Alex pulled out his phone. “Like I was saying earlier, it’s much easier to look at property records with exact names. What was the last name again? Francis?”
I nodded and waited with bated breath as he typed several things on his phone, frowning with concentration.
“Shit. It only gives addresses, no photos.”
“Google the addresses,” I said hurriedly. “Usually if you do that, it shows you what the place looks like.”
“Fuck.” He slapped his hand against his forehead. “I don’t know why I didn’t already think of that, considering my whole ‘street view’ idea earlier.” He typed something in, then showed me his phone. “Look familiar?”
There was a photo on the screen of a large red brick Queen Anne-style mansion with ivy creeping up the facade. I shook my head. “I’ve never seen that.”
He nodded and typed something else before dismissing it after a cursory glance. “Not this. White Colonial, and it’s too small,” he muttered.
He showed me his screen again a moment later. “What about this?”
It was an enormous three story Georgian mansion made with pale red brick.
The hairs on the back of my neck rose, a fast prickle. A sense of déjà vu zinged straight through me, and a flash of stop-sign red burst across my mind. The photo wasn’t particular clear, but the effect it had on me was, crashing through me like cymbals smashing together.
I kept staring at the photo, my mouth open. Colors and images and voices were whirling in the front of my mind, twisting and twirling together until they coalesced into one stark memory.
I remembered standing outside this mansion now, looking up at it and marveling as my father smoked a cigar beside me. I knew he was well off, given his job, but we were nowhere near this level of rich. This place seemed like a palace to my young mind.
At the time, I felt like Cinderella after she was invited to the ball. Just a little girl, and all of a sudden I was allowed to attend a grown-up party in a lavish palace. I was so lucky. Anything could happen inside; all sorts of astonishing things, beyond my wildest dreams.
As it turned out, astonishing things did happen within those red brick walls, only they were beyond my wildest nightmares.
“Alex,” I finally whispered. “This is it….”