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Leigh dragged herself to her feet with the help of a nearby tree. No use in searching for her gun now. It’d take all night. She’d have to come back in the morning. See if whoever’d attacked her had left anything behind. But right now… She fell forward into the next tree, legs shaky.
Over and over, she stumbled from one trunk to the next until a hint of light bled through the trees. Streetlights.
She fell from the tree line onto flat ground. Numbness had taken hold. She could see the house. She was close enough to reach it, but her legs were done.
Wind gusted hard, and a can—empty from the sound of it—rolled onto the flattened dead grass in the front yard a few feet ahead of her. The lid was missing. A nozzle stared straight back at her. Spray paint? Then she saw it. Leigh army-crawled toward it. A fetid smell of forest and chemicals eased into her lungs as she fought to focus on the large letters graffitied across the garage.
Her head felt foggy, as though she wasn’t really lying there and was seeing all of this through some viscous filter. She’d managed to scrub off and paint over the obscenities directed at her father on the siding yesterday morning, but this…
Go back to where you came from.
The artistry was crude and stark, but the message came across clear as ever.
This was for her.
It would’ve been the first thing she’d seen when she’d climbed into her car in the morning. A sick cold leaked into her gut. Someone had come onto her property. They’d known she’d been home. They’d targeted her. They’d attacked her. This might’ve started with what’d happened twenty years ago and her family legacy, but now it was personal.
Her brain filtered through the rush of faces she’d met since coming into town as she lay back against the scratchy grass. Chris Ellingson, Officer Pierce, Tanja Carson, Katherine Garrison—none of them had wanted old memories or old cases brought back into the light.
But she wouldn’t stop. Not until this killer was behind bars, and she proved her father hadn’t killed Troy or Derek Garrison. She sucked in a deep breath and forced herself to her feet. She screamed into the trees. “I’m not leaving! You hear me? Paint whatever you want on my house. I’m not going anywhere.”
Her warning set off a light in the house across the street. Then another next door. Hinges protested as front doors opened, and Leigh turned herself to meet curious onlookers head-on. She was making a spectacle of herself. Just as she had as a teen, trying to get anyone who’d listen to see the truth. The police had it all wrong. Her father was innocent. A lot of good it’d done. Anyone she’d ever trusted had turned their back on her. Called her crazy. Worse. She was done. With them. With this town. With this case. “I’m not leaving.”
The words left her mouth as nothing more than a whisper.
Right before the world went black.
TWELVE
Lebanon, New Hampshire
Saturday, March 13
8:00 a.m.
A piercing rhythm punctuated through her senses. Bright. Assaulting.
This… wasn’t her childhood bedroom she’d been sleeping in the past few nights. This wasn’t her house. Exhales puffed from between her dry lips. Leigh lay on her side. Her arm had gone to sleep from the weight. Overhead lights burned her eyes, but a small plastic green figure took shape on the side table just out of reach. Troy’s toy soldier. Watching over her.
“Mr. Reed wanted to drop it off personally,” a voice said.
Chandler Reed. That was his name. The unit’s forensic investigator had kept his promise to take as small a sample as he could to compare to the soldiers left with the recent victims. Only the tip of the infantryman’s rifle was missing. A clean cut. He’d brought it back to her.
Her stomach overturned, and she reached for the mug of water on the table. “I need to throw up.”
“I recommend the Jell-O.” Heavy shoes scuffed too loud against the crisp white tile. A withered hand with perfectly short, manicured nails eased a plastic container of deep red gelatin into her vision. Then wiggled it back and forth. “The sugar will settle your stomach until you get your bearings back. Black cherry is my favorite.”
“I prefer watermelon.” Leigh rolled onto her back. Her entire body ached. Like she’d been shoved down an incline landmined with rocks and dead trees and freezing creeks by an unknown assailant. An IV tugged at the back of her hand. The rhythm she’d heard before still chimed in time with her heart rate. Embarrassment heated her face as she worked her way higher up the pillows stacked behind her, and that rhythm spiked. The newest member of Livingstone’s unit had been lured and blindsided by a ghost in the middle of the woods. She could hear Boucher’s taunts now. If the director didn’t ship her back to Clarksburg first.
“They have that, too, but you’ll have to get it yourself.” The deep voice pulled at a string she’d tried to sever since leaving Lebanon, and it was only then she realized Detective—no, Chief—Brent Maynor was the one who’d handed off the container and a disposable spoon. Sunspots peppered a ragged face and accentuated the years that’d taken a toll. That light brown hair he’d had a habit of running his hands through had receded more. Thinned out, too. Wrinkles had congregated around brown eyes that’d always made her feel invisible. He smoothed that trademark black suit, white shirt, and black tie, hesitant. “I’m out of favors today.”
A deep ache set up in her shoulders. She didn’t even want to think of how she looked right now with dead leaves and dirt in her hair.
The plastic utensil aggravated the cuts in her hand, but she managed to pry the sealed aluminum lid free and took a bite of the rubbery contents inside. Her stomach practically welcomed the change in acidity, and her head cleared enough to register she was, in fact, in a hospital. Most likely Dartmouth-Hitchcock. Didn’t explain how she’d gotten here though. Or what the lead detective assigned her brother’s case was doing beside her bed. Still, she’d feel a hell of a lot better if she could get her bearings. “How long was I out?”
The chief checked his smartwatch as he took a seat in the pleather chair a few feet away. Despite the early hour, Maynor’s suit had maintained its meticulously pressed lines. Same as the graying hairs around the man’s face. Not a single one out of place. Maynor liked control. Having it, keeping it. Then again, it took an expert level of assertiveness and discipline to lie through his teeth for two decades. “Going on ten hours. Nasty bump you got last night out there in those woods. I take it you don’t remember how you got it?”
Another flare of heat. The Jell-O had lost its taste. There was only one reason for the chief of police himself to wait until Leigh had gained consciousness: Her involvement with the unit and this case was over. She set the container and spoon in her lap. “Someone was at my house last night. He ran when I tried to confront him. I followed him into the woods. Bastard warned me to leave town then shoved me down a hill. I landed in the creek.”
