Toni snapped around and rushed out of the room, leaving Jeff with the wall of photos. Articles. Printed pages. One was a local newspaper article written around the time of Annabelle’s disappearance.
He knew what it said, because he’d read it before. Online. From his deployment at the time. He’d been with the Army even then, out on missions every night, when he’d received that email from his mom.
She was gone.
Annabelle, who had pushed every boundary set for her, driving them all crazy and keeping his mom up all night at Hope Mansion—and not because of the residents and the help they needed. Instead, with her constant shenanigans.
Jeff ran his finger down the family photo. The three of them, and their mom. All they’d needed after Brett and Jeff convinced her to leave their dad. But it was like Annabelle hadn’t wanted to see anything other than her own pain. He’d had no idea how she justified the concept that she was the only one who hurt after what they’d lost—the fact they’d sent their father packing. Who knew where he was now. Jeff didn’t care.
Annabelle had gone off the rails for whatever reason she’d formed in her head. He’d been overseas and Brett said she hadn’t wanted to open up to him, her oldest brother, about what her deal was. And when Jeff tried, she never responded. That left their mother. Except the two of them had never gotten along, and Mom was about the last person Annabelle would have had a vulnerable conversation with. Which only left Jeff with more questions. Like whether something had happened to Annabelle that he and his brother never knew about.
But then she was simply gone.
Frustration bled away at the idea she had been victimized or hurt. Or killed. Even after the issues they’d had, Jeff’s only concern had been the fact he was thousands of miles away with no way to help. By the time he’d been able to come home, all the leads were cold.
He scanned the papers Toni had taped to the wall. A forestry service report from a fire road close to where her car had been found the night Annabelle went missing. The road had been washed out by heavy rainfall the week before her disappearance and was then inaccessible. Next to it was a forensic analysis of fibers found in the car.
But no one had found the vehicle his sister drove. Not the police, or Tate, or anyone. So where had Toni discovered this? It made no sense.
If she’d been investigating Annabelle’s disappearance on her own—and that in itself was crazy—then she’d made far more progress than the police had.
Voices drifted to him from down the hall. Toni spoke to whoever the older woman’s voice belonged to. The homeowner who was her landlady, most likely. But he wasn’t about to go out there. This town wasn’t a place where anyone could see his face, besides the scant few who knew he wasn’t dead, as the military had reported it. Better that this woman never saw him here, and he hoped that Toni didn’t mention his presence.
He eyed the wall again. Clearly, Toni knew him.
How, he had no idea. Maybe she was a reporter, or private investigator. Though why she’d decided to look into what had happened to his sister, he had no idea. Had someone hired her?
Jeff ran his hand through his hair, then scrubbed it down his face. What on earth was going on here?
He tugged his phone from his back pocket and swiped up for the camera, then moved to the bedroom door. Toni had pulled it almost completely shut when she went to talk with the landlady. That alone made him wonder if she was still interested in safeguarding him. This woman had invaded his life. And she’d done it in more than one way, judging by that wall of photos.
Jeff peered around the corner, then used his phone to zoom in. He snapped a picture of Toni with her face mostly in profile. Unless she turned to him, that was the best he would be able to do.
He ducked back into the bedroom and sent the photo via text from his unregistered burner phone to another unregistered burner phone. A number he had but never used since he was declared dead.
Care to share who this is?
If anyone knew, it would be Zander. And if not, the guy could run her photo through channels Jeff had no access to and maybe get a hit. Figure out who she was—because she wasn’t just some local girl cleaning the gym at night. Too many things made him wonder if she was a pro. Maybe not special operations, but certainly she’d had some training given how she’d responded to her fingerprints being left at the Simmons’s house.
The amnesia might have thrown things out of whack. Still, it was in the way she moved. Her instincts, like closing the bedroom door just now. That wasn’t consideration of his situation by someone who knew nothing about operational security. A one-armed man stuck out. And if this landlady had been around town any length of time, she’d be able to recognize him on sight.
His phone buzzed.
You don’t know?
Jeff frowned at the screen and replied,
I’d ask her, but she has amnesia. So answer the question.
A second later, the three dots became a message.
No way. Amnesia?
Jeff replied.
That’s what I said.
Zander’s answer came seconds later.
Not my business to circumvent His ways.
Jeff wanted to throw the phone across the room. Instead, he went to the window to see if the landlady had left yet. Then he’d be able to get answers from Toni. She had to know more now about who she was, and he needed that information. Especially since Zander wasn’t willing to give him anything.
Toni showing up, but with amnesia of all things, was a work of that guy shooting at her.
Jeff frowned. God had allowed it to happen.
He worked his mouth side to side as he realized he hadn’t even considered that God might be doing something in his life, or hers. The fact was, he figured God had left him to his choices since that bomb blew his arm off.
Was God still trying to work in his life?
On the bedside table, below the window, a battered Bible lay next to a framed photo. Two girls stood together; their dark-skinned cheeks pressed against each other as they smiled for the camera. Happy children, no matter that their tall socks had holes in them. Or that the wall of the house around them was cracked and the paint peeling. He’d been in places like that in the world and guessed it was Nigeria or Somalia, though he could easily be wrong.
Toni, and her sister? The one who had drowned off a boat?
A delicate gold necklace hung from one corner of the small frame, a cross at the end of the chain. Jeff lifted the Bible and tipped it open with his right hand to let the pages fall from one cover to the other. Several were loose, and a feminine hand had made notes in the margins of most of the pages. Text was highlighted in several colors and long passages had been underlined. Dates. Names in the empty space around verses. This was a person who lived close to the Word of God.
It shamed him that his own Bible lay in a drawer. Undisturbed.
Toni’s life and Christian walk had led her to search for his sister.
The answer came to him, like God speaking to his soul. He turned to the wall, still holding the Bible. That was what she’d been doing here. Looking for Annabelle’s body.
The weather reports. The car his sister had been driving. She’d been building a case, though they knew who had killed her from a recent witness statement. Finally. Bridget had been working with police to find Annabelle’s body. And here, Toni was doing the same thing.
Jeff turned back to the photo. A woman who had lost her sister knew what it felt like. And never knowing where her body had been left? Toni would know how much worse that was.
He moved to the window so he could stare out at the silence of the night. Day would come soon enough, dawning the same way Toni’s memories would return. Bit by bit, illuminating the dark places and bringing her life and personality back to her.
Before he could think on it too much more, Jeff spotted someone creeping around outside. A dark figure. Most likely a man, though it was hard to tell from this distance.
He went to the bedroom door, making sure he remained out of sight. Toni was still talking to the landlady, reassuring her she was all right even though she’d been absent for so many days. “Toni!”
Her reply was tentative. “Yeah?”
“Is there a back exit? Someone is outside.”
The landlady said, “In the closet, dear.” She started to ask about a man in Toni’s bedroom, but he couldn’t stick around to hear how Toni would explain this. Not when their safety could be in jeopardy.
Jeff found a trapdoor in the closet floor. Below it, a ladder was affixed to the wall of the dark barn. He used it to climb down and then jumped off the bottom rung where he flipped on his flashlight. It would double as a weapon, or he could drop it and pull his gun. Not ideal, but it was what life had given him to work with.
Not my business to circumvent His ways.
The barn smelled like animals from decades ago; storage in one corner, sectioned off with a wire cage door. Stalls down one side, probably used for horses years ago. A car had been parked in the center and then covered with a tarp. An old, classic model, if the lines were anything to go by. He wouldn’t mind a look under there after he checked out the situation.
As he moved to the side door, he had to wonder why Zander was suddenly so hot on not messing with what God might be doing. Had he changed in the last couple of years? He hadn’t been a believer before, and this seemed almost mystical. Not really, considering faith was a spiritual thing. Jeff’s mom was in tune with that stuff, and she would often say God had spoken to her or given her a dream. He’d just never experienced that himself.
And yet, God might even be using him right now to keep the two women upstairs safe from potential harm.
He sighed and eased the side door open. It was a lot easier living a solitary life in his cabin than getting involved with people and their messy lives.
A rustle behind him had Jeff drop his flashlight and reach for his gun. Before he could draw, a heavy weight slammed him up against the door. His head glanced off the wood, and he winced. Breath escaped his lungs in a rush.
He brought his knee up. His assailant grunted. Jeff grasped for his gun.
A crackle sounded a split second before pain coursed through his middle. As his body jerked, Jeff realized what’d happened.
He’d been hit with a stun gun.
He fought the effects, but as soon as the voltage stopped, he realized he was on the floor. The assailant kicked him in the head. Even that didn’t knock Jeff out, so he was aware when the man grabbed his jacket collar and started to drag him across the barn floor using Jeff’s own flashlight to light the way.
He bit back a moan when the man dumped him in the storage cage in the corner and slammed the door shut.
A second later, he heard liquid splashing.
Then he smelled it.
Gasoline.