Page 80 of Everything She Feared

But what if I’m wrong this time? What if somehow, in some way someone drew a connection from Anna Shaw to my past? What if those online searchers have gone from being ridiculous to being right, and right down the street? Watching? Waiting to do—what?

I can’t be found and I can’t be found out. If the world discovers the truth—Stop this!

Sara got offline, got away from her computer.

Deciding to clean her house, she dusted, vacuumed, then changed the sheets on her bed, then Katie’s. The mundane tasks gave her a sense of accomplishment, a sense of control, restoring a measure of order to her life. She found it therapeutic.

Maybe I’m overthinking this.

Anna’s death was horrible, but maybe the detectives coming back was nothing more than a routine follow-up? And, like Dr. Mehta had suggested, maybe Katie’s reactions were normal responses to witnessing a traumatic tragic event.

I just need to get a handle on everything.

Since she was changing the sheets, Sara decided to do laundry and began collecting clothes in the hamper. In Katie’s room, clothes were scattered helter-skelter. Sara was forever picking up after her.

Getting down on her knees, she checked under the bed for any fugitive socks or underwear. Nothing, but she did a double take.

Some pages were hanging down, wedged into the bed frame.

Katie’s spiral-bound drawing book.

Sara pulled it out and began flipping through her sketches of birds, trees, butterflies, hand tracing.

I’ve seen these drawings. Katie’s shown them to me. But why hide this book under her bed?

Sara continued turning pages, coming to the last one on which Katie had sketched, gooseflesh rising on Sara’s arms from what she was seeing.

In Katie’s scrawl, she’d titled the drawing:The Park.

It showed two stick people, one labeledAnna, her mouth agape, tilting, falling from a cliff. The second one, labeledMe, arms outstretched toward Anna, her face wide-eyed, her mouth open.

The balloon of dialogue from Anna said:Help!

The balloon of dialogue from Katie:Why, why, why!

34

Tacoma, Washington

The woman behindthe counter at the drugstore handed a prescription to a man with a cane. She rang up the transaction, the man left and Ryan Gardner approached her.

“Could you help me?”

She was wearing a white smock. Her name tag saidSherry Evers. “What would you like?”

Ryan indicated a shelf nearby. “Could you recommend something for a backache?”

She came around the counter, led him to the display. A source had tipped Ryan that he’d find his subject working at Giger’s RX Pharmacy, an independent store in Tacoma, and that her name was Sherry Ursula Evers.

As Ryan had done so many times with so many other leads over the years, he’d checked out the pharmacy until he found her on duty. Now, with Evers so close to him, he absorbed every detail. She was the right age, the right height.

“I was thinking about this.” He pointed to a box on a higher shelf.

Eyeing her, he studied the wrist extending from her sleeve as she reached for the box. She had flawless skin. Not a mark. And all he could think was that he’d struck out, again.

Then something happened.

She raked a free hand through her hair and a single strand caught the light as it fell, floated and coiled, landing on the bottom display shelf. Evers hadn’t noticed. Ryan pretended to listen as her glossed fingernail tapped the medicinal ingredients on the box while she told him about the remedy.

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