Page 12 of Once Silenced

“Right here,” Riley murmured, tapping the spot.“That’s what the numbers you found are telling us.”

She knew that park as a place of towering trees and silent trails—a location that was surely not chosen at random.

“Is that...is that somewhere we’re going?”Jilly’s voice broke through the suspense, her eyes wide.

“No,” Riley replied hastily.“But it’s important information.Very important.”

As she looked back at her daughters, she saw reflections of herself—the same relentless drive for answers, the same desire to see justice served.But she also saw innocence, a precious quality she would do anything to protect.And so, she wrapped her arms around them both, holding on to the moment before everything changed again.

“Girls,” she said, “you’ve been a real help.This could be a major break in an FBI case.”

April and Jilly leaned in closer, their bright eyes mirroring the screen’s glow.They were eager for details, but Riley hesitated.She’d always been meticulous about keeping her professional dangers separate from the sanctuary of home.Yet now, the two worlds were colliding, and she wondered how much to reveal to her daughters.

“Mom, what is it?”April pressed, her curiosity growing.“What does this have to do with your work?I thought you were just teaching now.”

“Have we been helping you find clues?”Jilly chimed in.

“Something like that,” Riley managed to say.She was weighing the potential harm of telling them anything further when the front door creaked open, heralding Bill’s unexpected arrival.The girls erupted into a flurry of excited chatter, pulling him into the dining room.

“Mom solved a real mystery with our help!”Jilly exclaimed, tugging at Bill’s sleeve as he took in the scene before him.

“Really?”Bill responded, eyebrows raised in surprise.He glanced at Riley, searching her face for an explanation.

“Easy, girls,” Riley interjected, her tone light but firm.“We just found something interesting, that’s all.”She offered Bill a tight smile, trying to quell the growing excitement and the inevitable questions that were sure to follow.

“Interesting, huh?”Bill said, giving Riley a look that suggested a deeper conversation was needed.

“Girls, why don’t you go finish your snacks in the family room?I need to talk to Bill for a second,” Riley suggested, gently steering them away from the table.

“Mom, you’re not going to tell us more?”April asked, disappointment etching her features.

“Later, honey,” Riley assured her.

Bill sat down, his frame filling the chair across from her.“Riley, what’s going on?”he asked, his voice low and serious.

“I think we’ve stumbled onto something big,” she began, her words tumbling out in a rush.“Big enough that I’m considering talking to Meredith about it.”

Bill just waited for her to continue, so Riley let the barriers fall, her words spilling out.“I called Hoke Smith today,” she confessed, watching as his expression shifted from curiosity to concern.“Mrs.Whitfield’s murder—it’s part of an ongoing FBI case.”

Bill leaned forward, elbows on the table, his attention unwavering.“And?”

“And I tried to get assigned to it.Went straight to Brent Meredith.He said no.”

“Of course, he did,” Bill muttered.

“Then I went back to my office and accessed the official file anyway,” she added, the gravity of her actions sinking in.It was a breach of protocol, a risk to her career, but she couldn’t let it go—not this case, not Mrs.Whitfield.

“Riley, you know the kind of trouble you’re in if this gets out?”There was no judgment in his tone, just a plain statement of fact.

She nodded.“I know.But Bill, the girls—they helped me make a connection.We found something that the team working on the case needs to know.”

“Found what?”His posture straightened, the investigator in him taking over.

“Coordinates,” she answered.Riley fiddled with the edges of the quiz sheets.“These are copies of sheets of paper that were pinned to the victims’ bodies.They’re algebra problems, and I knew it would take me forever to remember how to work them.So I got Jilly and April to do it.They pointed out something ...two anomalies among the answers.Then I remembered the problems that Mrs.Whitfield used to give us, where the answers were clues to a specific location.That's what these two odd ones were, not just numbers—they’re coordinates.”

For a moment, Bill’s eyes widened.Then, he leaned back in his chair, the creak of the wood breaking the silence that had fallen over the room.Riley watched his eyes, knowing that, like her, he understood the significance of this discovery.

“Coordinates,” he finally said, his voice carrying the gravity of the revelation.“And you think this is linked to Mrs.Whitfield’s case?”

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