“Yeah.” He chews the inside of his lip. “I heard it all. Problem is, I can’t go to my sergeant and tell him we’ve got to put out a search party for some family all because some woman walked in off the streets with a hunch.” Before I can protest, he lifts a palm. “No offense to you either. Not saying I don’t believe you, but that’s not how this works. Unless we have evidence or probable cause, some reason to think his wife and kids are in immediate danger, legally there’s nothing we can do.”
I collapse into the opposite chair and bury my face in my hands.
If I can’t save Merritt and the kids from The Monster, I’ll never forgive myself.
“Other issue is, there was a reward fund set up for you,” he says. “Can’t remember the exact amount, but it was meant to encourage people to come forward with information leading to your whereabouts. Obviously that never happened, but a few years back, we had some lady wander in claiming she was you. Looked nothing like you and refused to let us swab her, so it wasn’t hard to turn her away. But on the off chance you’re not Lydia . . .”
“No, I understand. You have to do your vetting. I get it.”
“If you want to wait here, I’ll go grab a DNA swab kit. We can at least collect that while you’re here.” Rhinehart heads for the door.
“What are you going to do if there’s no DNA to compare it to?” I ask.
“Got any family you can call? Someone we can use as a positive identifier?”
I shake my head. My mom—who was an only child—is dead. Couldn’t even begin to guess my father’s name. Never met a single grandparent. Never had a cousin that I know of.
“None that I can think of,” I say.
His head tilts. “Surely there’s someone.”
I shrug. “Nope.”
“I’ll dig into your file. You’d be surprised who comes out of the woodwork when someone goes missing.”
“I won’t hold my breath.”
He gives a terse nod. “Wait here, okay? I’ll be right back.”
Detective Rhinehart returns two minutes later with a sterile kit and swabs my nose and mouth before sealing it in a baggie, which he labels with my name.
“I’m sure this feels a bit anticlimactic for you,” he says. “After all you’ve been through, I mean. But this is step one. We’ll send it off to the lab, get it in our database, go from there.”
“How long will this take to process?”
His eyes apologize before his mouth gets a chance. “Could take weeks? I’ll have my sergeant see if he can move it to the top of the pile as a personal favor.”
“What do I do in the meantime?”
His brows rise. “In the meantime, don’t go anywhere. Don’t do anything. Stay away from Mr. Coletto. Rest assured I’ll be keeping an eye on him.”
“But what if he doesn’t come back to Bent Creek?”
“You let me worry about that, okay?” Sliding a yellow pad and pen across his desk, he adds, “Write down your name and number here. I’ll get ahold of you once I talk to my sergeant.”
I rise and gather my things. Delphine’s been waiting for me in the waiting room this entire time, probably propped up in a hard chair summoning every archangel she can think of.
I jot down the address to The Blessed Alchemist and grab my phone to get the phone number. With everything going on, I’ve yet to take the time to memorize it. But it’s then, as I’m tapping through my settings, that I take a second look at Luca’s last text message.
The coordinates. It’s a location. A lure.
I think I know where I might find them . . .
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
MERRITT
We finish our cauliflower soup, get the babies to bed, and retire to the quiet dark of the living room. Everett has taken a turn for the better since we’ve been here. Less fussing, more eating. No more of that purple-faced screaming. Growing more wide-eyed and responsive by the hour.
Luca hasn’t said a word all evening, though I watched him pop a couple of Advil and chug a bottle of water earlier. In the past, I’d massage his neck whenever he had a headache.
He can massage his own neck now.
“You need to replace the furnace filter,” I call over my shoulder when I spot Luca heading from the kitchen to the stairs. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was avoiding me. “The air quality in here leaves much to be desired. It can’t be good for the baby.”
“I know.” He stays planted at the base of the stairs, one hand on the railing. He couldn’t hide the resentment in his voice if he tried.
“And we should wash Elsie’s bedding,” I add. “It’s dusty.”
“Yep.”
So this is what it’s come to.
Our handcrafted partnership is grinding to a screeching, resentful halt—and by no fault of my own, I might add.
This is all his doing.
I’ll never forget that first year after the insurance windfall, how we reinvented ourselves. New clothes. New cars. A new-ish construction house in the suburbs. We waited two years after Lydia’s official “death” before eloping, and we exchanged vows in a Hawaiian ceremony with a couple of locals as our witnesses.
When we came back to Bent Creek, we bought a dilapidated old boathouse not far from the shore and turned it into our first restaurant brainchild—Coletto’s by the Sea. At the time, it was arguably the nicest eatery the town had ever seen, and we propped our reputation on catering to the well-to-do with money to burn.
My father always said the only way to make money was to have money first. It was a strange circle of logic that proved to be true. The more money we’d dump into the restaurant, the more money it would make—like a slot machine rigged in our favor.
With each flourishing year, we’d open another restaurant, and another. And at the peak of our success, we were pulling in a healthy seven figures. Of course, half of that went to taxes and another chunk went back into the business, but we were doing well for ourselves. More than well. We had everything we wanted—except a family.
Then came Elsie.
And Everett.
But now we’re back to square one: miserable, penniless, hopeless.
All the control I had over him . . . Poof. Gone.
He said he had a plan, but it doesn’t matter. I didn’t need to ask him to elaborate because I’ve always been the one in control. He was the head, but I was the neck that moved the head.
Regardless, what’s done is done.
And I’ve made my decision.
Friday morning, I’m driving into town to get my staples removed and to get the all-clear from the local OB. Afterward, I’m stopping into the bank to open an account so I can get a line of credit to cash out. When I get back, I’m packing up the kids and leaving Luca.
It’s over.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
LYDIA
I stop into the restaurant Wednesday morning to use the computer. The prep cooks blare nineties music and clang around in the kitchen—I doubt they even know I’m here.
Pulling up a search engine, I type in the coordinates from Luca’s text. I’d have done it from Delphine’s computer last night, but she took it to bed with her, falling asleep to some movie she streamed to calm herself down after the interesting night we’d had. After leaving the police station, we stopped at an all-night pancake place, where she loaded up on processed junk and ranted my ear off about the inherent incompetency of the modern police system.