Logan Fox wasn’t a private investigator tonight. He wasn’t an ex-cop or a neighbor to his two best friends. He was just a broken man with a thousand questions and no way of finding any answers. No sane way, at any rate.
It had been two nights since he’d received the call. The woman, whose voice he didn’t recognize, had been quick to tell him that his daughter was still alive. She then said she would be in touch, and Logan had been on pins and needles ever since. He’d been sitting by his phone for long periods of time, paying no mind to his need for food or water. If there was another call to come, he didn’t want to miss it.
At the end of those two nights, he gave up. Logan needed air and contact as soon as possible. Not contact with the living, of course, but some kind of company from the ones he loved so dearly. He had made his way over to the cemetery as soon as night fell.
Now, he was standing over their graves.
The questions came back to him, hurling themselves at his hurting head like a meteor shower. What if his daughter really was alive? Where was she, and why had she not shown herself this whole time? Was his wife alive, too? Was an empty casket buried under there?
It hurt to think. It hurt to breathe. Logan knelt on the patch of grass, looking over the two graves side by side. He thought about how he’d loved his family. How much joy they had brought to his life before their deaths had left him unable to love again. Months ago, their killer had been standing right here, urinating on their resting places to make his point. That man was now in prison, but that wasn’t enough. Logan felt only hate and rage as he stared at the names carved into the stone. He had killed them, and then he had…
“Are you under there?” he dared to ask, talking only to himself in the quiet cemetery. “Were you buried alive under there, or did you not even make it to the casket?”
It was no use. His voice was breaking under the pain and torment of the questions. Deep down, he wanted to believe that the mystery woman was telling the truth. That his daughter, Amber – whom he had physically held in his arms as she lay dead – had somehow survived the night and gone on to live a life for the next six or seven years. That after everything, there was still a chance of being reunited with his little girl.
No. It was a fool’s belief… wasn’t it? Logan wanted nothing more than for this evil, wicked lie to be true, but it wasn’t. Amber was dead, and so was her mother. Logan stood up, feeling the stiff joints pop in his massive legs as he let the spring, night air caress his cheeks. As much as he wanted to believe it, he couldn’t. Being here was only making things worse, which made him want to head home and crawl under the duvet, where he could hide from this miserable world and everything in it.
Where maybe, just maybe, he would get another call.