We found Celine Delacroix the next morning, sitting on the edge of a dock a two-hour drive from her house—the same dock where she and Michael had been photographed years before. Beside me, Dean watched, stone-faced, as Michael walked toward the end of the dock—toward Celine. I couldn’t make
out the expression on her face when she spotted him. I couldn’t hear his greeting or the words she offered in return. But I saw the exact moment when the fighter in Celine gave way to something softer.
Something vulnerable.
“This is what happens when they’re together,” Dean said, and I knew that he wasn’t talking about Michael and Celine. “Michael knows exactly what Lia’s feeling. Lia knows every time he lies to her. They hurt each other, and they hurt themselves.”
I thought about everything that had happened: Michael’s confrontation with his father, his fight with Lia, the realization that we’d been dragged away from hunting for my mother’s captors by what amounted to an elaborate prank. We’d been on this case for less than twenty-four hours, but even that felt like too much.
One day until Michael’s birthday. Three days until April second. As I watched Michael sit down next to Celine, the countdown to the next Fibonacci date resumed in my head.
“Relax, Dean,” Lia said, coming up behind us. “I’m fine. We found the girl. We saved the day. If you think I’m going to get all emotional over Michael Townsend, clearly I’ve been doing this cold-hearted shrew thing all wrong.”
Michael didn’t tell us what Celine had said. He didn’t tell us whether she’d explained why she’d done what she’d done or what she’d hoped to gain by it. By midmorning, we were back on the plane, a whole herd of emotional elephants in tow.
Briggs didn’t say a word to Sterling about the fact that she’d known from the get-go that this case had nothing to do with the Masters.
Sterling didn’t say a word to Briggs about the way he’d jumped the
moment her father had indicated how high.
Michael and Lia didn’t acknowledge the angry words that had passed between them.
I didn’t tell Dean that the night before, I’d dreamed of his father, of my mother, of blood on the walls and blood on her hands—and on mine.
Once we were in the air, Judd pulled me to the back of the plane. He settled into one seat and nodded toward another. I sat. For several seconds, he said nothing, like the two of us were sitting side by side on the front porch of the Quantico house, enjoying our morning coffee and a bit of quiet.
“Do you know why I said yes to this case?” Judd asked finally.
I turned the question over in my head. You want the Masters as badly as I do. They’d killed his daughter. But though this case had appeared related, my gut said that Judd—unlike the director and Agent Briggs—had watched Agent Sterling very carefully through the whole exchange.
He hadn’t been backing Briggs’s decision. He’d been backing hers.
“A girl was missing.” I repeated the words Agent Sterling had said the day before. “A girl that Michael knew.”
“Michael was coming back here.” Judd had never doubted that—not for a second. “And when one of my kids goes down an emotional rabbit hole like that one, he—or she—sure as hell doesn’t do it alone.”
Judd gave those words a moment to sink in, then reached into his bag and pulled out a folder.
“What’s this?” I asked when he handed it to me.
“A file someone tried very hard to bury,” he replied. “While you were off gallivanting after Miss Delacroix this morning, one of Ronnie’s contacts managed to dig it up.”
Ronnie was short for Veronica—as in Agent Veronica Sterling.
“Inmate named Robert Mills.” Judd resorted to speaking in fragments as my fingers found their way to the edge of the folder. “Convicted of murdering his ex-wife. Killed in prison not long after he was convicted.”
The man Redding talked to. My grip on the edge of the folder tightened. The one whose ex-wife’s body was never found. The one who was taken, just like my mother.
As I opened the folder, Judd caught my chin, and his weathered hands turned my face gently toward his.
“Cassie-girl, don’t go down this rabbit hole alone.”
