Page 121 of A Forgotten Mistake

“The door is latched from the outside,” he notes.

“It is, but she could have locked it using the window here if she had something to help her. It would have thrown off the attacker if she had the time to do it,” I say as I notice the chip on the paint of the handle, like something metal was slammed against it.

Gabriel steps to the side as he slides the latch open. “Locking herself in a space with no way out means she didn’t think she’d make it much farther. Ready?”

“Yes.”

He swings the door open, and I move in. The shed is cluttered. There’s a zero-turn mower in here, along with boxes and a Christmas tree that seems to have been forgotten in a corner judging by the number of spiders making it their home. If Sadie has a gun on her, she’s at an advantage while I sweep myflashlight along the area. Gabriel has my back when I step onto the deck of the mower and see her tucked in the corner.

“Put your hands up where I can see them,” I say, though when she doesn’t move, I can’t help but wonder if she’s already dead. I can see that the only thing she’s holding is a hammer. Her other hand is pressed tightly against her chest where blood has bloomed out around the wound.

“Put your hands up,” I warn as I move in.

When I reach for the hammer, Sadie jerks back. “Please,” she whispers.

I pull the hammer from her hands and toss it. There’s really not much room to push her forward to cuff her, and even if there were, I don’t see much sense in it. She’s pale, her breaths are coming rapidly, and she can’t seem to even sit up straight.

Her eyes struggle to keep hold of mine. “They killed her. They killed so many. Please. You have to stop them. Please. They watched her die. They enjoyed it. They laughed when she begged for help. They’re monsters. They deserve this. They deserve worse.”

“Who shot you?”

“I don’t know… there’s one left. Please.”

Something about her desperation and the depravity of what happened feeds the darkness inside of me. It makes that desire to hunt wake up. “I’ll find them,” I say quietly before adding, “I’ll stop them and make them pay for what they’ve done. Do you know who they are?”

“I don’t know. None of the others would tell me. Please. Christa… I finally got her out of that horrible life with our parents. I raised her. They deserve this. They deserve it…” She leans against the cabinet, and I can see her mouth moving, but I can’t make out what she’s saying. Her breathing comes in gasps, like she can’t figure out how to find a single breath.

Gabriel is calling for medical personnel who descend upon her as I step out of the shed to meet up with him.

The team fans out, moving out from the direction of the shed as they search for Sadie’s shooter, who was also involved in killing her sister. She seems to be confident they are the last one, and I’d love to hear what her reasoning is, but at the moment, I’m not quite sure she’s even going to live. When I get tired of looking for someone who clearly is no longer here, I head back to the lake house and let myself in, Gabriel following close behind me.

“You’ll want to see this,” Chris says as he leads me back to a room where Matthew is staring at a wall covered in photos. The blur in each picture makes me feel like they’ve been pulled from videos. Most are just hints of people. Arms, legs, anything that she could use to identify a person. I examine them, looking for hints that she was able to run with. A scar on an arm that matches one found on Mitch’s body, a smattering of moles… this woman scrutinized every inch of what she was given. She tore it apart and slowly pieced together who had taken her sister from her life.

“She should have gotten a job in homicide. Maybe she can take Donna’s position if she lives,” I comment as I examine every single photo. “Anyone know where Jesse is? I have to assume he’s here by now.”

Matthew’s head snaps up. “Is he out back? He shouldn’t be out there alone. They really cared about each other, so he doesn’t need to see that.” He hurries off, concern written across his face.

“I wish she’d have worked with us,” Gabriel says. “We could have done something.”

I rock back on my heels as I survey it all. “Going through the foster care system, I met a lot of people like Sadie and Abby. They were children who had to become adults because there was never an adult in their life that they could trust. They hadto grow up and fend for themselves. In Sadie’s case, her whole world likely revolved around her sister. Raising someone when you’re only a few years older than them is hard enough, but becoming their whole world and then having that ripped away… I’m not surprised she still assumed she had to do it all alone. The police definitely didn’t do her justice when they wrote off Christa’s death as an accidental drowning.”

“It never should have been overlooked,” Jesse says from behind me. “It was a medical examiner who was already convinced that what they saw at surface level was the answer. They never bothered to look deeper. A troubled girl with a record of underage drinking found dead in the ditch… what else is there to look into?”

“Are you okay?” Gabriel asks him.

Matthew’s hand, which is on Jesse’s shoulder, tightens. Jesse reaches up to it and squeezes it gently before he takes a deep breath and moves forward. “This one is Mitch; the scars line up. This one is Steven. So then we have a tattoo… did the guy who died today have a tattoo?”

“His name was Anthony, and I don’t think so.”

“Cameron didn’t either. Might be your final guy. You said Abby and Sadie’s sister had tattoos. Could Abby tell you who did the tattoo? If they were all in the same friend circle, there’s the possibility the same person tattooed them.”

I notice Michaels standing in the doorway listening in, and my mind drifts back to Abby talking about monsters and the fact that her father died meant that another “monster” was created—or maybe got free.

“Michaels, can you look into the people that Abby’s father Ted was keeping an eye on before he was killed?”

“I can, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to find specifics if it’s not explicitly documented,” he says.

“Can you send up the videos that were found in Anthony’s place? I want to watch them,” I tell him. “But I’m going to stop by the hospital first and see what Abby has to say.”

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