Page 34 of The Girls in the Snow

“I had no idea she was doing a documentary on your parents,” Miller said. “I bet money she’s brought in the protesters. They’re probably paid.”

“She’s got Mark’s family believing he has a chance at being exonerated. You think she cares about them?”

“She does as long as they’re useful,” Miller said. “If she shows up at this construction site, someone’s leaking information. I can’t believe she’s doing this when we’re trying to find out who murdered those kids.”

Nikki bit her lip, trying to think of the right thing to say. Local police often had issue with the FBI coming in and taking over, but Miller seemed to be just the opposite, and Nikki suspected that had to do with his guilt over not finding Madison and Kaylee. “I’ve gone through the case file twice. You did everything you could.”

“It wasn’t enough.” Miller sighed.

“Sometimes it isn’t,” Nikki said. “But that doesn’t mean you’re to blame. The sad truth is that we can’t save them all, especially when it comes to missing kids. You know the statistics as well as I do.”

An awkward silence fell between them.

Nikki started to ask about turning the radio on when she noticed the pictures. “Are those your daughters?”

Two wallet-sized school pictures of grinning, gap-toothed girls were taped to Miller’s radio.

“Yep. Six and nine. It’s all estrogen in my house.”

“That’s going to be rough in a few years.”

“I don’t even want to think about it. The little one’s boy-crazy, too. She kissed some boy at recess last week. My wife thought it was hilarious.”

“I think I kissed a boy on the playground in kindergarten.” Nikki blocked out the unpleasant image of Lacey doing the same.

“Hell, I kissed three or four girls by first grade,” he said. “But when it’s my little girl, nah. That ain’t happening.”

Nikki laughed, and Miller joined her.

“I’m serious,” he said. “I told her that’s how a person gets really sick and ends up missing a bunch of school.”

“Did that work?”

“For now,” he said.

Nikki’s laughter died in her throat. A large, white canvas had been mounted onto the side of a dilapidated barn. “Free Mark Todd” sprawled across the sign, the red spray paint a vibrant shock of color against the winter landscape.

“You okay?”

“I have to be,” Nikki said, composing herself. She thought about Rory’s insistence that his brother was innocent and wondered if he’d painted the sign. “What do you know about Mark’s younger brother?”

“Rory? Not much, which means he stays out of trouble.”

“I ran into him at the gas station yesterday.” Nikki recounted last night’s embarrassing events. “He was far nicer to me than most people would have been.”

“He’s grown up in the shadow of his brother’s case, seeing his parents spend their lives trying to free Mark. You’d think it would have made him bitter, but he doesn’t have that in him.”

“How are his parents?” Nikki remembered Mrs. Todd as petite and friendly. She’d enjoyed Mark having his friends over. Mr. Todd had been reserved and usually kept to himself, but they’d always seemed like a close family.

Miller shifted in the seat. “Far as I know, they’re fine. They moved to an apartment in town a few years ago. I heard Rory bought the house.”

Nikki flushed, trying not to think of how good it had felt to lean on Rory’s chest and breathe in his scent. She rarely allowed herself to think like this, to be so vulnerable, even with Tyler during their best times. He was good and kind, dependable. Nikki could always count on him to be there for her, but she’d never experienced the sparks other couples described. Nikki had always assumed she lacked the ability to truly connect with anyone. She’d trusted Tyler enough to tell him the details about the night her parents were murdered, but she hadn’t been able to let her emotional guard down. He’d pressed her to tell him how she felt and what she was going through, but Nikki could never manage it. It wasn’t his fault, but Tyler couldn’t possibly understand.

But there was something different about Rory. They had both experienced the same thing, albeit from different sides. They’d both been living under a media microscope after the murders, they both understood what it was like to have their family torn apart. No matter how hard he tried, Tyler would never be able to understand what that had been like.

“There’s another thing I wanted to mention,” Miller said. “I would have brought it up back at the office, but you’d just dealt with Newport.”

“What is it?”

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