered a missing person. Her picture has been up on the news. She’s on missing persons databases. There’s even a Facebook page dedicated to finding her. If Jillian was also Danielle, why wouldn’t she have come forward?”

“But neither one of those stories seems to have anything to do with a girl getting murdered and disposed of on the ranch. Jillian clearly hasn’t been murdered because she keeps emailing. The missing woman was seen well after,” Noah points out.

“But do we know that for sure?” I ask.

“What do you mean?”

“No one even knows who Jillian Renee actually was. Nobody else who was involved in the project and I spoke with met her. They didn’t hear about anything other than a part being cut out of the movie. So who’s to say it’s actually her emailing him?

“As for Danielle, no one can absolutely confirm that they have seen her. There’s that one picture that her parents are clinging to saying that it was her. But they aren’t sure, and she hasn’t made any contact in ten years. So maybe they aren’t the same person. Maybe they are. Maybe they just wanted to start a new life. And maybe something horrible happened. We don’t know.”

We’re parked in front of the large, old house at the front of the ranch. He looks over my notes about the killings supposedly hidden on the ranch that I haven’t connected with any reported crimes in the area. I’m pretty sure they are just stories, but the others have made me very curious.

The door to the house opens, and Skye steps out onto the porch. She cups her hand over her eyes to cut the glare from the sun trying to come through the still-dark clouds. She seems to confirm that it is us sitting in the car and waves.

“So what does all this mean?” he asks.

“I don’t know. All I can tell you is that there are stories about this place stretching back well before Astor bought it. It seems like a strong possibility he bought it because of those stories. It fit with the story he wanted to tell with his film, and there was a certain eeriness about it. And it’s just grown from there. Now there is still one missing person and one confirmed murder. You’ve been around long enough to know what I’m going to say next.”

“You don’t believe it’s a coincidence.”

I get out of the car and walk around to Skye.

“You remember Detective White,” I say.

Skye makes a sound that says she definitely remembers him and isn’t particularly thrilled about him being here at this moment. Considering that the last interaction she had with him was him determining whether he was going to keep her overnight in jail, I can’t really say that I blame her.

“Who’s all here?” I ask.

“Just a couple of people. David. Dara. Lynette still has a couple of things here and said that she might come by to get them later, but I don’t know if she’s going to or not. Did you ever manage to talk to Curtis?”

“I got a message from him. We couldn’t find a good time to meet up. So I told him I was coming here this evening, and he said he could meet me here.”

“Does he know I’m here?”

“It didn’t come up,” I say. “But I’m not really concerned about that. We are here to run an investigation. We are operating on the intentional belief that you aren’t involved in the murder of Howard Spade. And that’s how we’re going to treat you. And it’s how everybody else should treat you. If he has some pressing reason for believing otherwise, then he needs to talk to me about that. But I don’t conduct my investigations around people’s personal conflicts. At this point, what’s going on between the two of you is like kids avoiding each other on the playground, and we need to leave that behind.”

Skye swallows my harsh words. “Where do you want to start?”

I look at the house looming in front of me. The decades have worn it down to make it softer and more rounded than I imagine it would’ve looked when this place was first built many decades ago. This would be where the family who owned the property would have lived. The sprawling layout of the house could point to a large family filling up the multiple bedrooms, but it could also just be to show off the exceptional wealth they had amassed.

I want to go inside. So many of the stories that I’ve heard about both the original movie and this one have centered around this house. I will go in later. I’m not here to indulge my morbid curiosity. I’m here to find out what happened to Howard Spade.

“Show me the cabin.”

Skye gestures behind her, a vague indication of something in that direction.

“It’s pretty far. David has his truck here. He said I can use that. It would be a lot faster to drive there than it would be to walk,” she says.

“Did you drive when you went there?”

“No, I was trying to see as much of the grounds as I could, so I walked.”

“Then that’s what I want to do. I want to see it as the rest of you did. I want to gauge the distance, how long it would have taken for everybody to get there and back. I need as accurate a representation of that night as I can get.”

“Okay, I’ll take you.”

Before we can start, I hear a car coming up the driveway. We all turn and watch a dark-green hatchback pull up beside Noah’s car. There’s a few seconds of hesitation, and then the door opens and a man gets out. I don’t recognize him, which tells me I think I already know who he is.

“Agent Griffin?”

“Yes.”

I take a step closer to the car as he walks around toward me, pushing sunglasses up on top of his head. His eyes flick over to Skye and then come back to me.

“I’m Curtis.”

“Glad to meet you. Thank you for coming all the way out here.”

He looks around and draws in a breath like he is regretting the decision to come. “I just want to help.”

He doesn’t specify what he wants to help with—whether it is finding out who killed Howard or strengthening the case against Skye. It doesn’t really matter. His perspective will be important for me to better understand what happened that night.

“We’re about to head over to the cabin. I need to see the scene. Can you come with us?” I ask.

“If I have to,” he says. “I don’t really ever wanna see that place again, to be honest.”

“I completely understand that, and I don’t blame you. But it would be really helpful for me to hear exactly how you came to find the scene that night. I need to piece together the exact timeline of events and where everybody was as much as possible so I can find where pieces are missing,” I tell him.

He doesn’t answer, but he nods, and I decide to take it as confirmation. I look over at Skye. Her eyes are locked on Curtis. There is curiosity in them, but also pain. She’s obviously hurt at Curtis’s firm stance that she is responsible for Howard’s death, but I have to wonder if there is something else in that pain. She pulls her eyes away from him and meets mine.

“Are you ready?”

We start deeper into the grounds, away from the driveway. From where we were standing near the house, I could see a few small sheds, a barn, a corral, and other remnants of when this place was a functioning ranch. But the direction we are going now is far less developed. There is what looks like what was once a garden of some sort. A large weeping willow curves down over a mossy cement bench. It almost looks like this side of the grounds was reserved for the private use of the family. It was their yard, the extension of their home. The rest was where they kept and tended to animals, where the ranch hands and other hired help would work. But this area was for them to enjoy.

The open space becomes dotted with trees as we keep moving. That in and of itself is confirmation of my assumption about the land. This area was for the family’s entertainment and enjoyment. In a space like this, it was the epitome of luxury. Ranchland is extremely expensive, and every bit of it is usually utilized to maximize potential profit. But the mini acres of woods we walk into aren’t for that purpose. It shows that the family could afford to not only have such a massive amount of land but also keep some of it set aside to never reap financial profits.

“Do you know much about the history of this place?” I ask. “I haven’t had a chance to look into it very deeply.”

“Not a lot,” Skye says. “I know it’s been around for a long time. Owned by the same family all the way up until Astor Barrett bought it. But by that point, it hadn’t been used in probably decades.”

“This land has seen a lot,” Curtis says. “All the places around here have.”

We fall into silence and keep walking. Skye is on one side of me, and Curtis is on the other. I am a divider, a physical separation but also the tense balance between what each of them believes to be true. It takes almost twenty minutes for us to get to a point in the trees where I see a clearing ahead. So far, I haven’t noticed anything that stands out to me. It all just looks the same. But a few steps ahead, I can see the outline of a cabin.

Curtis hesitates. He takes a breath and lets it out in a long puff.

“Are you going to be okay?” I ask.

He nods. “I’ll be fine. Let’s just go.”

“Tell me about that night. Start with realizing that Howard wasn’t around. What were you doing?” I ask.

I’ve already heard enough people talk to me about the incredible tension and difficult atmosphere of the set that day. I don’t need it reiterated. What I’m interested in is his perspective of Howard not being where he should have been and how he ended up making his way this far out onto the grounds of the ranch so he was there to find Skye over the body.

“I was actually kind of relieved when we needed to take a break. Not a lot of time was built into the schedule for me to take establishing shots and B-roll. A ton of that never ends up getting used, but it’s really important to have a lot of it for coverage and to guide viewers through the story. Howard was trying really hard to fit as much as he possibly could into a relatively short time. He had only gotten permission to be on the ranch for ten days and was already running out of time. I hadn’t gotten enough of the footage I wanted, and so I decided to spend that time going around and getting those shots.

“That’s what I was doing when I heard what I thought was a scream. It wasn’t the kind of scream that you hear around sets like this all the time. It wasn’t a scream queen kind of loud, piercing shriek. It was shorter and deeper. More of a shout, I guess. I didn’t know exactly where I was, so I started trying to orient myself. I had just kind of wandered and been taking footage, and realizing how far I had gone, I checked my phone to see if I had any service so that I could call and maybe figure out where I was. That’s when I saw how late it had gotten and realized that I needed to get back to the house so that we could start filming.

“At the same time, I was thinking about that shout, and it worried me. As I was getting closer to the house, I briefly got reception, so I called Howard. He didn’t pick up, and that was really strange for him. I hadn’t known him for very long, but he was very big on communication. He expected to be able to get ahold of everybody and, conversely, everybody could get to him. He had always been really responsive to phone calls and text messages. So when I called him and he didn’t answer, I was worried.”

“You were immediately worried?” I ask.

“Yeah, why?”

“It’s just that’s not the impression that I’ve gotten from everybody else. They mentioned that they called and tried to message him, but it really wasn’t that big of a deal because the reception around here is so bad and because things had been rough on the set. They thought he was just off doing something else and lost track of time or was having a hissy fit of some sort. I didn’t talk to anybody who said that they were concerned right off the bat. The only thing they were thinking about was wanting to make sure that the production got back on schedule. They wanted to find Howard so that you could start filming,” I say.

“I don’t know what to tell you. Maybe it was because I heard that scream. Or maybe I was just thinking about James. But I was immediately worried. I thought something had to have happened, and so I changed direction. Rather than heading back to the house, I started in the direction that I thought the scream had come from. I honestly don’t know how long I was walking around. It was really dark, and I had gotten disoriented. I just kept going, and then I saw the cabin.”

As he’s talking, we walk into the clearing, and soon I’m standing at the foot of narrow plank steps. A piece of crime scene tape is still over the closed door, but it’s the only indication from out here that anything terrible had happened inside the cabin.

It looks unsettlingly familiar, so much like Cabin 13 in Feathered Nest. I can almost close my eyes and hear the sound of the furnace or smell the intensely spiced tea left boiling on the stove.

“When you got here, what did you see?” I ask.

“The door was most of the way closed. I could see light coming from inside,” Curtis says.

“That’s the same way Skye described it,” I say. “That was the moment when she got worried about Howard.”

“Why?” Curtis almost snaps.

“His blood pressure,” Skye tells him. “You probably didn’t know about that. It wasn’t something he talked about a lot, and he sure as hell didn’t take care of it. That’s why I was as worried as I was. The only reason I knew about it was because during the first project I ever did with him, he ended up in the hospital. He thought he was having a heart attack. I was the only one still on set when it happened, and I had to bring him to the emergency room. That didn’t even change how he took care of himself, and I knew his health was just getting worse. When I saw the door open and the light, I was afraid all the shit going on that day had finally gotten to him and he had a heart attack.”

“I didn’t know about that,” Curtis says.

She doesn’t say anything about their argument the day before the murder, but now that I know about it, I have to believe it was weighing on her when she approached the cabin that night. She wasn’t just thinking about what was going on with the rest of the cast and crew. She wasn’t thinking about his diet. What was on her mind was the way she screamed at him. How worked up they’d both gotten. And when she saw him lying on the floor, she thought she contributed to it.

“Did you notice anything else when you were walking up to the cabin? Did you hear anything? See a shadow? Anything that was unusual?”

“No. At least I don’t think I did. I was so focused on getting inside that I wasn’t really paying attention to anything else.”

“Did you call out to Howard?” I ask.

“Yes.”

Skye shakes her head. “No… no, you didn’t. I didn’t hear you until you opened the door the rest of the way.”

“I’m sure I called out to him.”

“You didn’t.”

I hold up a hand to stop them before they start bickering. “Sometimes it can be really difficult to remember the details about traumatic moments like this. What happened after that? When you actually walked into the cabin?”

We walk up the steps, and Noah removes the crime scene tape from the door so I can open it. I step inside. The air inside the tiny building feels thick and hot. There’s just enough light coming in from a small window for me to see a wide bloodstain on the floor. Next to it is a smaller streak of red against the pale wood slat flooring. I back up and step out onto the porch again, blocking Skye and Curtis from following me inside.

“You don’t need to go in there again. Just tell me here what you saw.”

“Skye. She was on the floor beside Howard. There was blood all over her, and she was holding a knife.”

“What did she do when you saw her?” I ask.

Skye stands off to the side, her arms crossed over her chest. Curtis doesn’t even look at her.

“She looked at me. She looked right in my eyes. I asked her what she was doing, what she had done. She got up and ran. I tried to stop her, but she pushed past me, and I had to decide whether I was going to chase her or try to help Howard. I didn’t know how bad off he was, so I decided to stay and see if there was anything I could do for him. By the time I realized he was already dead, Skye was gone.”

Something immediately stands out to me.

“The knife. Noah, do you have the knife in evidence?” I ask.

“No, it hasn’t been found,” he says. “She didn’t have it with her when she was apprehended.”

“I thought it was still on the scene when his body was taken,” I say.

“No.”

“Come in here for a second. Skye, Curtis, wait out here.”

Noah follows me into the cabin, and I direct him over to the bloodstain on the floor. From the shape of the staining and the saturation level, I can ascertain which direction Howard’s body was lying. Being careful not to step on it, I move to the other side of the stain and crouch down to point out the smaller streak of blood on the floor.

“The knife was on the floor,” I tell him. “See that? That blood smear is from the blade. It was lying on the floor long enough for the blood to transfer onto the floor and begin to dry. If you look, you can see the different depths of the blood and how it shifted across the floor. It was on the floor and then was moved. Which means if you’re going to go with the explanation that Skye killed him, left the knife, then went back for it, she would have had to have left and been gone for long enough for the blood to start to dry and congeal. Then she decided to go back and get the knife, but took the time to crouch beside the body and look at it?

“Curtis came through the woods and didn’t hear anything as he was approaching the cabin. Which means she would have had to have gone inside and been there for as long as it took him to come through the woods, approach the cabin, and get inside. Why would she do that? If she was just going back to get the knife, why would she stay there for that long? And that’s setting aside how strange it would be for her to get as far away as she could have gotten in that time, then turn around and come back for the knife.”

He meets my eyes, and I go back out onto the porch.

“What did you do with the knife?” I ask Skye.

“I dropped it,” she tells me. “When Curtis came in, I panicked. I just started running. I didn’t even realize I was still holding the knife until I couldn’t even see the cabin anymore. I stopped to breathe for a second and realized it was in my hand. I dropped it and left it there when I kept going.”

“Could you show us where you went?” I ask.

“I think so,” she says.

She walks down the steps and pauses for a brief second in front of the cabin. Her eyes focused on the dirt at her feet, she seems to channel being in that place a few nights ago. Without a word, she turns and starts in the opposite direction from where we came toward the cabin.

We walk for a few moments, and I notice her weaving in and out of the trees a few times. She stops and looks at one of them. I step up beside her and notice a smear of dried blood on the bark.

“I slipped while I was running and grabbed the tree to keep me from falling. This is the right way.”

We keep going for several more minutes, and finally, she makes a sharp turn and crosses in front of me. She goes over to a fallen log and walks around the large root ball sticking up from the ground.

“This is where I stopped.”

She goes behind it, and I notice a quizzical look on her face.

“What’s wrong?”

“It isn’t here,” she says.

“What isn’t?”

I walk over to her and look down at the ground where she’s pointing.

“The knife. It isn’t here.”

Skye kicks at the grass and fallen leaves around the root ball, but they don’t reveal anything.

“Are you sure this is where you stopped?” I ask.

“Yes, I was getting tired, and it was so dark. I needed to take a second to breathe, but I didn’t want anybody to see me. At that point, I wasn’t even thinking about Curtis anymore. I was thinking about whoever had killed Howard. They were still out there somewhere, and I didn’t want them to come up behind me. So when I saw the fallen tree, I came over here and crouched down right here. That’s when I realized I still had the knife in my hand, and I dropped it. I didn’t touch it again. I left it exactly where it fell when I started running again.”

“Look in the hole where the roots were. Look under the log,” Noah says.

Using flashlights and phones for illumination, we search the area around the root ball, but we don’t find anything.

“It isn’t here,” I say. “Someone took it.”

“Who would do that?” Curtis asks.

“The person who actually killed Howard,” Skye says.

Something close to validation goes across her face. Her body visibly relaxes. This is evidence in her mind. A clear indication that she is not responsible for Howard’s death.

I’m glad for her moment of release, but this doesn’t change anything for me. It gives me stronger confirmation that Skye did not kill Howard, but it doesn’t give any indication of who did. I’m still asking the same questions, chasing the same truth. My job is still in front of me.

“Where did you go after you dropped the knife?”

“I hid in an old tree house. I didn’t know where else I was supposed to go. I was exhausted and scared. I found the tree house, and I climbed up to it. I honestly can’t believe it still supported my weight. It’s probably been there fifty years.”

“Show me.”

It’s dark enough at this point that we need to use our flashlights just to get us through the trees. Skye doesn’t know exactly where she went, but with some backtracking, she uses visual cues to get us to the tree house.

Built on a platform surrounding the trunk of a large tree, the house is a large, rectangular structure several feet off the ground. Steps in the form of boards are nailed into the trunk, and the frayed remnants of an old rope are just visible hanging several inches from the opening that leads onto the platform.

I climb up. There are obvious places where the wood is rotted, and there’s a distinct sway to the entire structure, but it is surprisingly sound. Inside the tree house, I see a few places where blood seems to have transferred from Skye’s clothes onto the old white paint. Shining my flashlight around the inside of the space, I see evidence of the children who used to play here. There are carvings on one wall, initials of a name long forgotten. Bits of old stickers still cling in some places. I look out the window on either side. The vantage point allows me to see all around me discreetly. I understand why Skye had chosen this place to feel as safe as she could considering the circumstances.

I climb back down. “Did you stay up there for the rest of the night?”

“She was found the next morning walking down a road behind the property,” Noah says.

“I don’t even know how I got there. I remember staying in here for a long time. I have no idea how long. I was just waiting to hear somebody. I thought about going back to the house, but I was too scared. Then I felt like I just couldn’t sit here anymore. I didn’t know where I was going or what I was going to do, but I had to keep moving. I know I went down the ladder, but that’s all I remember. There’s nothing else until the police were taking me into custody,” Skye says. “I don’t think there is anything wrong with me. I don’t think I was drugged or anything. I just blanked.”

“That makes sense. You were in an incredibly stressful, traumatic situation. Your brain didn’t know how to process it. So it didn’t,” I say. I turn my attention back to Curtis. “What do you remember from after you saw Howard’s body?”

“After I figured out that he really was dead, I went for help. I ran back to the house as fast as I could go. I looked at my phone once to see if I had any reception, and I didn’t. I didn’t even bother to look again. I just ran and started shouting for help. At this point, I still didn’t know that everybody was looking for Howard. I figured that obviously, people knew he wasn’t where he was supposed to be, but I didn’t know that everybody was spread out looking for him. It’s really a blur at that point. I don’t know who I talked to first or who called the police. I just know that I told people what I saw and that the police showed up. I told them everything, and then I brought them back to the cabin. That’s when they started looking for Skye.”

It’s fully dark by the time we get back to the main house. I can see a few lights glowing inside, but I know they are powered by a generator rather than electricity. If I go inside now, I won’t be able to get much done in the dim light, so I tell Skye I’ll be back in the morning, and Noah and I get in his car.

We sit silently for a few seconds.

“What do you think?” he asks.

“I think I need more time to look around,” I tell him. “That knife didn’t disappear. A squirrel didn’t come up and snatch it and run away with it. Someone purposely took it. Which means they either happened on it and knew exactly what it was, or they were watching Skye. It’s possible whoever is responsible for killing Howard was still in the woods and noticed the knife, so they took it with them. But just because something’s possible doesn’t mean that it is likely, and I would venture to say that that is very unlikely.

“I don’t think this was impulsive. This wasn’t somebody who was squatting at the cabin and killed Howard because he scared them or because they were dealing with some sort of mental health issue. It wasn’t a sudden decision. That has been the general theory from the beginning, that Howard was targeted. But this only confirms that for me. This was planned. It was intentional and thought out.”

“But how is that possible? How would somebody know to find him there in the cabin? He wasn’t supposed to be there. He decided to go there.”

“As far as we know. Or at least that’s our impression. Because that’s what everyone has been telling us. It was a sudden decision to take a break and just cool off until the next set of scheduled scenes. Which is entirely possible. But that doesn’t mean that no one knew he was going to that cabin. He could have planned on meeting somebody there. The fact that the knife was then taken tells me that whoever did this stayed in the area.”

“Why would they do that? Why wouldn’t they run as soon as they killed him? Nobody knew he was out there, so they could easily get away,” Noah says.

“They wanted to see what was going to happen. It wasn’t just about killing Howard. It was seeing what was going to unfold after that. They stayed around long enough for Skye to get there and discover the body, then for Curtis to find her. They watched Skye run away, too. That was probably a shock. It’s not the way that people would expect a completely innocent person to act. They likely followed her and saw her drop the knife.”

“But why take it? At that point, she was already seen holding it, and her fingerprints would be all over it. Any other fingerprints on it would have been obliterated by the blood and by her hand. What would be the point in them taking the knife?” he asks.

“I don’t know. But I’m getting the sickening feeling that we are in somebody’s movie.”

I want to be at the house early, but I understand that my concept of early when I am in the midst of an investigation tends to be firm, and most people are willing to tolerate it. As much as I would like to be standing at the door when the sun comes up high enough for me to see inside the house, I know I have to wait for Skye to actually be conscious and make it all the way out there.

That doesn’t stop me from waking up before the sun is up. Despite only getting a couple of hours of sleep, I know I can’t will myself back into the empty, gray dream backdrop I left for consciousness. I’m too awake. My brain is moving too fast.

I get out of bed and take a shower. It’s still early, but I make my way downstairs to the lobby for breakfast. I’m the first to get to the buffet, so I have my choice of the fresh food just laid out. It isn’t anything spectacular. I don’t even have the option of making my own waffle. But I pop a couple of pieces of cinnamon raisin bread into the toaster and down a cup of orange juice while I wait.

The smell of the toast reminds me to text Sam to tell him about the batch of cinnamon rolls in the freezer. He has to take up the challenge of representing both of us at game night with Janet and Paul tonight. I’m not there to make a cake or throw together a tray of sandwiches, so we have to go with an alternative. Of course, my husband is more than capable of making food for a get-together. He didn’t lose all survival skills when he married me. But I figure if I’m having to call out and leave him to defend our board game champion status on his own, the least I can do is contribute to the refreshments. Fortunately, I tend to keep a tray of cinnamon rolls at the ready in the freezer. If can’t make them fresh, these will do in a pinch.

I am lavishing my toast with butter, telling myself I need the extra calories to fill me through the day, when my phone rings. I see that it’s Sam.

Laughing softly, I pick it up. “Did you already forget how to thaw them out and bake them?” I ask.

“This actually isn’t about the cinnamon rolls. I wanted to call you yesterday, but I was waiting for confirmation.”

The words are ambiguous. They could be good news or bad. The tightening in my stomach is hope that it’s something good. The flutter in my heart tells me Sam’s voice means it’s not.

“Confirmation of what? What’s going on?”

“During the excavation yesterday, they uncovered more remains from the burn pit. There are additional bone fragments and some clothing. They also found several teeth. Some of the groups Mike Morris is involved in collected money to pay for a private DNA test so it would go through faster. You know as well as I do that those things can take forever. They didn’t want to wait that long. So they sent it to a private lab to compare to a known sample from Mike.”

“And?” I ask, nudging him past the uncomfortable pause.

“They could extract enough DNA from three of the teeth to test. They belong to Mike.”

I sit down hard. It was what everyone was expecting. It’s been far too long since the last time he was seen. But it still hits hard when there is confirmation.

“What about the bone fragments?”

“They were too burned to get anything out of them.”

“How many of them were found? How much bone?”

“They’re still collecting pieces. Most of it is really small. They did find an arm bone. It was at a bit of a distance from the burn pile and buried, so the researchers want to do a thorough examination to make sure that it is a contemporary bone and not part of an ancient burial or anything. This doesn’t end the excavation. They’re still going to keep going and find everything that they can. But…”

“I know.”

I eat breakfast, and as I’m drinking my second cup of coffee, I send a message to Skye. I’m surprised when she responds immediately. She’s already on her way to the house. She hasn’t been able to sleep, and she’s supposed to meet Lynette there since she couldn’t get there last night. I didn’t tell her that Lynette was the one who tipped me off to the argument she had with Howard the day before he was murdered. I don’t think it makes a difference. She already admitted that they were screaming at each other loudly enough for anybody who was nearby to hear it.

I head back to my room to grab my bag, and as I’m walking down the hallway, I notice the door isn’t all the way closed. I hesitate in the middle of the hall. I closed it. I know I did. Didn’t I?

I try to remember leaving the room to go down for breakfast. It’s such a mundane detail of my morning that I don’t really know if my memory of stepping out into the hall and pulling the door closed behind me is legitimate or if it’s just my brain conjuring up the image it knows I’m expecting. Like when you see a neighbor walk the same dog every single morning and know that you did one particular morning only to find out they didn’t pass by that day.

But deep inside me, I know that’s ridiculous. I’m Emma Griffin. I have never walked out of a hotel room and not shut the door behind me.

And yet, the door isn’t closed. It’s not standing wide open, just propped by the tongue of the lock, like it wasn’t pulled all the way. I wonder if it could be housekeeping. The cart isn’t in the hall, but it’s possible somebody just dipped in really fast to take my dirty towels. I haven’t been in there long enough to really justify a thorough cleaning or anything. I step up to the door and listen, but I don’t hear anything inside.

“Hello?”

There’s no response. Flattening my hand on the door, I gradually push it open, positioning my body so I can easily get out of the way of the open door. But nothing happens. I step inside. It’s empty. The bed is in the same slightly disheveled condition that I left it. My wet towels are in the corner of the bathroom floor. Housekeeping hasn’t been here.

I walk through the room. It doesn’t look like anything was moved, but the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. Something’s different about the room. I can’t place it. Everything is here. Everything that I left on the nightstand and the dresser. Even the remote is in the exact same position. My bag is on the floor, the zipper in the same place. No one has gone through it. But I know someone has been here. Someone came into my room while I was at breakfast.

I gather up everything and walk out of the room, taking the “Do Not Disturb” sign with me. I hang it on the knob and make a point of closing the door hard. I tug it to prove to myself it is secure.

As soon as I’m behind the wheel, I prop my phone in its holder attached to the dashboard and put it on speakerphone so I can call Denise Stein. Vivica answers.

“How is everything?” I ask. “I don’t need details. Don’t tell me where you are or what you’ve been doing. Just tell me that everyone is all right.”

“Everyone is all right,” she says. She sounds calm, not like anyone is listening or forcing her to say that.

“And if at some point everyone isn’t?”

“I have your number. I have Sam’s number. I have Dean’s number. I have Detective Melton’s number. And I also do know how to call 911.”

“It sounds like all your bases are covered. Okay, good. I’m still not in town. But I’m around. Don’t hesitate to get in touch with me.”

I don’t tell her there has been a new element. Right now that isn’t information that anybody needs to know. I just wanted to confirm that Denise is still safe and that there haven’t been any more attempts at contact.

My next call is to Baron Johnson. It goes much the same way. I do my rounds, checking in with each person whose safety and possibly life are resting in my hands. In some instances, I can’t speak to them directly. They have been put into safe houses that are kept fully confidential, meaning even I can’t call them. I have to go through their specified handler to make sure that they are all right.

Even though I have checked on everybody and know that they are safe, the comfort is shallow as I pull into the driveway of the ranch. I can’t get over the feeling of standing in the hotel room. But I have to put it away. Right now, my energy and attention has to go to this.

I agreed to help Noah. And Skye. I already made it clear that the Game Master case takes precedence, and I meant it. But I can’t justify leaving this investigation right now. Not because of a handful of teeth and an open hotel room door.

I walk up the steps to the porch and try the door. It’s unlocked. I step inside and call out for Skye. She appears from a room to one side.

“Hey,” she says. “Did you see Lynette out there?”

“No. There’s only one other car. I’m guessing it’s yours.”

“She was supposed to be here. I’ve been waiting for her all this time. It sounded like she was on her way, and I actually thought she’d already be here when I got here. But she’s not, and I haven’t heard from her.”

“Have you called her?” I ask.

“A couple times. She hasn’t answered. That could just mean she’s driving. She won’t answer the phone if she’s driving. Even on speakerphone. It just seems like it’s been too long. Anyway, do you want to just look around yourself, or do you want me to show you around?”

“I’d appreciate it if you would show me. It’s a pretty big place, and I don’t know exactly what I’m looking at.”

We start walking around the house, and she details what each room is. They’ve been used in the production. Equipment is still stored in a few of the spaces. When I’ve seen the entirety of the bottom floor, we head upstairs, and she shows me the rooms where the cast and crew have been staying.

“I know at least a couple of these rooms are the same ones that they used in Blood Crop. Maria was staying in this one, and she says that it was the same place she stayed ten years ago.”

I look around the room. Even after so many years of disuse, I can see how beautiful it used to be. Faded pink wallpaper with tiny roses is peeling off the walls. There’s no furniture, but gauzy curtains, gray with dust and yellowed with age, hang from the window. I can imagine there used to be a white canopy bed made up and covered in pillows with lace-edged shams. The closet suddenly catches my attention. The door is broken, cracked in half like it was kicked and hanging from the hinge.

“What happened here?” I ask.

“I don’t know. It was like that the first time I saw it. No one told me anything about it, so I’m guessing it was like that when they came too.”

“Even the ones who were here for the original project?” I ask.

“None of them,” she tells me.

I run my fingers along the broken edge of the door. It’s not fresh. It took a lot of force for this to happen. This isn’t one of the flimsy doors that show up in modern construction. This one was thick and sturdy. Somebody had to put effort into causing this kind of damage. We move on to the other rooms, and I don’t see anything that particularly stands out to me, but I can see that Skye is getting progressively more anxious. She keeps checking her phone. I don’t know if she’s looking at the time or if she’s hoping that she somehow missed a call or a text from Lynette.

We keep moving through the house. I don’t know exactly what I’m looking for. I figure it’s one of those things that when I see it—if I see it—I’ll know.

I’m taking in the details of each space I walk through, trying to put myself in the mindset of someone here to film a project. I think about the ones who came with no preconceived notions, not having any idea what they were getting themselves into. And then those who chose to come even though they did.

I go into the room on the top floor where Howard stayed. He obviously chose the best room for himself and spread out. Unlike all the other people who had crammed themselves into just a couple of rooms so they could all take advantage of the generators, he had a complete setup all to himself.

Here the walls are painted dark green. It’s a heavy, almost oppressive look. It seems strange for a bedroom, especially in contrast to the delicate rose wallpaper downstairs. I go over to the window and look out. The view is of the woods, and my thoughts go to the tree house and the missing knife.

“Do you want to see the original set?” Skye offers. “It was left pretty much intact from the first film. Howard added a couple of set pieces and props to it, but you can watch the Blood Crop and see how much it looks the same.”

“You mentioned to me that he had put some of the original props from the old movie back into the set. Is that the set you’re talking about?”

“Yeah, he wanted to preserve the integrity of it but at the same time make it his own. He thought it would be really cool if he took out some of the old props and added them in. That started a lot of the controversy the day he died.”

“Sure.”

I don’t feel like I’m getting much information from walking around the house. I don’t know what I thought I would find. But I still feel the compulsion to go into every space. To see it and contextualize what I’ve heard from everybody involved in the projects.

Skye hesitates near the front door, looking at her phone again.

“I am really starting to get worried about Lynette. It shouldn’t have taken her this long. She should have been here a long time ago. Or at least called me to let me know what was going on.”

“Do you know where she’s staying? We could go check on her.”

“No, let’s just stay here. This is where she said she was coming, and I don’t want to leave and have her show up. Come on, the set is down in the basement.”

We go downstairs, and she shows me the room where in Blood Crop, the killer savagely tortured and killed his captive victims.

“James was filming the scene here when he decided to leave the project,” I say.

“Yeah, it was set up pretty much like this. Different plastic. But the few things that had been changed, we just recreated. From what I’ve heard, they had been going over the same scene for hours, and Astor just wouldn’t move on. Everybody else was really pleased with what James was doing and said that it looked and sounded great, but because it wasn’t exactly to Astor’s standards, he kept making them go over it again before he would finalize it.

“James had enough and told Astor he wasn’t going to do it anymore. Astor asked for him to stay long enough to talk with him that night, and everybody thought he was going to. James went upstairs, and the rest of the cast and crew finished up what they could for the night. But when they went up, James wasn’t there. They just figured he left.”

“What did Howard add to this room?”

She shows me a few pieces of scenery and props. Some of it is gruesome. The weapons look shockingly real, and the body parts sitting on the floor have been meticulously crafted for optimal realism. It almost seems like a strange juxtaposition. So much of the production was thrown together or done with almost no budget and haphazard attention to detail. But then there are these exceptional pieces that would find a comfortable home in much bigger, more impressive projects.

Looking across the room, I see a prop of a whole corpse lying on a table. Getting closer to it, I see that the skin is shriveled and darkened like it was naturally mummified. It’s covered in a layer of something that almost looks like translucent stone. When I see a large assortment of candles positioned on the table beside it, I realize that it isn’t stone; it’s supposed to be wax.

“That’s another of his additions,” Skye tells me. “That’s an original from the prop shed Astor left behind.”

I keep staring at the body, at the way it’s been put together, the fine details visible even through the wax. The sound of a door slamming upstairs takes my attention. Skye and I look at each other, then run up the stairs and through the house toward the entryway. Lynette is standing in the foyer. Her arms are hanging down by her sides, and the look on her face is blank and empty.

“Lynette?” Skye says. “Lynette, what’s wrong?”

She doesn’t respond. Skye closes the space between them and takes hold of her shoulders. The physical contact seems to jostle Lynette out of the trance she seems to be in. She jumps, stepping back away from Skye and lifting her hands slightly as if to protect herself.

I step up beside her. “Lynette, it’s us. Skye and Agent Griffin. Are you all right?”

She opens her mouth to speak, but no sound comes out. Skye wraps her arm around Lynette’s shoulders and starts to lead her out of the entryway and into the small parlor to the side. It’s one of the few rooms still furnished as it probably would have been when it was someone’s home rather than a backdrop. She pushes a blanket off of a couch, and I can see that even though it looks like it might be similar to what would have been here decades ago, it is a much newer piece of furniture. Skye helps Lynette sit down and sits right beside her, keeping her arm wrapped around her.

“What’s wrong?”

“Someone was chasing me,” Lynette finally manages to say.

Skye’s eyes snap at me. “Chasing you?”

“Yes. I was on my way here, just like I said. I stopped to get some gas, and while I was in the store, I saw a car kind of circling around. And then they pulled into a spot just a couple down from the pump where my car was parked. It seemed a little bit weird, but I didn’t really think much of it. I paid for my gas and a couple of snacks, then I went back out and pumped the gas. I looked over at the car, but the windows were so heavily tinted I couldn’t see anybody inside.”

“You couldn’t see anything?” I ask.

“I could see the outline of a person behind the wheel. But that was it. They didn’t try to talk to me or anything. I got in my car and started to drive off, and I noticed them drive up right behind me. And they started following me. I didn’t want to come here. I started just driving around, turning randomly, just trying to get them away from me. Or maybe test to see if they were actually going somewhere else and it just looked like they were following me. But they definitely were.

“They became more aggressive and were getting closer. I still couldn’t see who it was. I kept driving and kept driving. But then I realized I was running low on gas. I didn’t want to stop at the station again, so I headed here. When I started to get close, they veered off, and I was able to make it here.”

“What kind of car was it?” Skye asks.

“I wish I knew cars better. It was big. Not like a van. Chunkier than that. But I wouldn’t really call it an SUV. I don’t know. But it was dark green.”

“You need to call the police and make a statement,” I say.

“I don’t want it to seem like I’m overreacting about something,” she protests.

“You aren’t overreacting. Someone who follows you like that over an extended time is doing it intentionally. And considering what has happened here, both now and ten years ago, you really can’t be too careful. If you would prefer, I can contact Detective White rather than us calling emergency services.”

“If you could do that, it would be amazing. There are people out there who are experiencing actual emergencies, and I don’t want to take anything away from them.”

“Again, you’re not taking anything away from anybody. This is something that needs to be brought to the attention of the police. I’ll go call him.”

I step outside to get better reception than I have inside the house and call Noah.

“I’m actually not far away. I’ll be right there. Probably ten minutes,” he says.

I go back inside and sit with Skye and Lynette while we wait, but as I’m sitting there, the uncomfortable feeling I got from the prop body downstairs keeps creeping up the back of my neck. This is the first time I have been up close and personal with horror movie props, and the effect is nothing short of unsettling. I guess I always figured that if I was right on them, it would be so obvious they were fake, and being up close, I could see all the problems and flaws in the material. But the discarded body parts and especially the corpse are vividly realistic.

Noah gets to the house, and I let him in. He sits down with Lynette and calmly asks her questions about what she experienced. She seems to be settling down now that she is here with us, but her eyes stay wide, and I notice them flashing up to the window overlooking the driveway every few seconds. It’s like she’s checking to make sure that the green car isn’t still following her.

“Do you think the gas station has cameras?” Skye asks. “Maybe they have the car, and you could get a license plate.”

“It was Carmichael Convenience,” Lynette tells him.

“I know where that is. I know they have cameras inside because I’ve had to review footage there after a burglary, but I don’t know what kind of coverage they have of the parking lot.”

“I was at the gas pumps. Surely, they have some sort of security at the gas pumps,” Lynette says.

“Let me see if I can get in touch with them.”

He goes outside just like I did and comes back a couple of minutes later.

“I just talked to Jeremiah, the manager on duty right now. They do have security cameras that cover the gas pumps themselves, but he says they don’t really show the parking area. So unless the car was parked in the very first spot, it’s really unlikely that it’s going to be on the footage.”

Lynette’s head drops. “So there’s no way of knowing who it was.” It isn’t a question. It’s a resigned acknowledgment.

“Can you think of any other businesses you drove past that might have cameras?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t really paying that much attention to exactly where I was, I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to apologize,” I assure her. “We will do our best to find any footage that might exist. But what you can do is just make sure you really pay attention to where you are and what’s going on. Do exactly what you did, and take note of anyone or anything that seems strange. Don’t be afraid to take out your phone and snap a picture. I would rather you look strange because you’re taking a picture of somebody’s car than for something like this to happen again and leave us without answers.”

Lynette nods. “Thank you.”

“I’m going to get going. Call me if anything else comes up.”

“Actually, before you go, can you come look at something with me?” I ask.

“Sure. What’s going on?” he asks.

“Just come with me.”

I bring Noah down into the basement.

“Did you look through here at all?”

“No. Do you think there was reason to?”

“Not that has anything to do with Howard’s murder. What do you think about that?” I ask.

I tilt my head in the direction of the prop corpse. He looks struck by the visual and walks over to it.

“This thing looks freaking real. It must have cost a fortune. Why would they have a prop like this down here where it isn’t going to be seen?” he asks.

I move toward the head of the body, to the spot on the side of the neck that’s still bothering me. It doesn’t look as pristine and smooth as the rest. The wax coating seems to have cracked here. It could be intentional. From the layout of the scene, it looks like Howard was creating an image that the killer had covered his victim with hot wax. Perhaps while they were alive as a form of torture. But the details of the body that are still visible through the wax don’t look like a mannequin or what a fresh fake body would look like. The drying is too extensive.

I touch the cracking wax, and pieces of it fall off. I grab a screwdriver from the nearby table and use the end to remove more of the wax. A large piece falls out of place, revealing the corpse. I instantly know this isn’t an expensive prop.

“Noah,” I say, my mind spinning with all the stories I’ve heard of this ranch and the horrors that have happened here. “I think it’s real.”

I rush up the stairs. Skye looks startled when I burst into the room.

“What’s going on?” she asks.

“The prop of the corpse downstairs. The one you said that Howard wanted added to that scene. Where did he find it?”

“In the prop shed. The one that Astor Barrett left. He went through it a couple of times to find stuff and he found it there,” she says.

“And you said it was one that has been there?”

She looks a bit confused. “I guess. I mean, it was in the shed of props and wardrobe from Blood Crop. So I’m guessing that it’s been there since then. I don’t know. I wasn’t a part of that project. But he said it was too incredible for him to just leave.”

“Is he the one who covered it with wax?” I ask.

“Yeah. He said he had this vision for a part of the torture room. He had seen some movie where this guy was dripping hot wax on a woman and it was supposed to be really erotic, but he didn’t think it was sexy. He thought that it looked horrifying, and that’s what gave him the idea. Essentially, a victim being incapacitated and then slowly covered with hot wax until they die,” she says. “It was a really gruesome idea, but it fit perfectly with the narrative he was coming up with. He was really excited about it, and when he showed me the whole setup, it looked good.”

“So you got to see it first? Before he showed everybody else and started the controversy?”

“Yes. He worked on it in that room upstairs that I showed you. The one that nobody was staying in. He did all the work up there so that nobody would see it. He thought it was going to be some great surprise. He really wasn’t expecting everybody to be mad and for it to cause as big of a breakdown as it did. Honestly, it wasn’t just the corpse. Or even the hot wax—though that did bother some people because it didn’t seem authentic to the story, according to them. But Howard knew what he wanted.”

“Okay, but the corpse itself. Did you see it before he covered it with wax?” I ask.

“No. Why?”

“Did he tell you exactly where he found it? Like was it in a box or just sitting out?”

“A bag,” she says.

“A bag?”

“A body bag. Obviously, it was used for something at some point. There were a few other body bags in the prop shed too. A couple had body parts in them. It must have been a particular scene in something. I don’t remember something like that in the actual movie of Blood Crop, but it could have been something in the background, or he could have used them for a different project altogether and just had them with him here in case he wanted to use them,” Skye says.

“Do you know if the bag is still in that room?” I ask.

“I don’t know why it wouldn’t be.”

I head back up the stairs to the top floor and go into the room that she showed me earlier. It’s right next to the one where Howard was sleeping. She called it his project room. It was apparently where he worked on ideas for the project and expected not to be disturbed. That was why he would have felt comfortable working on what he thought would be his most impressive prop.

I would have noticed a body bag sitting in the room the first time I saw it, so it’s obviously not just sitting out. I go over to the closet and open the door. There, on the floor, is a mounded-up bag. I reach down and tug on it to pull it out onto the floor.

As I do, a flurry of dust tumbles out of the open section of the zipper. Closer examination reveals that the bits look like little white pebbles or crystals. I know they look familiar. I’ve seen them before. It takes me a few seconds to place them. As soon as I do, I rush back downstairs.

“Silica gel,” I say to Noah.

“What?” He asks.

“Silica gel. There was silica gel in the body bag.”

“Oh shit.”

He has already called the forensic team, and when they arrive, I bring them down to the basement. They have the same assessment I do. They can’t make any absolute verification here. Tests will need to be done. But they’ve seen enough. They know what the test results are going to be.

It isn’t a prop.

The body encased in wax is a real corpse.

I can’t sleep.

I’ve tried for hours. I’ve tried to lull myself with an old episode of my favorite cooking show, hoping that the familiar sound of the voices would quiet my mind. It didn’t. I turned everything off and lay in complete silence and darkness. That didn’t do anything either. I took yet another shower. I even went downstairs to the lobby to look in the tiny grocery and sundry shop next to the front desk in hopes of finding some milk I could microwave. The thought of plain, hot milk makes me feel a bit sick to my stomach, but I remember my grandmother giving it to me when I was little. It made me sick then too, but it did help me relax. There isn’t any milk, so I have officially exhausted all my ideas to try to get some rest.

It leaves only one option. The same one I always go to.

Pulling my computer into the center of the bed, I open it to a search engine and delve deeper into my research. I need to go back through everything I found. I need to reread the stories, dig further into any evidence that might exist. There’s no way to tell if the body is male or female. Not from just looking at it in that condition. I can’t reliably use the size of the body to make a guess. The desiccant inside the body bag did exactly what it was meant to do. It drew out all the moisture in the body, essentially mummifying it. That’s why the skin looks so dry and darkened. It was basically turned into leather.

But the effect isn’t just on the skin itself. It’s to the entire body. All the tissues. That creates a shrinking effect, making the corpse look much smaller than the person would have looked in life. The result is a body that is comfortably within the window of being either a fairly tall woman or a man of average or just slightly below average height.

That still leaves me with two obvious options. This could be James Delaney. With no reasonable explanation as to how he got away from the ranch and no sightings of him in the last ten years, it’s entirely possible he never left the set at all. The fact that his belongings were also never found does create some issues, but there are many ways to dispose of the few things an actor would have with them on a shoot. His bags could easily have ended up in the trunk of a car and driven away without anybody noticing.

The other possibility is the elusive woman, Jillian Renee, who may or may not have been disgruntled on her first day and left. Who may or may not have decided to go hike the Appalachian Trail rather than go back to her regular life. Who may or may not have existed at all.

Searching for James Delaney doesn’t come up with anything new. I have already read through all the articles about him. I’ve watched the news footage. I’ve gone down the rabbit hole of crime forums discussing a wide array of theories about him. It seems his story is a prime inspiration for conspiracy and speculation. Proposed explanations for what happened to him range from him deciding to embark on a new life to him currently being held hostage in a secret government facility and tested as part of a project aimed at synthesizing the genetic material responsible for talent.

That’s probably my favorite. It reminds me of something Xavier would come up with. Only he could break down the science of why these experiments were being done and produce rubrics for evaluating comparative success. The people rambling on the forum have been throwing around words I am positive were created solely for the lexicon of some science-fiction series.

The more realistic theories about what happened to James fall somewhere in the middle. Most of them revolve around a gruesome murder in the name of an ancient ritual or at the behest of demons or spiritual ancestors. I can easily cull the explanations I’m not going to give any credence to because I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that James Delaney was not killed by aliens or used as a human sacrifice offering.

The possibility of a serial killer, though, seems more reasonable every time I read through it. The deaths of the two other men within a few weeks of James going missing are so similar. I don’t have access to the full case files for them, but the information I’m able to find doesn’t point to any personal relationship between the two or any shared activities, workplaces, anything that would make them cross paths. Instead, it looks like two similarly aged, similarly looking men who were both killed and dumped on the side of the road.

It does beg the question, though, of why James would be different. Why would both of those victims end up disposed of that way, but he would be surrounded by silica gel and stashed in a prop shed? A possible explanation is that whoever’s responsible knew the very high risk of being caught by one of the many people on the ranch for the film, or they were trying to take his body off the ranch and were almost caught so they had to change their mind.

But then how did they get his body into the shed? It’s possible it was unlocked because of the production. It would be easier for everybody involved for the door to be unlocked so that they could get anything that they might need. Skye did mention that there were other body bags in the shed.

But the silica gel. That isn’t something that would just be sitting around. Maybe in small quantities, but not as much as I saw in that bag, and I can only imagine there was even more when the body was first put in. That was an intentional choice.

And it leaves me with the disquieting thought that it was someone who had been there all along.

With my thoughts about James bouncing back and forth like a tennis match in my head, I switch my attention back to the possibility of the missing actress. I don’t have Astor to ask about her. And the details about who she might have been and what could have happened to her after she arrived early for filming are hazy at best among the people who could have been here. Maria, David, Lynette, and Grant would be the ones with the best possibility of having encountered her, yet none of them did. And all of them said that they got only bare details about a role being cut from the cast.

Astor hadn’t told any of them about the girl who had been given the role. They didn’t know her name or what else she had done in her career. So when that role was cut, rather than thinking about what had happened to that girl, they just saw a shift in the script.

There is a strong possibility that Astor made it all up. He’s known for embellishing stories and telling tales he thinks will get him attention and impress people. He’s always showing off and trying to get people to either laugh or admire him. Maybe this was just another one of those stories. This is the same man who eagerly fed into the morbid fascination of the audience by pushing through a version of Blood Crop after news of James’s disappearance broke out.

There are still threads that could connect Jillian to the missing girl Danielle Fox. Even without anybody identifying her by picture, Danielle’s mother still insisted that the paperwork filled out for Astor was in her handwriting.

Hoping I might find more information about the possible sighting of the girl on the Appalachian Trail, I narrow my search to that. The one image of her that I saw was widely publicized, showing up in all the articles and news footage about her, but maybe there are more. That one was specifically taken of her with the other two people she met, but somebody else could have caught her in the back of a picture or while taking a group shot, not realizing she was in it until later.

I start sifting through all the stories I can find about missing people showing up on the trail. The results are sparse, and I don’t find any additional pictures or details. I go back to the beginning and consider the rumor that she was killed and hidden somewhere on the ranch. I start searching further, clicking on the image search to see if there are any maps or other visuals people put together to support their claims.

Among the images is the one from the trail. There’s also a map purporting to show where bodies are buried. I attach that to an e-mail to myself so I can access it later and print it out. I am about to close the images when I notice one of them is the cover of a book.

It looks familiar. The colors are bold and attention-grabbing. The graphic of a woman running down a dirt road creates that little bit of anxiety that makes me want to read the book to find out what she’s running from. I click on the book and read through the blurb.

Lured out to the beauty of the countryside for an opportunity she can’t pass up, Callie Rae finds herself at the mercy of a vicious killer aimed at continuing the bloody tradition of her family’s farm. She’ll try to run, but there’s nowhere to hide, and soon she’ll find herself among the others lost to the expansive land she will never leave. She thought she was coming to find her future. What she will really find is her end.

The glimpse into the book explains why it showed up in the image searches. It sounds similar enough to link them.

I’m finally starting to feel like I could get some sleep. I plan on waking up in the morning and printing out that map. I’m fully aware that the chances of it actually leading to anything are next to nothing, but I have to check. Putting my computer aside, I crawl into bed and turn off the lights.

I only get a handful of hours of sleep, but they are deep. I get dressed and head directly to the medical examiner’s office. I show my credentials at the desk, and a few moments later, the medical examiner comes out of the back.

“Ralph Glover,” he says.

“Agent Emma Griffin. I’m with the FBI. I am assisting Detective Noah White with an investigation. A potential piece of evidence came into your office yesterday, and I was hoping that you could provide me with some information about it.”

“By ‘potential piece of evidence,’ do you mean the corpse covered in wax?”

“Yes. So it’s real?”

“Let’s go back to my office.”

I follow him to his office, and we sit down.

“I removed the wax from the object and confirmed that it is an authentic human corpse. It is of a male. That’s really all I can say at this moment. I’m going to have to do a much more thorough examination of the remains to provide any sort of insight as to the identity.”

“Do you have any idea how long he’s been dead?” I ask.

“No. The conditions the body was found in manipulated a lot of the markers that would help us to identify how long ago a person died. I might get a clearer idea during the full autopsy.”

“Thanks. When is that going to be completed?”

“Within the next twenty-four hours.”

I leave the medical examiner’s office and call Noah.

“I was just dropping by my favorite diner to grab some breakfast. Can I get something for you?” he asks when I tell him I’m on my way to the station.

“That would be good, thanks.”

I get to the station before Noah. He arrives just a few minutes later carrying two large paper takeout bags. This time he brings me to a conference room. This is the type of room set aside for the family and friends of victims or witnesses that aren’t suspected of having any involvement in the crime. As opposed to a stark, gray box with a bare table and chairs, this room is painted a soothing teal and has soft, comfortable furniture. Noah sets the food out on a dark wood coffee table.

“What did you find out at the medical examiner’s office?” he asks.

“He confirmed that the body is human. It is an authentic corpse, and it is male. Right now, he can’t give me an idea of how old the person was or anything like that. He can’t even tell me how long he has been dead. But he’s going to be doing the autopsy within the next twenty-four hours and should have a lot more information then.”

“So what are you thinking? Do you think Howard was killed because he took that body out of storage? Maybe whoever did it was angry that it was found and killed him so they wouldn’t be uncovered?”

“If that was the case, they wouldn’t have left the body there. Not in storage for the first time and not in the basement after Howard was murdered. As much as I initially thought that all these stories about the ranch and the mysterious deaths surrounding movies shot here were all just urban legends and ways to give more intrigue to a horror movie, the more I look into it, the more it seems like a lot of them are at least based in reality.

“I couldn’t sleep last night, so I did a lot of research. I found a map somebody posted that supposedly shows where some of the bodies are buried on the ranch. I don’t know who made this map or why they have the information they say they have. I also think it’s most likely nothing. Just somebody playing along. But it’s worth the chance. We now have two bodies. And if there are more, we need to find them.”

Noah takes a bite of a massive bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich. He wipes his mouth with a napkin and nods.

“We have a new class fresh out of the Academy. They are just aching for something useful to do,” he says.

“I’m sure they are.”

Astor Barrett meets us at the ranch. He has just gotten back into town, and when I contacted him to ask for permission to do the search on the grounds, he asked to be present as we do it. He wasn’t hesitant and didn’t seem put out by me wanting to search. There was just a protective note in his voice. I am perfectly happy to have him there while we look around. As long as he doesn’t get in the way, it doesn’t matter if he’s there or not. He could even help us navigate the huge space and better understand how it was developed over time.

But even more than that, I need to ask him about the body in the prop shed.

The first thing I do is show Astor the map.

“Does this look at all like it coordinates with any part of the ranch?” I ask.

He looks at it for a few seconds, tilting his head back and forth like he’s orienting himself.

“Yes. This looks like the back plot. It’s the furthest piece of the land from here. It’s actually where the original house used to stand. It was there until a couple of years before I bought it. Nobody had lived in it for generations, so it just kind of sat there. As far as I know, it was used for some storage. But it burned down.”

“It burned?” I ask. “Did they ever find out what happened?”

“Yeah, it wasn’t anything nefarious. Somebody who didn’t realize that it was private land was camping and accidentally started a small wildfire. It was contained fairly quickly, but unfortunately, they couldn’t save the house.”

“But you’re pretty sure this is a map of that area?” I ask.

He tilts his head one more time just to confirm. “That’s what it looks like. What is this about? You told me you wanted to search, but not for what.”

“We are following up on some of these stories being told about the property and deaths and disappearances that have happened around it. This map was published online and is supposed to show burials.”

His eyes widen slightly. “This is where the witch coven was supposed to be buried?”

“The witch coven?” I ask, convinced I couldn’t possibly have heard what I think I just did.

“It’s one of the stories I heard about the ranch a long time ago. One of the reasons I was so fascinated by it. There was a story that one of the original family members stumbled on a coven of witches performing rituals on the land. He took it upon himself to eradicate them and buried them right here as a warning to others.”

“Do you believe that?” I ask.

“Not literally. I don’t think anybody found an active coven out here and killed them all. What fascinates me is the origins of these stories. Why do they exist? What is it about this land that has made people come up with these stories and keep passing them down? But this could mean there’s a possibility that something like that actually did happen. Can I come with you for the search?”

“Actually, I need to talk to you.”

He’s clearly disappointed, and any thought of what could be happening out on the far plot of his land disappears quickly after I tell him about the body.

“In my prop shed?” Astor asks, sounding horrified. “You found a body in my prop shed?”

“I didn’t find it. Howard Spade did. He wanted to add some authentic pieces from the original movie, and he found a body bag in the back of the prop shed and it had a prop corpse in it. He had come up with this whole idea of torturing a person with hot wax, so he covered what he thought was a prop in wax. But it wasn’t a prop. It was a real corpse. A man.”

His mouth falls open. “James?”

“I don’t know. Other details haven’t been confirmed. It’s going to take a lot of work to confirm an identity.”

“You don’t think… I didn’t do anything to James. Ask anybody who was here that day. I wasn’t alone from the time he walked away from the set until we realized all his stuff was gone and we all went to bed. We were filming and setting up shots that entire time. There wasn’t a single minute when I didn’t have somebody else with me.”

“I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m just trying to get any information that you might have.”

“I don’t have any information about a body. I didn’t know it was there.” He looks around like he sees something I don’t. “I need to go. I need to get out of here. Am I free to go? Can I leave?”

“Of course. You don’t want to be here while we’re here?” I ask.

“No, I just need to get away from this place right now.”

“Please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you think of anything else. I’ll be talking to you again.”

He doesn’t answer but gives a nod and rushes to his car.

Since the plot of land is so far out, I get into my own car and drive in the direction the rest of the team had gone. By the time I get there, they have triangulated the location of the marks on the map meant to indicate graves.

“Do you see anything? Does anything look disrupted?” I ask.

“This whole area looks disrupted,” Noah says. “But it does look like there could be something here.”

An hour later, he’s holding a bone in his hand.

“Is there anything else in the grave? Did you find any fibers or jewelry or anything that could put a date on when this person ended up in the ground?”

“Not yet,” he says. “But this whole place needs to be roped off, and we need to get the right teams here. These are human remains, and they are nowhere near the family cemetery.”

Noah sends the brand-new officers away, and soon they are replaced by a forensics team. I’m watching them carefully unearth a leg bone when my phone rings. Sam’s number is on the screen.

“Hey, babe,” I answer.

“Why won’t you stop interfering with my game?”

It isn’t my husband’s voice. It’s been mechanically modified so it comes through in cracks and warping volume. The words make my blood cold.

“Who are you?”

“Why won’t you stop interfering with my game? Do you know how long it takes me to choose my players and come up with their challenges?”

I hang up and call Sam. My heart is beating so hard I can feel it in my throat until he answers.

“Hey, honey. What’s up?”

“Are you okay?”

“What’s going on?”

“Are you okay? Where are you?”

“I’m fine. I’m at home. What’s going on?”

“I need you to make sure all the doors are locked and be very careful. I love you.”

I hang up before he responds. My phone rings and displays Sam’s number. I know that it has been spoofed, so it may not be him.

“I don’t like when people hang up on me, Emma. I don’t think you understand the rules of my game. I didn’t invite you to play.”

“I don’t believe you.”

The call drops. I checked to see if it’s because I’ve lost reception, but this seems to be one place where the signal is strong. It must be because we are at the far back of the property near a street. Almost immediately, my phone chirps to alert me to a new message. I open it, and I feel like a cold hand has grabbed my spine and is pulling it out of my throat.

“Noah!” I shout. “Noah, I have to go.”

“What do you mean you have to go?” he asks disbelievingly.

“I’m sorry, I will come back as soon as I can. And I will keep looking into all this. I will get you the answers that you need. But I have to go.”

I run and jump into my car. Dropping my phone on the passenger seat beside me, I start the engine and turn toward a narrow path leading to the main road beyond. Out of the corner of my eye, I can still see the video clip that just came through. It’s only a few seconds long, but it’s enough for me to see Paisley—the chosen player who went into a safe house, having avoided any communication from the Game Master at all. The footage clearly shows her coming out of the house onto the back porch. Holding a cup of coffee, she takes a deep breath and then a long sip. Words in bright-orange font appear across the video:

Can you save her?

I don’t even bother to go back to the hotel to get what I’ve left there. I will call them and have them box it up and ship it to me or keep it for when I come back to town. I fully intend on being back here. I still need to answer these questions. But for now, I have to get back. I drive directly to the airport Zara directed me to. It’s almost an hour away, but she can meet me there, and I can get to Ashbury in a fraction of the time.

While I’m in the air, I’m on the phone with the agent assigned to keep Paisley safe.

“I need her moved. I can’t answer questions right now. I can’t get into it. But I need her moved. Don’t tell anybody. And I mean nobody. No family. No neighbors. No friends. Don’t even tell Eric. Just move her, and don’t take your eyes off her for a single second. If you are stopping to pee, she’s in there with you. Do not leave her.”

We land, and I thank the pilot I have depended on many, many times.

“Absolutely. If you need me again, just call me,” Zara says.

I’m already running toward the rental car that’s waiting for me. Almost as soon as I am out of the parking lot, my phone rings again. This time I don’t recognize the number.

“Who now, Emma? Who haven’t I played with enough?”

The call drops, and I call Detective Melton.

“I’m coming in from the airport. I need you to get an officer to Baron Johnson as quickly as you can.”

“You’re back in town?”

“Yes, I need you to get an officer to Baron. Get eyes on him. Make sure he is okay. I need him monitored. If he isn’t going to cooperate and we have to figure out some traffic charge to arrest him on, do it. Get him off the streets to where people can watch him, and keep everybody away from him.”

“Emma, you’re scaring me. I need you to tell me what’s going on,” he says.

“I can’t right now. I will explain everything. But right this second, I just need you to do that for me,” I say.

I spend the rest of the day at full speed trying to shift around every person I have in protection and find those who are not being protected and make sure that they are safe. I warn all of them to stay away from their phones and any devices. Not to be alone for any reason. It seems almost futile.

Even as I move them around, I am acutely aware of the fact that I don’t know how he’s getting the information that he is. I don’t know how he found Paisley. And even if I can put a protective bubble around every one of the people he has contacted and who is still alive, that doesn’t mean it’s the end of it. He can keep choosing more.

And he does.

“What’s going to happen when she can’t answer my riddles, Emma? She thinks she’s clever, but not enough…”

“He should be finding my first message now. Imagine his excitement…”

“I don’t understand why they can’t do the simple things that are asked of them. Maybe this one will succeed. And if not—”

“Try me.” The words come out of my mouth before they even formulate in my mind.

The brief pause on the other end of the line tells me he is surprised.

“What did you say?”

“I said try me. Leave them alone. I’m offering myself to you as a player. Let me play your game. See how I can do.”

“Interesting,” he says.

“You cannot get me to kill anybody. I’m not going to blow anything up. But give me your riddles. Give me your puzzles. Not them. Leave them alone. Try me.”

He hangs up without another word. My heart beats so hard in my chest and ears I feel like all of me is rattling. I keep driving. I don’t have anywhere else to go. I have checked on everybody. I have rearranged safe houses and put other people in protection. I have done everything I can think to do, including volunteering myself to save these people. And I got no answer. Now I don’t know what else I’m supposed to do. I’m just waiting.

I drive aimlessly for hours, well into the night. I’m too tired to keep driving and go to the hotel. I drop into a dreamless sleep almost as soon as I hit the pillow. I wake up to the sound of my phone ringing.

“I’m calling to accept your offer. Don’t write any of this down. I will know if you do. Get in the car and drive fifteen miles east. Take your first left turn and go another three miles. Then turn right and go ten miles, turning left twice at even intervals. Repeat the first step, only in reverse. Go now.”

Since I didn’t bring any of my clothes with me, I’m still wearing what I was yesterday. I don’t care. I run out of my hotel room and jump into my car. I repeat the instructions he gave me over and over in my head, making them more concrete and easily recalled the more times I hear them cycled through my thoughts. I follow them intently. I get to the second of the two left turns at even intervals.

Now I’m conflicted. His wording was ambiguous, and I know it was meant to be. He said to repeat the first step, only in reverse. Which could easily be interpreted as needing to go fifteen miles to the west. But I don’t feel like that’s what he means. Instead, I throw my car into reverse and head backward down the road. The entire time I’m gripping the steering wheel as hard as I can and muttering prayers that I won’t hit anybody or anything.

My phone rings a few miles in. Even though the screen says the call is from Noah, I can’t skip it so I can concentrate on this. He very well could have spoofed Noah’s number just like he did Sam’s.

I answer, expecting it to hear my next set of instructions. Instead, it is Noah’s voice. It’s so heavy I almost can’t hear it over the engine of the car.

“Emma, Maria is dead.”

For an instant, I’m aware of headlights behind me, then there is a deafening sound followed by a blinding pain in my head, and I dive forward against the broken glass of my windshield. Everything goes black.

It’s still black when I finally come to. I don’t know how long I’ve been unconscious, but pain radiates through my entire body. I’m aware of a blindfold over my eyes, keeping out any light and stopping me from seeing my surroundings. Pressure around my ankles, on my wrists, and across my thighs makes me try to move, but I can’t. I’m tied to something. A gag in my mouth is coming perilously close to my throat.

I can sense somebody around me. Wherever I am, I’m not alone. I strain for the sound of footsteps and hear them falling softly on the ground. It’s the kind of trained step of someone never wanting to announce their arrival with their feet rather than their voice. I keep trying to move, trying to scream, but I can’t.

Suddenly, the presence feels stronger near me, and I catch a whiff of cologne. The heat of a man’s body comes close to my side. I feel the breath along my cheek and neck as he leans down to put his face close to mine. My stomach twists with dread.

And then he whispers to me.

“Do you really think I wanted you, Emma? I don’t want you. I want Xavier.”

Dear Reader,

Thank you so much for reading The Girl and the Last Scene! Writing this book felt a bit like being dropped into the middle of a chaotic movie set. Complete with backstage drama, missing cast members, and a director on the brink. More than once, I caught myself wanting to yell “Cut!” at my computer when things got a little too intense. And now that the final scene has wrapped and the dust has settled, I can honestly say this one was a whirlwind. It was exhausting, exhilarating, and so much fun to write. Like any big production, there’s a mix of relief and a hint of mourning when it’s all over… but I’m so glad you were here for the ride!

And if you thought this story packed a punch, just wait until you see what’s coming next. The upcoming season finale will push Emma and Xavier to their absolute limits as they face off against a mastermind who knows their every weakness. With twisted games, buried secrets, and a dangerous enemy pulling the strings, the final showdown is fast approaching and no one is safe. It’s the end of the line for the web of lies and betrayal that’s been quietly unraveling all season. I hope you’ll join me for this explosive finale as Emma fights to protect the people she loves and bring justice crashing down once and for all.

While Emma’s fighting battles on one front, her cousin Dean Steele is uncovering dark secrets of his own. In Hidden Intentions, the second-to-last book in his gripping series, Dean is drawn into a harrowing case when a star swimmer is found dead and a teammate vanishes without a trace. What begins as a tragic mystery quickly unravels into a tangled web of corruption, blackmail, and lies within the halls of a prestigious school. With the series finale just around the corner, you’ll want to catch up on Dean’s journey as he edges closer to exposing a powerful network that will stop at nothing to stay hidden.

Thank you for being part of this journey. I’m eager to hear what you thought of The Girl and the Last Scene, so if you have a quick moment, please consider leaving a review. Your feedback and enthusiasm have been instrumental in shaping the direction of this series, and I’m incredibly grateful for your continued support. Thank you for helping to bring these stories to life!

Yours,

A.J. Rivers

P.S. If for some reason you didn’t like this book or found typos or other errors, please let me know personally. I do my best to read and respond to every email at mailto:aj@riversthrillers.com

P.P.S. If you would like to stay up-to-date with me and my latest releases I invite you to visit my Linktree page at www.linktr.ee/a.j.rivers to subscribe to my newsletter and receive a free copy of my book, Edge of the Woods. You can also follow me on my social media accounts for behind-the-scenes glimpses and sneak peeks of my upcoming projects, or even sign up for text notifications. I can't wait to connect with you!

Emma Griffin FBI Mysteries

Season One

Book One—The Girl in Cabin 13*

Book Two—The Girl Who Vanished*

Book Three—The Girl in the Manor*

Book Four—The Girl Next Door*

Book Five—The Girl and the Deadly Express*

Book Six—The Girl and the Hunt*

Book Seven—The Girl and the Deadly End*

Season Two

Book Eight—The Girl in Dangerous Waters*

Book Nine—The Girl and Secret Society*

Book Ten—The Girl and the Field of Bones*

Book Eleven—The Girl and the Black Christmas*

Book Twelve—The Girl and the Cursed Lake*

Book Thirteen—The Girl and The Unlucky 13*

Book Fourteen—The Girl and the Dragon’s Island*

Season Three

Book Fifteen—The Girl in the Woods*

Book Sixteen —The Girl and the Midnight Murder*

Book Seventeen— The Girl and the Silent Night*

Book Eighteen — The Girl and the Last Sleepover*

Book Nineteen — The Girl and the 7 Deadly Sins*

Book Twenty — The Girl in Apartment 9*

Book Twenty-One — The Girl and the Twisted End*

Emma Griffin FBI Mysteries Retro - Limited Series

(Read as standalone or before Emma Griffin book 22)

Book One—The Girl in the Mist*

Book Two—The Girl on Hallow's Eve*

Book Three—The Girl and the Christmas Past*

Book Four— The Girl and the Winter Bones*

Book Five—The Girl on the Retreat*

Season Four

Book Twenty-Two — The Girl and the Deadly Secrets*

Book Twenty-Three — The Girl on the Road*

Book Twenty-Four — The Girl and the Unexpected Gifts*

Book Twenty-Five — The Girl and the Secret Passage*

Book Twenty-Six — The Girl and the Bride*

Book Twenty-Seven — The Girl in Her Cabin*

Book Twenty-Eight — The Girl Who Remembers*

Season Five

Book Twenty-Nine — The Girl in the Dark*

Book Thirty — The Girl and the Lies*

Book Thirty-One — The Girl and the Inmate*

Book Thirty-Two — The Girl and the Garden of Bones*

Book Thirty-Three — The Girl on the Run

Book Thirty-Four — The Girl and the Last Scene

Ava James FBI Mysteries

Book One—The Woman at the Masked Gala*

Book Two—Ava James and the Forgotten Bones*

Book Three —The Couple Next Door*

Book Four — The Cabin on Willow Lake*

Book Five — The Lake House*

Book Six — The Ghost of Christmas*

Book Seven — The Rescue*

Book Eight — Murder in the Moonlight*

Book Nine — Behind the Mask*

Book Ten — The Invitation*

Book Eleven — The Girl in Hawaii*

Book Twelve — The Woman in the Window*

Book Thirteen — The Good Doctor*

Book Fourteen — The Housewife Killer*

Book Fifteen — The Librarian*

Book Sixteen — The Art of Murder*

Book Seventeen — Secrets in the Acadia

Book Eighteen — The Forgotten Girls

Dean Steele FBI Mysteries

Book One— The Woman in the Woods*

Book Two —The Last Survivors

Book Three — No Escape

Book Four — The Garden of Secrets

Book Five — The Killer Among Us

Book Six — The Convict

Book Seven — The Last Promise

Book Eight — Death at Midnight

Book Nine — The Woman in the Attic

Book Ten — Playing with Fire

Book Eleven — Murder in Twilight Cove

Book Twelve — Under the Mask

Book Thirteen — Hidden Intentions

A Detective Riley Quinn Pine Brooke Mystery

Book One —The Girls in Pine Brooke

Book Two — Murder in the Pines

Book Three — Strangers in the Pines

Book Four — Shadows in the Pines

Book Five — Letters in the Pines

Bella Walker FBI Mystery Series

Book One— The Girl in Paradise*

Book Two— Murder on the Sea*

Book Three— The Last Aloha*

Other Standalone Novels

Gone Woman

* Also available in audio