10. Ridley

10

RIDLEY

I hit the floor of the van with an oomph , and my head slammed back against it. The force had pain flaring bright as light danced in my vision. Then a loud and panicked meow sounded in my ear.

My eyelids fluttered, my surroundings coming into focus again. The van. The open closet. And lots of fur. I hadn’t been taken out by an intruder. I’d been taken out by my three-legged cat.

“Tater,” I muttered.

She meowed again, settling into pissed-off chatter. I stayed lying on the floor of my van for a moment, my head aching. My hand sifted through Tater’s fur, trying to calm her. The chattering eased, and she started to purr, but it only took a few seconds before she bit my hand.

The bites were never hard, exactly. It was her way of showing affection. But her tooth hugs could still draw blood on occasion.

I let her bite away as I nuzzled her to me. “I love you too.”

The purring was back.

Slowly, I pushed to my feet, setting Tater down and surveying the van. It hadn’t been ransacked. All my valuables were still in place. No one had made it inside.

But someone had tried.

That had a chill running through me. It must have been someone simply passing through the campsite, seeing what valuables they could find within easy reach. Because no one knew where I was staying. And the locals had just found out I was here. There wasn’t time for sabotage.

I still hated the idea of someone trying to break into my haven. Pushing to my feet, my head thrummed. I needed some Tylenol stat.

Tater made a sound of protest as I moved.

“It’s okay. You can come with me.”

There was an excited meow this time as she bounded out of the van after me. I’d had Tater since she was a kitten. When her leg had been damaged in the birthing process, her owner had dumped her at a local shelter. Something about the determined, little, three-legged creature had called to me, and we’d been together ever since.

Because I’d had her since she was so young, taking her wherever I went, Tater was used to following me in the outdoors. The only issues arose when she spotted a dog. She was not a fan and would climb me like a tree until she was perched on my shoulder like a parrot, leaving claw marks in her wake.

But as the sun dipped toward the horizon, Tater stayed close. I made quick work of locking up my bike and let my gaze scan my surroundings as I went. Nothing out of place. But that didn’t mean someone wasn’t there.

A video call alert came from inside the van, and I whistled for Tater to follow me. She easily jumped up into the vehicle, and I shut the door behind her, locking it. As I hurried toward my computer, I saw the incoming video alert. I groaned as I took in Baker’s name. Not exactly something that would help my headache.

Sliding quickly onto the chair at my desk, I hit accept . I'd expected just Baker, but instead it was a group call with him and Sully. They appeared onscreen, Baker with LA behind him, and Sully with New York as his backdrop, so in opposition to my current setting. I forced a smile, trying to shake off the events of the afternoon. “Hey. What’s up?”

Baker frowned at me. “What’s going on with your hair?”

My gaze flew to the rectangle on the screen that showed my face. My long blond locks had formed a sort of rat’s nest. I felt atop my head, wincing as I hit the tender spot where I’d clocked myself. “Was just out on my bike. That’s all.”

Tater jumped up onto my desk, meowing at Baker in an accusatory tone.

Sully leaned toward the camera, squinting. “You okay, Ridley?”

“Just dandy,” I lied and had a feeling Sully could read it.

“The first episode is going up tomorrow,” Baker cut in. “I need assurances that you actually have something here.”

I wanted to growl at him but bit it back. “I have something.” In reality, all I had so far was the background I’d managed to gather on Emerson’s case. Recording it between paddleboarding and my trip into town had taken hardly any time at all. And I knew that wasn’t a good sign. If I didn’t get some firsthand accounts and quick, I was going to be in trouble.

“And that something is?” Baker pressed.

I hadn’t wanted to lay my cards out just yet. I was still putting the pieces together. And I wanted the listeners to go on the journey with me, to care about Emerson’s story so the others’ would hit them even harder. Because if they cared, they’d rally around me. They’d turn over every rock until we had answers.

Answers I needed more than anything.

“I’m talking to locals. Getting a feel for the town and finding out more about Emerson.”

“You’ve got people willing to go on the record?” he pressed.

I fought not to wince. “Not yet, but I will.”

I knew Dean would go on the record, but he’d need parental permission, and I doubted they’d give it. Not to mention the fact that he didn’t really know Emerson and would barely remember what had happened a decade ago.

Baker sighed as if so damned disappointed in me. “Ridley. Pull the plug on this. Come to LA and do the spin-off I pitched you for a couple of weeks.”

I couldn’t help the way my nose wrinkled, as if I smelled something bad. Baker had wanted me to help launch his newest true-crime venture. A podcast hosted by a bunch of reality TV stars who had made names for themselves by being total douchebags on a variety of dating shows. He was calling it Reality Rampage .

“No thanks. I’m good here.”

“Ridley,” Baker gritted out.

“Give her a few weeks,” Sully interjected. “You know Rids always finds what she needs to.”

A muscle fluttered wildly along Baker’s jaw. “Fine. You’ve got two weeks. You fuck this up and the leash gets shorter. These advertising dollars pay your salary too.”

And with that, he hit end on the call. But Sully remained.

I slumped in my chair. “Thanks for having my back.”

“Always.” He studied me for a long moment, a grandfatherly concern radiating through his blue-gray eyes. “There a reason why this one is calling you?”

I usually shared with Sully. Told him my thought process. But I hadn’t with Emerson’s case. Couldn’t get myself to say it out loud quite yet. So I gave him a half-truth. “She might be alive, but he still stole her life.”

Sully’s mouth pulled down in a frown. “How so?”

“She’s still so traumatized she never leaves the house. I don’t blame her. She has no idea who took her. She would have to walk around not knowing if the man who'd just held the door open for her is the same one who kidnapped her. She has no idea what he’d planned to do with her. All those unknowns, they’ve taken everything from her.”

Sully scrubbed a hand over his stubbled cheek. “Can’t imagine.”

“Me either.” I sighed, toying with a pen on my desk. “There's more. I think there’s a chance this was the first in a series of abduction murders.”

“Well, why the hell didn’t you tell the suit that? You know he would’ve laid off you if you connected it to something serial.”

I winced, knowing he was right. “I also know that he would’ve pushed me to lay it all out right at the beginning. But I have to follow the trail. Start where he did. And that’s with Emerson.”

Sully squeezed the back of his neck. “All right. What do you need from me?”

“Right now I gotta prep some stuff for tomorrow. You good to get the episode submitted? I didn’t have any tweaks.”

He straightened, jerking his chin in a nod. “I’ll get it uploaded and ready to go.”

“Thanks, Sul. Don’t work too hard.”

His lips twitched. “That’s you we’re talking about.”

I grinned. “Don’t worry. I’m hitting the lake with my paddleboard again tomorrow morning.”

“Glad to hear it. Be safe,” Sully called, reaching for the end button.

“You too.”

The video call ended, and I was left to look at the background of my desktop. It was a photo of Avery and me. We were thirteen and in our backyard in Ohio. We’d been having a summer picnic, and my mom had taken the photo without us knowing it. Our heads were tipped back, and we were laughing full-out.

Avery had always been shyer than me. She didn’t laugh like that with just anyone. Only the people she trusted most. And that laughter was a gift, a gift I got because I was in that inner circle.

I couldn’t remember what we’d been talking about at the picnic. What had spawned that sort of cackle. And that killed. It felt like I lost more and more pieces as time passed. I’d replay old voicemails and videos just to remember what Avery’s voice sounded like. But I didn’t have her laugh. Didn’t have that full-out, uninhibited cackle that she only shared with me and a couple of others.

Pain—the kind that made it hard to breathe—washed through me, digging in and pressing against my chest. It wasn’t constant anymore, the way it had been in the beginning. But that just meant, when it sidelined me out of nowhere, it stole my breath.

Only it wasn’t out of nowhere. Not really.

I tugged the keys from my pocket and found the tiniest one, the one that resembled a mailbox key. It wasn’t as if I had visitors to my van, but still I kept one drawer on my desk locked. It wasn’t the one that held my recording equipment, even though that would’ve fetched more than a decent price if sold. This drawer housed something much more important.

Sliding the key into the lock on the bottom-left drawer, I twisted it, feeling the lock give way. Countless file folders peeked out. Names and locations. All the details I could find. But I went for the first file, the one where I housed my overview.

Sometimes, I’d deep-dive into one specific case; for others, I needed the big picture. Today it was the overview. I needed to see how all those pieces connected and remind myself why what lay in front of me was so important. It wasn’t just Emerson’s story. It was twenty-three other women's too.

I laid the file on my desk, making Tater jump down and move to her cat tree in the corner, and steeled myself before opening it. I always did. Because what lay inside suggested that the monster who’d taken Emerson was still out there and he’d only grown crueler.

Flipping open the file, I stared down at the first sheet of paper. As I’d pulled the strands together, I’d put them in chronological order. And as I’d done that, I’d seen how the monster had developed. How he’d twisted further and further.

It started with Emerson. A thwarted abduction. I hadn’t found a single case that fit the parameters before her.

And after her, he’d gotten smarter, learned from his mistakes. The next girl he’d taken, he’d used chloroform, knocking her out for longer, so when she woke on the side of a road, everything had been hazy. That may have been his only gift, that she didn’t remember the assault that had occurred.

The next five victims he’d left alive, but with growing expressions of violence. Until number seven hadn’t survived at all.

That was his turning point. When evil truly took hold.

No one survived after that as far as I could tell. And as time passed, the bodies that were found showed increasing evidence of torture from their time in captivity.

The pressure was back in my chest, the burning pain. I just kept breathing. I focused on the ties between the women. The ties that no law enforcement thought were enough to pursue, not even the FBI when I’d brought the new information to their attention.

All blonds ages sixteen to twenty-four. Athletes who excelled at their chosen sport. It wasn’t always the same one, everything from tennis to soccer to gymnastics. They were state champions, medal winners, scholarship recipients. All were high-achieving students as well, and when I’d done a deeper dive there, I’d found out they had all been members of the National Honor Society.

I’d gone down a rabbit hole with that, searching every employee of the organization I could find. But there wasn’t a single one I could prove had been away from home all the times girls had gone missing.

Because not all the women I’d identified as his victims had been found. In fact, only about two-thirds had. Survivors or bodies that families had been forced to lay to rest across the country. But I knew the torture of not having bones to put in the ground, a framework to say last goodbyes within as I hoped they’d find peace. It was a special kind of torture, the type that occasionally slid the tiniest flicker of hope into that black night. The taunting voice that said, Maybe she’s still alive .

I flipped to the next page, my finger following down the list of names. Some missing persons cases. Some open murder cases. That finger stopped on the name that burned.

Avery Bennett.

Victim number ten. Lacrosse player. Arizona State Champion. National Honor Society. National Merit Scholar. Recipient of the Hayes Fellowship for sports medicine. Daughter. Sister.

Gone.

As if she’d disappeared into thin air, never to be seen again.

“I’m going to find you, Avs. I promise.”

No matter how many interfering sheriffs got in my way. No matter what accusations they threw at me. I would find my sister, my twin.

Whatever it took.