Page 95 of I Am Sin

A knife that came from our own kitchen, they said.

Did it? I didn’t know.

The beginning of the end.

Because whoever hurt Griffin that night came back several months later.

And this time they took her away.

I didn’t know that, of course. Not until years after the fact.

Did my parents truly think I had escaped the group home they had forced me into and come back and taken my little sister?

They must’ve thought so, because they didn’t come to get me.

They never reclaimed me.

Griffin disappeared.

This isn’t something I talk about. No one knows about Griffin except Jesse and Tim. So who could be calling? I trust both Jesse and Tim, so how would anyone else know? And why would he be messing with me?

But…

What if it’s true? If this person knows where Griffin is, does that mean they know where her body is? Her tiny five-year-old body, decomposed by now?

Or…

Is Griffin alive?

No.

She can’t be.

They wouldn’t come to me. They’d go to my parents.

But I have no idea if my parents are even alive. I gave up caring about them decades ago.

They forsook me, so I forsook them.

But I have to know.

I have to know if this phone message was real or if it was just a horrible trick.

I walk to Diana’s room and knock.

She opens the door just as she’s ending a call. “Dragon?”

I swallow. “I don’t want to bother you, but I need your help.”

“With what?”

“Do you know how to trace a call?”

She shakes her head. “No, but my family has resources. What’s going on?”

I pull up the number on my phone. “I just got a call from this number. I need to find out who it belongs to. Where it came from.”

She takes a look at it. “It’s a Denver area code, so it couldn’t have come from far. Unless of course it’s someone with a cell phone with a Colorado number who is now living somewhere else.”

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