Page 35 of Catching Fire

“Yes,” Maggie answered.

Seline filled in more. “My thinking was that maybe there's something else from his family. Some property that came to him with little or no fanfare. Something he can use …”

She didn’t say for what.

No one asked if this even mattered. The FBI had to be looking into every possibility. The four of them surely weren't better than the feds at this, but Seline had todosomething. And if they did get anything that helped, then it would be worth every minute.

Even as Seline thought this, Ivy asked, “I know his cabin was in the park, but where?”

“Here,” Sebastian immediately put his finger on the map. It was probably forever burned into his brain from when he’d run to save Maggie’s life. He’d pinpointed a small batch of mostly abandoned cabins in the middle of a swath of green. “And it was listed as being owned by one of his great uncles. He’d passed about a decade ago.”

“The uncle’s last name was also Sanders?” Ivy asked.

Maggie and Sebastian both nodded and Seline was grateful. She hadn’t known that.

Ivy looked at all of them expectantly. “Has anyone looked under his mother's maiden name?”

Chapter Twenty-Two

“Those are in a different room,” Ivy told them. “Follow me.”

Maggie and Seline were immediately on their feet, tagging along behind the petite librarian as if she were the Pied Piper.

But Kalan put his hand on Sebastian's arm and held him back. He waited until the room cleared but didn’t wait for his friend to ask what he wanted.

“We're on shift in less than twenty-four hours. If there's no word about Balero …” He left the question hanging in the air between them.What should they do about Maggie and Seline?

Sebastian pressed his lips together. “I've been thinking about that, too. We passed Marina’s fourteen-hour mark while we were here.”

Kalan felt that settle heavily into his heart. Though he too had noted when the time had passed, he hadn't commented. He hadn’t wanted to bring up the time frame that they knew the Blue River Killer dispatched his victims in. Though the FBI hadn’t called to tell them anything, Marina Balero was most likely dead.

“Even if we find anything,” Sebastian said, “We're probably saving the next person, not Balero.”

That was hard to come to terms with. He’d managed to push the twist in his gut away enough that it hadn't quite dug its claws in until Sebastian confirmed it just now.

They'd all ridden Seline’s coattails of anxiety earlier. When she’d demanded that she had to do something, they'd all agreed. Doing something had certainly felt much better than sitting and waiting as the FBI had instructed. In fact, if Sanders was watching, what they were doing now was an appropriate response for four friends—two couples—given the news that their friend had disappeared.

He didn't know if the women had noticed that they were in the other room by themselves, though it would have been hard enough to miss. They were probably just quietly giving him his space.

Ivy had been on her feet all morning, popping up and down as she answered the phone or the door or helped another patron. At ten, a volunteer had come in and the librarian had finally been able to fully lend them her full focus. It was making a difference.

Just maybe not enough of one.

“There's also the issue of that strange call Seline got.” Kalan kept his voice quiet, not knowing what might be happening on the other side of the slightly ajar door.

“The FBI hasn’t found anything from the call.” Seline shrugged. “They thought it was a prank, too.”

“But what if it wasn’t?” he asked. Did it mean there was another murder?

Sebastian didn't need to answer. In Blue River Killer shorthand the single word could mean that there was another body out there waiting to be found. But no one had found a body—yet.

Frustrated, Kalan rubbed the palm of his hand over his short, curly hair, the texture of it soothing in some way. “Sanders likes his bodies to be found.”

Luckily, Sebastian didn’t need the full explanation of how he’d gotten there. “That's true.”

“So why did it take so long to find the body with the second note?” Sanders didn’t hide his victims. He posed them with the intent that they be found and terrorize everyone who knew about them. He offered up something that had been bugging him, something he hadn’t wanted to share with Seline.

“It wasn’t properly anchored,” Maggie replied.

---