Page 43 of Her Dying Secret

Before all the blood.

No.

I can’t think about that. I will be too sad and I’m already sad enough with nobody here. I play with all my treasures, put them back, play again, put them back. I eat what food was left for me. I don’t like it but it’s important to only eat things that haven’t been tampered with or poisoned by the people who want to take us away. My belly still wants more. I fall asleep thinking about protein bars.

One day you’ll have all the protein bars and food and special treats that you could ever want.

I hear her voice in a dream. She was the one who told me about promises. When I wake up, I think about all the promises she made, but then the whisper comes back.

Whose blood?

By the time I hear the noises that mean he’s back, I almost can’t wait to see him. I run to greet him but when I get there, my feet get frozen to the ground. I don’t understand what’s happening.

“Not now,” he snaps.

But I can’t help the question that falls out of my mouth. “What did you do this time?”

THIRTY-TWO

Josie stared at the photos of the envelope, Tranquil Trails brochure, and Post-it note now arrayed on the corkboard. After sending Noah to Bobbi’s to drop off the cat, Josie had gotten checked out at the hospital. No permanent damage to her vocal cords, luckily. Then she went home with Noah to their sweet, cuddly dog. She got lots of Trout snuggles, took the longest bubble bath of her life, and got a full night’s sleep. As refreshed as she felt, with lots of ibuprofen on board to dull the pain all over her body, she still couldn’t figure out the significance of the note or why Mira Summers had taped it to the underside of a kitchen drawer. Josie had even had two cups of coffee to jump-start her day and she was still stumped. The handwriting on the Post-it was the same as on the outside of the envelope. It said: He’s here. We have to tell. It was unsigned.

“He” had to be Seth. Who else? They didn’t know who had given Mira the envelope, but Hummel was trying to pull prints from it as well as from the Tranquil Trails brochure and Post-it which might shed some light on that. Still, the message “we have to tell” was bothering Josie. Tell what and to who? Tell the authorities about the child in his custody? For all they knew, the child was Seth’s. Or did the “we have to tell” refer to April? But April had been kept without sunlight for the better part of a year, so if Seth had been camped out on the Lees’ property with her, that didn’t make much sense. Also, Denton PD had searched the property extensively and hadn’t found any evidence that April had been kept there.

Josie was guessing that if Seth was, in fact, driving a box truck, he’d probably locked her in the back most of the time. A white box truck on the Tranquil Trails property would have drawn Rebecca’s attention for sure. Then again, they had no way of knowing how old the note was or when Mira had received it. She’d become a client at Tranquil Trails three years ago. Had she received it before then? Before moving to Denton? Or after? Had she received the brochure with the Post-it note affixed to it stating ‘He’s here,’ and then decided to become a client at Tranquil Trails? She’d been meeting secretly with Seth at the produce stand, so she had clearly known he was there. Was this how she’d found out?

The stairwell door whooshed open, and a gust of hot air rushed over her. The edges of the pages that weren’t completely secured fluttered briefly. Footsteps trudged behind her. Then came the creak of Gretchen’s desk chair. Josie knew it by heart. No matter how much WD-40 Noah sprayed on it, it always creaked.

“Stop obsessing,” Gretchen told her.

Without tearing her eyes from the pages, Josie said, “I can’t help it.”

“Try.”

Gretchen was right. The note wasn’t going to help them find Seth Lee or the child in his custody or, now, Mira Summers. All it did was raise more questions than it answered. But why hide it in a place nobody would ever look? It hardly seemed worth hiding at all. Was she missing something? It had to have some meaning to Mira that Josie couldn’t yet see.

“Seriously,” Gretchen said. “Stop.”

It still hurt to talk but the painkillers helped. “I can’t help it.”

The door opened again and this time, Noah strode through it, his phone and a notepad in hand. As he walked past her, he said, “Stop obsessing.”

Gretchen said, “She can’t help it.”

“Try,” said Noah.

Josie turned and put her hands on her hips, the motion only setting off a dull ache in her shoulder and hand. “You two should be life coaches.”

Gretchen snorted.

The door to the great room opened for the third time in less than twenty minutes. Hummel this time. A folder was tucked under his arm. Josie was struck at how different he looked in his regular uniform and not a Tyvek suit. “You’re all here,” he said, striding toward their desks. He looked at Mettner’s old desk—no, Turner’s desk—and his expression darkened. “Almost all of you.”

“Do you have something that is going to break the Summers/Carlson case wide open?” Gretchen asked.

“I wish.” Hummel sighed and took out his phone. “Shit. I should have brought coffee to soften this blow.”

“Surely it’s not that bad,” Josie said. “Unless you couldn’t get prints from the envelope and its contents that we found at Mira’s house last night?”

“Um, I did,” Hummel said. “But I don’t think it’s really helpful. Probably just confuses things more. Unfortunately, nothing I have for you today is going to locate Seth Lee, the child in question, or Mira Summers.”

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