Page 17 of All the Missing Pieces

Ridley looked between the two of us. “Don’t tell me bike riding is illegal in Shady Cove or something.”

“You could get hit by a car or snatched by a goddamned biker,” I growled.

“Or abducted by aliens. Or clobbered on the head by Bigfoot,” she singsonged as she slid a worn brown leather jacket over her shoulders.

“Don’t be an idiot,” I gritted out.

Ridley’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not. I’ve taken plenty of precautions. But I’m also not going to live my life scared of every single thing that could go bump in the night. Now, unless you’re going to arrest me, I’ll be going.”

She started for the door, her jeans hugging her sinewy curves as she went. She threw up two fingers in a wave. “Thanks for the booze, Trey.”

I watched her until she disappeared, the same way I’d watched her van. It was as if she’d cast a spell on me and there wasn’t a damned thing I could do to stop it.

“There’s a story there.”

Trey’s softly spoken words had me turning back around. “What do you mean?”

He glanced over my shoulder to where Ridley had disappeared out the front door. “She asked about crime in the area.”

My skin prickled, a combination of awareness and worry.

“Could be her usual MO,” Trey went on. “Single woman used to traveling alone, wants to get a lay of the land.”

“Or something happened to her before, and she’s trying to make sure that never happens again.” The thought had a sick feeling roiling in my gut. Because I knew that it only took one moment for someone’s life to shatter into something unrecognizable.

6

RIDLEY

I dippedmy paddle into the glassy lake, sending ripples across the surface. The sun had barely surfaced, sending beams of that pink, reddish light across the landscape, but I’d been up for hours. I’d had the nightmare again.

The same as always. It started out beautiful, a lake not unlike this one, if a little less mountainous. But this specific body of water was the one Avery and I had grown up visiting. We’d be swimming and playing until all of a sudden, Avery was drowning, screaming for my help. But I was stuck in the quicksand of the shallows, never able to get to her. Never able to save her.

It came less often these days, but it made sense as to why it had sprung to life in my subconscious last night. At least it meant I got to see this sunrise. It was my favorite time of day. A time when everything was so still you could fool yourself into thinking nothing bad could ever happen.

Even Tater appreciated the sanctity of sunrise. She perched toward the front of my paddleboard, clad in her life vest, taking in the view. And likely looking for fish.

I switched my paddle, from side to side, in a practiced rhythm, soaking in the gift of it all. The fact that my muscleswere strong enough to propel me through the water. That I had a job I loved that afforded me this paddleboard and campsite fee. That I was breathing.

A familiar stabbing pain hit my sternum. But I just grabbed on, holding it close.

“You’re with me, Avs.”

For the first few years after she went missing, I held out hope. That she was out there, still breathing too. But then I started to wonder what exactly I was hoping for. That she was chained up by some madman? Trafficked overseas for drugs or worse?

Some part of me knew she was gone and that the best I could hope for was that she’d found peace. My mom didn’t share that opinion, and I didn’t blame her for it. How could you let go of a daughter without hard proof that she had left this earth? Mom dove headfirst into every rabbit hole. It wasn’t until she nearly drained my parents’ savings account paying for psychics and people who had so-called tips on Avery’s whereabouts that my dad finally put his foot down.

He took Mom off the investment accounts and everything financial but their joint checking. If he hadn’t, I wasn’t sure they’d even have a house to live in anymore. Now, Dad was living with two ghosts, his daughter’s and his wife’s. But then again, I wasn’t sure he was truly living either.

We traded the occasional email, checking in, but he was distant. That distance had come on slowly, so slowly I hadn’t noticed it until one day I realized that talking to him was more like conversing with a coworker than my dad. Maybe it was a self-protection mechanism. A desperate effort so that if anything ever happened to me, he wouldn’t be leveled again.

That was the thing these monsters didn’t realize. They thought they were only ending one life, but it was so many more. The ripple effect of cruel violence that would live on for generations to come, all of us still breathing branded by it.

I turned the paddleboard in a wide circle, pointing us back toward shore. I could’ve stayed out here for hours more, but I’d woken to half a dozen emails from Baker wanting to know if I’d found anything worth covering in this case. The urge to block his email address had been strong.

Covering missing persons cases wasn’t anything new for me. It was just that usually the victims were still gone. More than six hundred thousand people went missing every year in the United States, and while many were found, there were others who stayed gone. Ones who became forgotten by all but their nearest and dearest.

I gave those people a voice. Making sure the world didn’t have any choice but to hear their stories. Each case I covered had a tip line funded by the show. Those tips came to me but then got dispersed to the law enforcement in charge of the case, forcing them to pay attention. Sometimes those offices were grateful for the help. Sometimes they didn’t want to lift a finger they didn’t have to. It didn’t matter, I would keep fighting regardless of their attitudes.

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