Chapter 55

Poppy finishes decoding the note and she’s even more confused. The message has only five words: “Find me in the clouds.”

What in the hell kind of nonsense? But the note means something to Ryan. Poppy didn’t tell Ryan what she knows about that night—what Dash told her—that Ali is alive, but he knows somehow anyway from the coded message. For Poppy, the puzzle pieces don’t fit yet, but she’s thinking the story goes something like this: Ali moved to Leavenworth when she was starting high school. She knew someone might come after her. She wrote a coded note that only Ryan could read if anyone ever found it. But why’d she’d go to such trouble is unclear. Was she concerned that someone would take her and find the note?

Poppy reflects on how Ali didn’t use social media. Her three high-school friends saying that she was almost phobic about not having her picture taken. Maybe she was in hiding. But from who?

Poppy suddenly thinks about the FBI agent, Fincher, who knows more than she’s willing to share. Maybe Ali and her father were in witness protection. That would explain why no one knows much about their background before Kansas. And who better to help you hide in a new town than the head of law enforcement there, Alison’s father’s old war buddy Sheriff Walton? Poppy thinks back to the press conference. The sheriff told the reporters that he’d spoken to Alison’s father, stalled giving Poppy the father’s address or number. She pulls on the thread…

So she’s in hiding. Keeping a low profile. Then suddenly writes a coded note that says: “If something happens to me” for her boyfriend. Why?

Then it hits Poppy: the viral video.

It went viral two weeks before Ali was taken. Maybe Ali feared whoever she was hiding from would see the video and come to Leavenworth. But she didn’t know that would happen, hoped it would blow over as viral videos do and they wouldn’t see it.

But they did.

Who are they?

Poppy’s biggest clues are the men from the bottom of the lake. She picks up her phone, finds the name in her contacts, and calls. “Chantelle, hey, it’s Poppy.” She flushes a moment but doesn’t know why. “You have a minute to help me run down something?”

She smiles when she hears the reply: “Hell, yes.”