Page 64 of A Forgotten Mistake

“Fucking hell, you haven’t done shit. You asked if I’d nibble on your cream stick, and suddenly you think we’re friends?”

“Stop calling it a cream stick,” I beg.

“His long john? Is that better?” Liam asks. “You know I like your long john best, my sweets.”

“Aww, we’re passing around pet names now? If Gabriel is Sweets, then Liam is Sugar and I am?—”

“Shithead.”

“Weirdly, I feel like I got the short end of the stick there,” Matthew says.

“Any stick is short when we’re talking about you.”

Matthew gasps. “You’ve seen my stick.”

“You have?” I ask, wondering when the hell this happened… and why.

Liam holds up a thumb and pointer finger and puts them about an inch and a half apart. “Vienna sausage.”

“Vienna sausage, my ass,” Matthew grumbles.

I see something and snap our train to a stop. “What’s that?” We release hands—much to Liam’s happiness—as I point at a mark in a tree. The tree hasn’t started to scab over yet, and the mark is seeping a bit, telling me it’s fresh.

Liam walks over and inspects the mark before lifting something invisible and swinging, as if testing out the arc the object would have taken. “Blunt object, not super thick in diameter. Impact would have been lower on Liz; at this height, he would have been aiming for her back… must not have wanted to hit her head.” He makes the swing and freezes. “It flipped out of his hand when he struck the tree, not having expected the impact. See here how the wound in the tree stops but there’s a ring here?”

I step forward and see that whatever it was must have eaten into the tree.

“That ring would have been caused by the object being snapped back, as if he lost control of it.”

“So it would be something hollow?” I ask.

“Yeah, hollow with a sharp end.” Liam draws back and reenacts it again.

I question, “Where’s her dog in this? Like… it’s not often a big dog would just stand by while their owner gets taken. Was it so far ahead it didn’t see anything?”

“Looks like it wasn’t too far away,” Matthew answers as he points to a leash hooked between a large root and the tree base. The end of it has been chewed off but there’s no dog in sight.

“Matthew, can you get Kenny over here? See if he can find the dog. It could have bitten the attacker if it was this close,” Liam says, surprising me that he wants Kenny anywhere near him. Unless he wants him close to the leash for some “light strangling,” as he’d doubtlessly call it.

“Got it,” Matthew replies, hurrying back as I see Liam scooting leaves back before kneeling.

“You find something?”

“Sure did,” he says as I come over and see that there’s a pipe lying among the leaves. Matthew returns with Kenny and the team, half of which go to help look for the dog, but the other half come over to document what Liam’s found. Once it’s cleared for Liam to move it, he lifts one end of the pipe with a gloved hand.

“Huh.”

“What?”

“It’s a strip of steel tubing, but what makes it interesting is that the inside is polished… they’re often used for hydraulic cylinders.”

“Which… means?” I ask.

“See the grooves in both ends? Neither side shows any wear, telling me that it wasn’t removed from something…butthere’s a blemish in one end.”

“From hitting it against the tree?”

“No, from when it was made. It was likely scrap, which means it would have come from somewhere it’s beingmanufactured. The average person wouldn’t have any purpose for something like this. With this type of steel and the polished inside, it has a specific purpose. How many manufacturers that work with steel are in the area?”

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