Page 50 of The Lost Girls of Willowbrook

People still search the woods for the remains of lost children.

Heather’s and Dawn’s words shrieked in her mind. She gaped up at Eddie, grief and fear tightening her throat. “Do you think it was Cropsey?” she croaked.

“No.” He shook his head violently back and forth, his features contorted by shock.

Then a sudden realization gripped her. “What if it was Wayne?” she said with a trembling voice.

“I don’t know who it was. But let’s not stick around to find out.” He reached under her arm to help her up. “Come on, get up. We have to keep going.”

She pulled out of his grasp and scrambled away from him on her hands and knees. Tiny pebbles and sharp rocks dug into her palms. She got up and turned to face him, panting and out of breath. “What are you talking about?” she cried. “Wecan’tkeep going. It’sRosemary! It’s my sister!”

“I know,” he said. “And I’m sorry, but we need to go.”

“We can’t go! We have to tell someone!”

“We will,” he said. “I promise. But we need to get you out of here first.”

She shook her head, his face a blur through her tears. “No. We need to tell someone she’s down here. We need to tell someone she’s been murdered!”

“Who the hell are we going to tell?” he said, close to yelling. “Someone who works at Willowbrook? What do you think Baldwin will do when he finds out? Do you think he’ll call the cops and let everyone know one of the residents was killed? A resident who hasn’t even been reported missing yet?”

“I don’t know,” she cried. “I don’t know.” She couldn’t think straight. And she couldn’t stop shaking.

“Well, I know. He’ll make this all go away and keep you here. He’ll send Rosemary to be cremated and it’ll be like it never happened.”

She felt faint. He was right. No one had reported Rosemary missing. And if Dr. Baldwin was capable of making up lies about a doctor molesting a resident to cover up what was happening in Willowbrook—who knew what else he would do? Norma and Eddie both said residents died there all the time and no one looked into how or why. And Rosemary wasn’t the first to disappear—what was one more?

But Rosemary had beenmurdered. She’d been taken down into these awful tunnels and someone had slit her wrists and throat. Whether it was Cropsey or Wayne or someone else, people had to know. They had to be warned. Then she had an idea. “Do you think the news crew is still here?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

She got to her feet and headed back the way they had come, her legs trembling, her hands clutching the damp tunnel walls to keep from falling. “We need to tell them before they leave.”

“Wait,” he said. “What if they’re gone and someone sees us?”

“We have to try!”

“Okay. But it’ll be faster if we go this way.” He pointed back the way they’d been headed. “If we hurry, we can run across campus and maybe catch them on their way out.”

He was right. They’d taken so many twists and turns, it felt like they’d walked a hundred miles. Going aboveground and taking a straight shot back to House Six had to be faster.

But that would mean walking past her dead sister.

There was no other choice. She returned to where Eddie stood. “You go first.”

Staying close to the opposite wall, he moved past Rosemary, then turned and held out his hand to Sage. “Come on,” he said. “We’ve got to hurry.”

She took a deep breath and, keeping her eyes on him, slipped past Rosemary’s body. Then she turned and took one last look at her.

“I won’t leave you here,” she said. “I promise. And I’m going to find out who did this to you if it’s the last thing I do.”

Then she followed Eddie a few more yards, climbed up a utility ladder through a manhole cover, and crawled out of the tunnels.

CHAPTER 13

A bitter wind whipped across the snow-covered campus, stinging Sage’s eyes and pushing tears across her cheeks as she ran. After spending so much time inside the dark walls of Willowbrook, she squinted against the sun, a high pinpoint of light in the sky that blinked and flickered behind scudding clouds. Her feet slid back and forth inside the too-big boots, grating against her heels and the balls of her feet like sandpaper. She ignored the pain and kept going, past four-story buildings and shuddering trees, across snowy roads and drifted yards. When her feet broke through a crusty snowdrift, she nearly fell but caught herself before tumbling forward, her hands scraped raw by ice. Eddie stopped and reached back to help her.

“Keep going,” she shouted. “Get to the reporters before they leave!”

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