Page 85 of In Her Eyes

Jake presses his lips together for a few seconds and then steps to the side. The chief chuckles under his breath. I walk to where I last saw Alice and stop. Both men are on my heels. An overwhelming sense of dread overtakes me. I lock my knees to keep from falling and breathe slowly and evenly. There’s absolute quiet now, and a wrongness hangs thick in the air. Alice is gone. I no longer see or feel her presence. The body must be near.

I put a hand up. “Stay.”

I take two steps forward and stop, walk in a small circle, and then close my eyes. A flash of an image comes, but it’s too fast for me to grasp. I crouch down and put both my hands on the ground. “Show me.”

A faint tug comes from my left. I look over my shoulder, and through the dense foliage, I see it. A crop of rocks covered in vivid green moss. I stand up. Look at Jake and Chief Malone. Then I point at the spot. “There. She’s over there. Be careful. Go slow. Don’t fall in. There’s a hole there somewhere.”

Both Chief Malone and Jake hold their guns pointing at the ground. The two of them take measured steps toward where I pointed. I don’t move. The ground in this area is damp, with water trickling down the rocky formation. Ferns and arrowwood grow all around the area, so dense in some spots the ground is not visible beneath them.

“Chief?” Jake puts a hand up. “Watch my back.” He holsters his gun, walks to a tree, breaks off a long, skinny branch, and uses it to move the foliage around.

Alice comes back. She’s flicking in and out just a few feet ahead of Jake. She points at what looks like a rock ledge. And disappears again.

“Jake.”

He stops and turns around to look at me.

“There, see those rocks piled on top of each other?”

He looks at the spot I’m pointing. Nods once. The chief circles closer, his gaze darting everywhere. I could tell him it’s just the three of us here, but I know he’d still be on alert.

Jake uses the branch to move the ferns growing all around the rocks. “There’s a hole.”

He grabs his phone, turns on the flashlight, and shines it down. “I see something. Wait.” He takes a step closer, moves the ferns out of the way with his foot, and squats to get closer to the opening on the ground. For a minute, he shines his phone flashlight in the cavity again. Then, he drops his head, stands up, and turns off the light. Putting his phone in his pocket, Jake walks to my side. “There’s someone down there. Maybe ten feet down.”

The chief looks from me to Jake and back then goes to the edge of the hole. He grabs a small flashlight from his pocket and looks into the opening. “Holy shit.” He puts the flashlight back in his pocket, takes several steps away from us, stops, and when he turns, he’s pointing his gun at us.

Chapter42

Jake

What the fuck.Next to me, Ava freezes as we stare at the barrel of a Glock 22. “Chief? What are you doing?”

He doesn’t waver. “Funny thing. I was about to ask you two the same question.”

I raise my hands slowly and take half a step to the side, putting myself between the gun and Ava. “You know what’s going on. You saw it in my office, and we told you what Ava can do.”

The chief wags his head to the side. “Miss Ava, why don’t you take a step to your left, so I can see you both and keep those hands up while you do it.”

“No.” I shift again. “Ava, stay behind me. Chief, put the gun down.”

He pulls his cell phone out.

My heart booms in my ears. “What are you doing?”

“First, I’m calling for backup. Then I’ll sort this mess out about how you two knew where the body was.”

“We fucking told you how. You saw yourself and you said you believed her.”

“Bullshit! All I saw was my detective and some out-of-towner walk straight to a hole in the middle of nowhere and find a body. A body that’s so well hidden it could have gone forever in that hole and never been found. That’s what I saw. Try proving otherwise.”

“She wasn’t even in the country when Alice went missing.”

“But you were.”

My blood runs cold. He thinks I did this. Him, of all people? He who fucking failed to find Emily’s kidnapper and knows how much I struggle with it. He knows the only reason I became a cop was to solve the case myself. I’ve resented him for years for not finding her. And he knows it. And now he’s turning on me. “You know I had nothing to do with the disappearances. You know my reasons for becoming a cop, for staying in this town when my entire family left. How can you think that of me?”

He shrugs. “Your family didn’t go far. They’re in the next town over. I could never understand how she disappeared like that without a trace. You were the last one to see your sister alive. For all I know, you did it.”

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