At the mention of the name Margaret Tepper, Sammy glanced up from his MacBook for the first time in nearly an hour. He exchanged a quick look with Gimble and Vela. “I’m checking, hold on—”
It took him only a moment. “She was Alyssa Tepper’s mother. Looks like she passed away about ten years ago, breast cancer.”
Gimble turned to Longtin. “I asked you if you knew the name Alyssa Tepper, and you said you didn’t.”
“You asked me that? I’m sorry.”
Gimble stood, started pacing.
Vela reached into his back pocket and took out the feather they had found in the book. “Have you ever seen this type of feather?”
Longtin’s face went white. He reached for the feather, his hand shaking. “Where did you get that?”
Vela ignored the question. “You recognize it?”
Longtin’s fingers closed around the feather. He raised it to his cheek and stroked his skin with it. His eyes filled with tears again. “Early on at the treatment center, before I was confined to my room, I’d walk the grounds. I found a baby sparrow at the base of a willow tree. It fell from a nest about nine feet up. Doc Fitzgerald let me keep it, nurse it back to health. I had to feed it with an eyedropper for nearly a month, but eventually it got better and we had this little ceremony where I released it back into the wild.” He paused, wiping at his eyes with the back of his hand. “At the settlement hearing, Doc gave me a feather just like this, but it had dried blood on it. He told me, ‘Broken things don’t always deserve a second chance.’”
With a loud pop, the power went out.
The small cabin went dark.
The only remaining light came from the fire, which was nothing but glowing embers now.
A single shot echoed outside, and Gimble whipped around to the window.