Chapter 8

Special Agent Fallon Baxter

"That's Emily," Linda Gannon says with a hard sigh. "My daughter who will forever be frozen in time." She shakes her head at the picture of the girl she just called a witch. "I'm a little angry at her at the moment." She shudders. "Heck, I don't blame her for what happened. I can't. But a part of me does and I don't seem to have any control over it."

The young woman in the frame is smiling. It's just a close-up of her face, but there's a softness about her, and not just in her dimples or the way she's looking up at the camera.

Jack nods as he examines it. "Can you tell us about her?"

"How much time you got?" Linda huffs out a laugh and the fresh scent of cigarettes emanates from her breath. "Emily was always the altruistic one. My husband said that was my fault." She tries a smile but fails on impact. "He's my ex actually. We had it all, nuclear family, big house in the hills, country club, you name it. Not long after Emily took off, my husband did the same. My other kids found somewhere else to live, and I wasn't about to pad around that oversized haunted house all by myself. Too many memories. So I bought this place, or my husband bought it for me. It used to belong to my housekeeper if you can believe it. She was asking nothing for it and I didn't want to waste a dollar on anything I didn't need so here I am." She shrugs. "If Emily did try to come home, I'm not sure she would have known where to look. And boy, do I have stories about Emily."

Jack and I exchange a glance. It looks as if Linda needs to take the long road, and I'm all for it. The more information, the better.

"How long has Emily been missing?" I ask.

"She took off three years ago." Her chest bucks. "We had some contact with her in the beginning, and seeing that she was an adult, the sheriff's department said there was nothing they could do about it."

"I'm sorry about that," I say and mean it.

It's the same runaround we received in the beginning as well. Erin was no missing child either. That was before Rob took over, but he hasn't had much luck anyway.

"Emily was always a free spirit," she goes on with a hint of a dry laugh. "Much like me, but with a restlessness that the quiet life around here couldn't contain. She moved to Denver, just craving some excitement from life. She was passionate about environmental activism, animals, women's rights. She was dedicated to any cause that aimed to protect the things she cherished. She loved to paint, too. A real artist, that one." She swallows hard. "I hoped Emily would come back to me, but not like this."

"So what happened during those three years?" Jack lands his elbows on his knees. "How did she make a living in Denver?"

"Make a living?" She laughs at the thought. "Once my husband and I cut her off, Emily quickly found out that money didn't grow on trees. Her paintings weren't exactly flying off the shelves. She met up with some girls who got her to peddle some hippy-dippy stuff, some self-help courses, and she tried her hat at it. She said she was moving in with the girls and that it would all work out. She didn't want us to worry. Then out of the blue, about three weeks into her move, she said she didn't think it was healthy for us to be communicating anymore."

A small jolt of electrocution pulsates through me and I lift my chin a notch.

Erin.

I shake my head. I need to push my sister out of the way for now. I need to be present and pay attention. Any and every detail is just as crucial as the next.

"So she cut off communication with you?" Jack asks, taking notes with his phone.

"She sure did. All of it." Linda sighs hard before scooping up the anxious dog at her feet. "We couldn't believe it. She wouldn't talk to us, not my other daughters or my son either. She cut off what few friends she had back home as well. It's as if she wanted us to forget she ever existed."

"Do you know the names of the girls she was living with?" I ask as my heart begins to race, and it has very little to do with Emily.

The woman lifts a finger and pauses midair. "Lauren and Dana, I think." She closes her eyes. "No, that's not it. Lauren and Reyna? Oh, I can't recall it's been so long. But she said they were really nice girls and they were moving out of the city."

"Out of the city?" Jack cocks his head, hoping she'll fill in the blank.

"Some ranch." She shrugs. "Or wait, she called it an intent community." She snaps her fingers. "Intentional," she says a touch louder and the dog barks up at her. "Oh hush, you." She drops a kiss to the pooch's nose. "It was an intentional community, she said. And I remember it because my son was saying that it was an intentional mistake. Anyway, about a week later, she sent her final message, something about how she didn't think she fit in our lives anymore. She wished us all well and not to come after her because it was time for her to live her own life."

A breath expels from me, and Jack turns my way an inch as if to assess my needs.

I hold up a hand as if to say I'm fine, but I'm anything but. You could easily swap Linda out for my mother, save for the fact Erin hasn't been found in pieces—not yet anyway.

"That's it." She tosses up her hands. "That's all I've got. Our lives went to hell in a handbasket while Emily was out doing who knows what with whom. And we looked for her. We did. My husband and I wanted to drag her back home by the hair. We didn't care if we were trampling on her rights or whatnot. We wanted our little girl back." She stares down at the picture in Jack's hand and he passes it to her.

"She was our baby. She's going to be my baby forever." Tears stream down her cheeks as she stares at Emily's smiling face. I can feel her pain right down to my marrow because I've cried those tears myself.

We thank her and take off, driving for less than two minutes before Jack kills the radio.

"Intentional community?" He shakes his head at the thought. "That's BS for a commune."

I nod. "And how many of those do we have between here and Cheyenne?"

"That's what we're going to find out. We're also going to need to run a search on every Dana, Reyna, and Lauren, along with Emily's name, to see if something crops up."

"I'm on it," I say, staring vacantly out the window because I darn well know I'll be adding Erin's name to the mix.

We end up in Pine Ridge Falls in record time, or at least it feels that way with my thoughts wandering to dark places despite the fact I'm trying to think nice things for my sister. Things didn't end up so nice for Emily, though.

"Are you up for a sandwich?" he offers, breaking the spell. "I know a place that does a mean hot pastrami."

"Crime makes you hungry, doesn't it?" I tease.

"Food and justice." He ticks his head to the side. "That's about all I live for these days."

"What about the cat?" I ask.

"You were paying attention to the details." He slings a short-lived smile at the road.

"Paying attention to the details is what they pay me for."

We drive through the downtown district and Jack's truck slows dramatically enough for me to look up, expecting to see someone's bumper in my face, but there's not another car in front of us. Instead, I note Jack looking to the left, glaring at a man rifling through a trash can. The guy looks down on his luck, thin, dirty, in need of self-care and a nice long shower—maybe a visit to the nearest psych ward for good measure.

Jack speeds up a notch, and soon we're headed into familiar territory.

"My mom's diner is just down the street," I say. "We could eat there if you want. I hear she has a mean hot pastrami as well."

"Sure," he says, his demeanor darkens and there's a faraway look in his eye that suggests he's not in the mood for hot pastrami or anything else for that matter.

"Looks as if Rob is here," I say, pointing to the sheriff's car parked out front, and something in me enlivens at the thought, but only because I was hoping to see Buddy again.

"Yup," he growls as he pulls in alongside him. "Hey, I just remembered I needed to be somewhere." He winces. "Do you think you could get a ride home with your boyfriend?"

My mouth opens and I choke back a laugh. "Yes," I say. I would have reminded him that Rob isn't my anything, but Jack left the proverbial building about five minutes ago. "If I dig anything up on those women, I'll let you know."

"Thanks." He offers a solemn nod and there's an apology buried in his eyes.

I hop out and he backs up and leaves as if he were late for the preliminaries at NASCAR, like he forgot his kid at the mall two days ago.

Jack's forgetting one other thing, the devil is in the details.

Paying attention to the details isn't just what they pay me for—it just so happens to be my specialty.

If there's a detail or two Jack thinks he can hide from me, he's dead wrong.