51. BRECIA

Cascade, Idaho

I watched as Emma helped Kimmie squirt a line of ketchup and mustard onto her hot dog at the empty bar. Impossibly, both girls were smiling again. They still didn't know anything about their dad. Still didn't know that he was the real monster they'd been running from all day, who had forced them through the forest and night and into a dirty bathroom stall, just to escape becoming victims to the same violence he'd been committing right under their noses for their entire lives.

Someday April would have to tell them. There was no getting around it. But I suspected I wouldn't be there for that conversation. And as I looked at Kimmie and Emma's little-girl faces and downy hair, I was glad. I didn't want to see their hearts shatter. It was difficult enough to see April, in the staff room, as she sat with the police, her eyes red and her whole body shaking.

The police were taking her initial statement in the staff room of the bar and grill, while they waited for Detective Domanska, who was driving from Boise, to arrive on the scene. The statewide manhunt was over, and James was being booked into the county jail.

They told April they'd gotten a search warrant for her and James's entire house, including computer, social media accounts, and his phone records. The puzzle pieces were coming together. If they hadn't already, they would find MatchStrike.com. Which meant that, if they dug deep enough through the aliases and ghost accounts, they would find my name in his inbox too.

I could tell that the officers questioning April were hoping to learn just how much she knew. They wondered, like I had in the beginning, whether she was naive. Or stupid, Or both. Whether, in the worst-case scenario, she might have even been an accomplice. But April just cried, apologizing for what she knew too late. Apologizing for what she'd suspected but denied, even to herself. She told the officers about Nina and the text messages she'd gotten in Utah. She admitted to looking up Meghan's name after Domanska called. She cried harder when Domanska asked about Skye.

As more officers arrived and the waitstaff was questioned and released, we learned that the mysterious Marjorie had been located in Caldwell, Idaho, where she had been arrested for helping James elude authorities.

As April fumbled through the sequence of events that had led to the cabin escape, she told police that Marjorie was James's stepmother. James's mother had died when he was six, and his father had remarried Marjorie the same year. They'd divorced by the time James was ten. He'd hinted at but never directly admitted that the constellation of faint scars on his arms, back, and legs—anywhere a t-shirt or shorts would hide—came from her.

Marjorie had tried calling the house in the early years of their marriage, asking to meet April and then the girls. But James had made it clear that he had no desire to see her again. Until he called about the cabin.

When Domanska arrived in Cascade, she drove April and the girls—and me and Skye and Meghan—to a nearby motel for the night. It was nearly eleven at night, by that point. April wasn't under arrest. And the girls were falling asleep at the bar.

When they got to the little log-cabin motel, Domanska led a sleepy Emma by the hand while April carried Kimmie in her arms. Skye and I stayed as April climbed into the king bed next to the girls, not bothering to undress. Meghan followed Domanska down the hall to her room.

"She won't leave without saying goodbye, will she?" Skye asked me quietly as April turned off the bedside lamp, blanketing the room in velvety darkness. The sadness in her voice settled over me, cold and heavy, like fog.

I knew that of the three of us, Skye was the least interested in moving on. She wasn't sure what was waiting for her or how to get there. Not like Meghan, with her grandmother. And even though I hadn't yet allowed myself to drift in the same way, I was ready. Ready to find my Aunt Nelly. To tell her how much she'd meant to me when I was a little girl, and to learn who she was on a deeper level than macaroni necklaces and playdates. The idea of finding her again filled me with a warm glow. I was ready to move toward that light.

"She'll be back," I assured Skye, my own relief and hope filtering through the dewy mist of her sadness like sunlight.

* * *

When Meghan slipped into the dark room an hour later, she came bearing case developments from the past week. Ken—Skye's manager at the Daily Grind—had picked James out of a photo lineup, as the one who had sometimes flirted with her at the counter.

But the video that showed James's license plate in the parking lot didn't show Skye getting into his car. And the Froyo shop's security footage that did show her getting into a vehicle didn't show James's face. When Domanska called Kittleson—who was in bed back in Boise—he made it clear that unless there was some evidence beyond the circumstantial evidence they already had—to connect him to Skye's murder, the DA was not planning to move forward with charges at this time. The car had been clean. They already had him for Meghan's murder in Utah. And they'd learned that he met Meghan—and plenty of other women—on a site called MatchStrike.com.

When Meghan told me that Domanska had said my name—the Brecia Collier cold case—I felt a shiver of electricity run through me. A detective from Colorado was on his way to Idaho. My parents and sister would finally learn what had happened to me. Maybe other women he'd crossed paths with through the app would come forward. Nicole. Elle. They'd find answers too.

I knew it wasn't over, exactly. For so many people, the heartache and the horror were just ramping up; however, I knew that my role in this story was finally over. And I was ready to move forward without James Carson.

Then I felt Skye next to me, her sadness curdling into despair.

In an instant, the relief I'd felt curdled too.

The answers her family needed seemed to be right there for the taking. They knew who had killed their baby. But the way things were headed, Skye's name wouldn't be heard in his trial. They wouldn't find her name on MatchStrike.com. Her case would go cold.

I pictured Skye's mother—the one she had shown us in her memories. The lithe, dark-haired woman with the same curls and golden-brown skin. I imagined her watching the news coverage of the grieving families connected to the MatchStrike case. Reading the details in article after article as lawyers battled to put him behind bars for two murders, not three. Knowing her daughter had been allowed to slip through the cracks because it was "too difficult to prove," despite the seemingly smoking gun.

Skye's despair hardened into resignation as she turned away to look at April, who was finally breathing softly and deeply in sleep. "It's okay. I knew this might happen." She closed her eyes and added in a low voice, "I still mattered."

Meghan frowned. "You still do." She looked thoughtful, turning her face toward the slivers of moonlight at the corners of the motel blinds. "Maybe there's something they missed. Maybe they'll still be able to charge him for what he did to you."

Skye snorted. "Kittleson probably missed a shitload. He was ready to move on before they even found me."

Meghan scooted next to her, reaching out her hands for both Skye and me. "Then let's look together to see what he missed."

* * *

We spent the rest of the night sifting through Skye's memories.

We watched every painful detail of "James" flirting with her in the Daily Grind.

Every excruciating moment as shy, hesitant Skye got into his car in the parking lot after work that day.

Every unspeakable moment that came afterward.

We could only see what she saw, remember what she remembered, of course.

But as we watched Skye's memory from the coffee shop, the last time he'd come in, I suddenly yelped.

The disposable coffee cup he was holding in his hands. The one with the little smiley face and the eyelashes and the word "James" and "hot chocolate" in loopy letters.

I had seen it before in my own memories, at his house.

He'd shoved it into the desk drawer.

I let go of Skye and Meghan, frantic to tell them. "Skye, was he holding a coffee cup in any of the security footage?"

Skye shook her head. "I don't know. I haven't seen all of it. Just the parts my mom watched over and over. I know he's on camera, though, from when he was in the coffee shop that morning."

I grabbed her hand and showed her the memory of the coffee cup in his desk drawer. There was no way to know whether it was still there or not. Even if it was, would the detectives executing the search warrant know what they were looking at?

"We have to tell Domanska," Meghan insisted, already moving toward the motel door. "She'll listen."