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A war etched deep into Boucher’s expression, one that held him hostage between his career and his family. They both knew what was about to happen. No officer—Lebanon or otherwise—was permitted to work a personal case, and there was nothing she could do to help him. He talked to her from over his shoulder. “The chief sent over the list of names you wanted from the school board while we were in Concord. I ran each of them through the database. There aren’t any recent hits. Whoever killed our vics, he’s planned this for months, if not years. He’s too good to slip up now.”
Then she’d been wrong. About all of it. The realization threatened to unravel everything they’d been doing these past few days, but she couldn’t think about that right now.
“Talk to your ex. See if she remembers anything more. Anything unusual. I’ll keep you in the loop. I give you my word.” It wasn’t much, but it’d have to be enough. As long as his son was missing, Boucher had to take the bench.
“Yeah.” He slipped back into the hallway.
She stared after him as the past threatened to override the present. This room… She could feel the warmth, almost hear the laughter of that little boy in the photos. It sucked the oxygen from her chest and left her empty all over again. Turning in the center of the room, Leigh mentally catalogued everything. Dust patterns, the locked window, the blankets strewn across the floor. None of it out of place. Carter’s abductor would’ve known his mother was home. Would’ve planned for that. So how had he gotten in?
Police hadn’t been able to determine the killer’s entry point in either the Brody or Garrison home. Detective Maynor had settled on the theory that Derek Garrison had been taken from the elementary school, while he believed her father had taken full advantage of killing Troy inside their own home. But neither of those scenarios were possible here.
In a matter of seconds, she was that seventeen-year-old girl again. Standing in a room that’d seen so much love, so much life, then left barren as though it’d been nothing but a dream. Believing she’d made it all up. That she’d made Troy up. That moment had set her on a path to graduating high school early, to leaving everything she’d known and loved behind, to taking on as many college courses as she could physically handle to graduate with her criminal justice degree and putting herself through the police academy. It was the moment she’d held on to to keep going when she’d gotten the news about her mother, when she’d handed her captain her papers, when she’d hit dead end after dead end in her brother’s case.
Time hadn’t eased the grief. She hadn’t let it. Because it was that pain that’d sharpened her into something else altogether, and it was happening again. Stripping her free of the need to try to get this town to accept her and her family. Killing off her desperation to prove her father’s innocence. Conditioning her into the agent Carter Boucher needed her to be. Not the one shaped by her brother’s murder.
A fraction of the fury Boucher had shown took root as she stood in the middle of his son’s room. She’d wasted so much time convincing herself she could conquer the past.
But the truth was, nothing she’d done had gotten her closer to Troy’s and Derek’s killer. And trying to force the pieces to fit wouldn’t do a damn bit of good for Carter Boucher, the missing boy from Fruitland, or any of the other victims now.
Not until she let everything she thought she knew about herself, about these cases, about this town go.
“Talk to me, Carter. Why did he target you?” Leigh shoved a full rack of clothing to one side to get a better view of the closet. Kids hid all kinds of things they didn’t want their parents to know about. Considering Carter Boucher’s age, a closet would just be the beginning. Given enough time, he would move on to air vents and returns, prying molding off the wall, or shoving things under his mattress. She combed through an impressive Lego collection. Typical sets she’d expected, half-built, random pieces scattered across the carpet. Carter had stacked the empty boxes along the top shelf, and her personal obsession made quick work of matching each box to its set.
There was one set without a box though.
Leigh scanned the rest of the closet, finding the cardboard shoved into the corner on the floor. She pushed aside a pile of discarded stuffed animals to get to it.
Exposing the crawl space access door.
TWENTY-FOUR
Lebanon, New Hampshire
Tuesday, March 16
7:30 a.m.
That was how he’d gotten in.
Into her childhood home, into Carter Boucher’s. Her memories of the Garrison home in the original investigation file confirmed her theory. All three victim homes had crawl space access, but because Derek Garrison’s body had been found in the backyard shed, Lebanon PD hadn’t made the connection. Splinters of wood frayed around the crawl space access in Carter’s closet suggesting it’d been nailed shut at one point. Now all that was left was a collection of bent nails scattered in the dirt beneath the house.
Leigh fought a yawn as sunrise broke through the bedroom window and cast a streak across her laptop screen. Her legs begged for relief, folded under her as she worked from the middle of Carter Boucher’s room.
The search team had grown overnight, pulling in hundreds of capable men and women from border to border. Volunteers scoured beyond property lines with spotlights, flashlights, and radios. Chief Maynor had called in a K9 unit from Concord while neighbors made sure the team had coats, food, and water. Gabriel Boucher had gained their trust as an officer by protecting them and this town. Now he’d need them more than ever.
Only there was no sign of Carter.
As though he’d simply vanished.
Leigh knew better. She read through the Fruitland file for a third time, cover to cover. Fruitland PD was desperate. Her request for the investigation file had been granted in less than forty-eight hours and emailed over to her last night. While she couldn’t be sure without speaking to the lead detective directly, she had the feeling the town of less than six thousand residents wanted any help they could get to bring Michael Agutter home.
“I thought I might find you here.” Chandler Reed leaned against the bedroom doorframe. She hadn’t heard him approach. Odd, considering that while the Boucher home was newer, there were still spots in the hallway that creaked. “You look like you haven’t slept in two days.”
“I grabbed a couple hours in the car this morning.” It was the stupidest decision she could’ve made in the middle of an investigation. Exhaustion meant she wasn’t thinking clearly, and her reaction times would be compromised. Any small slip—any mistake—on her part, and Carter Boucher could lose his chance of coming home alive.
The federal investigator came into the room, much too large and taking up too much space. He seemed to take it all in, right down to the toy soldier she hadn’t let Lebanon PD collect. “What are you doing here, Leigh?”
There was a familiarity there she didn’t have the mental capacity to process at the moment. Like they’d known each other all their lives. Leigh forced her attention back to the computer screen and the pixelated words starting to lose their shape in front of her. “You already know the answer to that.”
