Page 31 of Silent Desires

After two hours of digging, Ben suddenly exclaims, “Ah ha!”

I jump up quickly, looking over his shoulder. “What did you find?”

“Okay, see this here? It’s her current license: Helen Davies. Now look at this one here.” He pulls up another file beside it.

“Hellena Davenport,” I read aloud.

“Look at the pictures,” he adds.

The haircut is different, but it’s clearly the same person. “That’s great! What have you found on Hellena?” I ask, staring at the screens, excited to finally have a lead. People don’t just create fake identities for the fun of it.

“Nothing yet—I literally just found this,” he says, already clicking away. I pace back and forth, squeezing my stress ball while he works.

“Okay, here’s what I’ve got: Hellena only seems to have existed for four months and lived in Rock Springs before just up and leaving one day. Nobody’s heard from her since. She rented an older home for cash and, according to reports, lived there with her husband and son.”

“What? That doesn’t fit with what Mina told us. She said Jeff has only been with them since they moved here and there’s no mention of a daughter?” I ask, confused.

He keeps clicking. “No… weird. Let’s check the dates of any murders in the area. They’re not really a match, but…”

“Go on,” I say, prodding him to explain.

“Just about two weeks after she left, a seventeen-year-old girl was murdered in that same town, and they still have no suspects or leads.”

“But that was two weeks after Hellena left, so either it wasn’t her…” I trail off.

“Or… they lived somewhere else for a few weeks, knowing the timing wouldn’t match up,” Dom adds from the doorway. “We need to put together a timeline of each murder and track Mina’s family’s movements to see if it matches,” Dom states.

I nod, already picturing the perfect wall to pin this out on. I love mapping—laying out the whole case on the wall is like a visual snapshot, it lets you think about it in an entirely different way. You don’t have to waste your brain power remembering little details if you lay them out in front of you. Then you can just look for patterns or similarities and connect the dots.

“I’m going to keep looking to see if I can find any other identities for Helen,” Ben says absently, already clicking away with his keyboard. Dom nods and leaves the room.

I slap my palm on Ben’s shoulder and give it a squeeze. “Good job, bro. It feels like we’re finally getting somewhere after months of almost nothing.”

“Tell me about it. But… Atlas?”

“Yeah?” I stop mid-exit to look back at him.

“Do you think Mina is involved?”

I sigh. “I hope not. Why would she tell us about all those cities if she was? But there’s definitely something going on with her. She is involved somehow and hiding something. She might be protecting someone.” He nods sadly in agreement.

I leave the room, thinking about the sweet girl who’s working her way into all our hearts.

Chapter twenty-one

As we head toward the gym, I let myself actually look around at the other students. What catches my attention the most is that no one else is holding hands. There’s one guy with his arm around a girl’s shoulder and a couple of girls with linked arms. I watch two girls hug each other before leaving in opposite directions. That must be a goodbye hug, like Dom and Atlas gave me earlier. I should start giving all my friends those. They seem to like holding my hand, and they’ve both hugged me, so they’d probably like it if I initiated it. It would show them I like them and that I’m their friend.

But what I don’t see is any other friends holding hands. Weird. I don’t really know what to think about that. I like holding their hands, is that strange?

When we reach Tucker’s office, the twins pull me inside and shut the door. Jasper reaches into his bag and passes me a small, wrapped present. I stare at it with wide eyes. Another present? Max already gave me the mp3 player, and now Jasper was giving me a gift? I try to keep the tears from falling so they don’t think I’m crazy. I need to stop crying so much around them.

“Go on, unwrap it!” Max saysexcitedly.

I smile and rip the paper off. It’s a cell phone in a beautiful green case covered in trees.They remembered my favorite color.

“It’s a phone!” Max says excitedly.

I stare at it in shock. This is abigpresent.

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