Page 70 of Shiver

Devra didn’t respond, couldn’t. A lump had formed in her throat making it difficult for her to swallow. With trembling fingers, her mama dug into the envelope and pulled out a yellowed photograph of a smiling man standing with his hands on the shoulders of a young boy. Sitting next to them was a woman bouncing a toddler on her knee. Devra took the picture from her mama’s fingers.

As she looked at it, she thought she should feel something. Obviously, these people had some connection to her. But she didn’t feel anything but numb. “Who are they?”

“That’s my brother and his wife,” her papa said.

“You have a brother?” she asked, surprised.

“He was killed a long time ago,” her mama said softly. “So was his wife.”

Devra stared closely at the picture, at the little baby in the frilly white dress with a head full of tight yellow curls. “Is that me?”

Her mother’s eyes closed as pain filled her face. “Yes,” she said softly, so softly Devra almost didn’t hear her. She stared at the baby a moment longer, awed by the happy smile and chubby little legs. Then she perused the faces of her real mother and father. They looked like such nice people. They looked as if they loved her. They looked as iftheywould have fought for her.

“Why didn’t you tell me you weren’t my parents? Why didn’t you give me the chance, give them the chance to—” She’d meant for the words to come out strong, demanding, insistent, giving them no room to back down or retreat, but at the last moment, her throat tightened and tears filled her eyes.

As they cleared, she focused on the boy in the picture. Something quivered inside her. “Who is the boy?” she asked, unable to keep the tremor out of her voice. Because deep down, she knew who the boy was.

Her mama looked at her papa, who shook his head, his eyes imploring her to keep silent.

“Tell me, Mama. Is this boy my brother?”

She nodded, some secret pain aging her face and dulling her eyes.

Devra stopped breathing. “I don’t understand,” she whispered. “Where is he? What happened to him?”

Taking great pains, her mama opened an old newspaper article and smoothed it across the table.

“You shouldn’t have kept that Lydia,” William admonished.

Devra’s stomach turned and the room tilted as the bold, black headlines leaped off the page.Thirteen-year-old boy bludgeons mother and father to death. Baby survives.

“You are that baby,” Lydia whispered.

Chapter 26

Riley turned to the chief.“We have to find her.”

“Mandy, call Mrs. Hutchinson and see if she’s at the B&B. Call her parents, too, then put an APB out on Officer MacIntyre’s vehicle.”

Riley quickly wrote down the color, model, and plate number for her. A homicidal maniac was after Devra and if Riley didn’t act fast, he was going to lose her. An overwhelming sensation of helplessness overcame him.

Evil wouldn’t win. Not again.

Riley grabbed his jacket off the coat tree by the door and stopped. “Chief, she has my gun.”

“What?”

Riley’s cell phone rang from his pocket.

“Riley,” Tony’s voice was triumphant. “Don Miller’s last known residence is New Orleans, before that Miami, three years before that Portland, and before that Seattle. Every city where one of our murders took place.”

“She’s at her parents,” Mandy called.

“Tell them to keep her there,” the chief ordered. “We’re on our way.”

Riley and Chief Marshall both hurried out of the building to the chief’s car.

“Sorry, Tony,” Riley said into the phone. “And before that?”

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