Page 73 of The Lost Bones
Mackenzie didn’t know how to answer. “They’re… working on autopilot, it seemed to me. What is going on?”
Jane Doe rested against a tree, scratching her arms and avoiding Mackenzie’s eyes. “It’s prison.”
“You said this before. You were forced into it?”
She nodded.
“How many of you were there?”
“Too many. I never counted.”
“And the tattoos?”
“To keep track of us. To call us by a number.” She lifted the hem of her dress and twisted her ankle to show her barcode. “I’m number seven.”
Cold shards of disgust and fear blasted into Mackenzie. The women were treated like cattle. Branded with numbers. Stripped of their identities. Dehumanized. Used and abused like they were just flesh and not living, breathing people.
“Tell me how this happened,” she said. “I can help. We can save them.”
Jane Doe’s eyes rolled up and she shook her head over and over again like she had been electrocuted. “No. No. No.”
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry.” Mackenzie stepped forward, raising her hands. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”
Slowly Jane Doe calmed down, and the flush that had spread up her neck began to recede.
“I get it. I saw the people in that house. Judges, lawyers, businessmen, lobbyists… They’re all powerful. Too powerful. You don’t know who to trust. And even if you find one honest person willing to help, you’re afraid that it might go nowhere. That they’ll get hurt too and your situation won’t change. I understand. You’re stuck. That’s why you haven’t said anything to us. Because the people who hurt you are among us.” Mackenzie glanced at the spot where she’d sat watching her mother bury the body. “I brought you here for a reason. This place means something to me.”
Jane Doe tilted her head. “Why?”
The only person in the world Mackenzie had shared her darkest secret with was Nick. She had lived her entire life locking it away, afraid of what the consequences could be, afraid of what everyone would think of her, afraid of how her life could unravel. But once the truth was spoken aloud, it lost some of its weight. Secrets found their power in silence.
“When I was twelve years old, my mother convinced me to help her bury someone right here.” The words burned on her tongue. Jane Doe’s breathing quickened, but she didn’t say anything. “My mother lied to me. She manipulated me. But it didn’t change the fact that I participated in something horrible.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Jane Doe asked with tears swimming in her eyes, like she ached for Mackenzie.
“I’m giving you my trust, hoping that you could give me some of yours. This last year, that’s what I’ve learned. That I need to trust and there will be more to gain.”
Jane Doe looked conflicted, squirming against the bark of the tree. “Are you scared because your ex-husband is missing?”
“Yes.”
There had been no news of Sterling. This morning the CSU had confirmed muskrat fur deposits next to the door where they believed he had been abducted from. To make matters worse, the cameras covering the docking area had been damaged the day before. Something told Mackenzie that wasn’t a coincidence.
Jane Doe put her hand into a pocket in her dress and withdrew a key. “I always keep this on me. I took it from Judge Hamilton.” She was whispering, even though they were alone in the woods, as if even the trees were treacherous. “He kept it in a special box in his side drawer. In that house.”
“You don’t know what it opens?”
“No.”
Mackenzie took the key from her. “But it must be important to him. Where were you and the girls held? Is Hamilton the lynchpin of this operation, or is it someone else?”
Jane Doe raised her chin and shook her head. “Don’t ask more from me. You are surrounded by enemies.”
Just like that, the moment between them vanished, like footprints being washed away on the shore. One step at a time, Mackenzie told herself. She held the key tightly in her palm, wondering what bone-shriveling revelations it would lead her to.
“We need to tell someone,” Nick said at the station, primed by the coffee in his hands. “We can trust Sully.”
Mackenzie looked around. Suspicion was firmly embedded inside her head. Only Austin was in the office, talking on the phone. “I think we can.”
