Well, that was very specific. What a luxury to talk about things like favorite colors and Easter egg dye. The realization made his mind spin. And it made him sad. He smiled again, but it felt sort of odd. For the last few days, he’d felt like his face was underwater and all his expressions came out sort of wrong and distorted, like they were being pulled in several different directions by an unseen current.
“Did they find anything?” she asked, her finger playing idly with a thread on the throw blanket on the end of her bed.
He sighed. He knew what she was referring to, but he’d hoped to have a few more minutes to talk about mundane things. Sad things. Because it felt like they mattered too little now. And it felt like they were everything. Life had become a circle of conundrums, and he didn’t know how to make it make sense. “No. The fire destroyed almost everything. By the time fire trucks got out there, it was a smoldering pile of ash. There were bits of human remains found, though, belonging to two individuals.”
She worried her lip for a moment. “The men we killed,” she said. “So they were the only ones there.”
He nodded, taking a seat next to her on the bed and leaning his forearms on his knees before tilting his head to look at her. “Whoever else . . . visited . . . was only there temporarily.” It’d only been a few days since they’d given what information they had to give to the authorities. Multiple agencies were still testing and investigating and whatever else they did with a case like theirs. The FBI was involved. Cyberteams and forensics experts and all the best of the best. Surely they’d find those responsible. Evan couldn’t consider living in a world where the people who’d tortured them for almost a month and a half—it’d been five weeks and one day that he’d been gone, three fewer for her—weren’t apprehended.
From what he’d been able to gather so far, when they’d first gone missing, it had seemed overly coincidental that two kids from the same school had disappeared within days of each other. In the beginning, the police had wondered if they were together—a secret romance, perhaps? But when their friends had insisted that that wasn’t possible and there was no evidence he and Noelle had ever even spoken, much less were carrying on a secret relationship, that potential lead went dry. If they’d been taken by the same person, there was no evidence of that, either, despite that they did have a connection in their fathers’ legal battle. Seemingly, both of them had just disappeared into thin air for no discernible reason. Not much had been uncovered in their absence, so for all intents and purposes, the investigation was just beginning now.
Evan stood, bending a slat in the blind and peering out at the quiet street. The sun was lowering. It would be nighttime soon. Those hours when he was tormented by dreams that felt so real he woke clawing at nothing, his fists swiping at invisible shadows that existed only in his mind.
And reaching for her, his fingers stretching to link with Noelle’s and then dropping when they met only emptiness.
“You have a weapon,” she said, nodding to the hunting knife in his back pocket. It flipped open with the slide of a button and was hooked and sharp and could be deadly if used with enough force.
He’d use that force if he needed to.
“When I was grabbed,” he told her, “there was a moment when I could have used a weapon if I had one. But I didn’t. I only had my fists, and those ended up being mostly useless. I won’t make that mistake again.” He looked out the slat again at the black car parked just down the street. His driver waiting for him. It was supposed to make him feel safe. Whatever safe was.
“I know what you mean,” she said softly. “I looked up how to register for a concealed carry yesterday. It’s like . . . I’ll never feel safe again, you know? I haven’t even left the house.”
He returned to where he’d been sitting on the bed next to her, taking her hand in his, running his thumb over her knuckle. They were still scraped, but they were healing. The bruise on her face looked better too. “Your dad . . . Noelle, how are you?” he asked. “Really?” Was she even able to grieve amid everything else she was trying to bear? The memories, the nightmares. He didn’t have to ask if she was having nightmares too.
She let out a shaky breath. “I just keep thinking about him here in this house alone and so terrified. They say he died of a heart attack, but I think it broke. I think it just broke in two. He couldn’t stand the torture of not knowing what was happening to me. He couldn’t stand another sudden loss.” Tears welled in her eyes, and he took her in his arms, rubbing circles over her back. He’d wanted to do this so many times over those long weeks when she’d come back from that upstairs room, the one that would be burned into his memories for all time, kept in the dungeon of his soul. He’d wanted to comfort her this way, but he hadn’t been able to. He was able to now, though, and it soothed him as well.