Before Kylee could follow Price or even call out, she heard him vomiting in the bathroom.
He didn’t come back right away. The toilet flushed and the water ran in the sink. She waited, checking the digital clock. It had only been a few minutes, but it was too long. Already she felt the cold trying to claim her as its own. She held out her right arm and examined the giant, nasty scar.
Price returned, his face pale, eyes bloodshot.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
He shook his head, not quite meeting her eyes. “I don’t know if I can do this.” He sat on the bed with his elbows on his knees, supporting his head with his hands.
“I’ll do it.” She tried to open the computer, but her numb fingers couldn’t connect with it. “Um, I need your help.”
Price swore and shoved off the bed, his body language agitated as he pushed open the computer. His hand brushed her arm. Then he returned to the bed and dropped his head again.
She’d never heard him swear. Kylee tried not to make a big deal out of it. The picture popped back up on the screen, and she cringed. “How do I get past this?”
“I don’t know. Try scrolling.”
She gave him a blank look. “Scrolling?”
He gave a loud sigh, then returned to her. “This.” He ran his finger over a blank square on the keyboard.
She reached the bottom of the autopsy file. Underneath it was the phrase “case history” in blue lettering. Kylee clicked on it, and a new screen popped up. “There, it’s gone,” she said, pressing her hand over his fingers. She gave him a squeeze. “Just words now. Do you want to see?”
His shoulders relaxed, some of the tension going out of him. He shook his head. “No. But show me anyway.”
She moved closer to him, turning the screen with her. “Looks like a summary of the case.” It was also several pages long. “‘Dispatch receives call on July 9, 06:30 hours. Missing child. Stepfather William McCormick called when Kylee Mansfield, age fifteen, wasn’t in her bed,’” she read aloud. “It details what they did; they interviewed my mom and Bill.” She scowled. “Bill told them I had a habit of skipping school and cutting myself. He said he thought it was a bid for attention but wanted to report it just to make sure.”
“Did you skip school a lot?” Price asked.
“Never! He made that up.” She kept reading. “Lieutenant Dan Stead took down the information and put out an APB. When I didn’t show up for another two days, the case became more serious. Because of the history between Child Protection Services and Bill, they got a search warrant and searched my house and the land around it.” Kylee shook her head. She already knew the answer, but it was heartbreaking to see it in writing. “All they found was a bloody piece of fabric and a knife. Forensics showed blood on the knife matched that on the shirt but . . . it was several weeks old. The only prints on the knife—” she broke off, not wanting to read that aloud to Price.
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Hers. The only prints they found were hers.
“How could they not find anything?” Price exploded. “They should have taken in cadaver dogs and searched around the lake!”
“They still thought I was missing, Price. And they’d need another warrant to search the Littles’ property. If they’d known I was dead, everything would have changed.”
“Missing.” Price kicked the computer desk. “Everyone knew you were dead. Everyone who knew you knew you’d never go anywhere.”
She bit her lip, resenting that assessment. She’d always dreamed of leaving. But she had never ventured out to anything new, not even an exciting or new elective in school. Her shoulders slumped forward. If she were alive, Bill would still be ruling her life. She would never leave.
She turned back to the report, trying to keep the emotion from her voice. “Okay, it skips here. No updates, I guess, until a few days ago.” She didn’t bother reading that part. She and Price knew what happened. “‘Lieutenant Stead searched the suggested area, search reveals body with a knife beside it . . . jagged cut on right arm from wrist to elbow. . . . Legal guardians suggest a suicide, that she often left for hours at a time . . . knife found next to victim matches cut, covered in her prints only.’”
She got to the end of the report and read the last few lines. “‘Multiple knives with Kylee’s blood and fingerprints found in house. Case under continued investigation.’”
That was the end, but it didn’t feel finished.
“Knives with your blood?” Price asked. “Doesn’t that prove something? Point the finger at your stepfather?”
Kylee lifted her head but couldn’t quite meet his eyes. “It proves his point. That I was a cutter. It makes me look suicidal.”
“Oh,” he said quietly. “Those were your knives.”
She didn’t bother giving the affirmative.
“Well,” he said, rousing himself with a heavy sigh, “at least the case is still under investigation. That means the police aren’t ready to say it’s a suicide.”
“Still under investigation,” Kylee whispered, weighing those words.
“Go back to the autopsy report.”
Kylee paused in mid-motion at the sound of the bus at the top of the road. “The bus is here.”
“How do you know?”
“I can hear it.”
“You can hear that?” He got up and looked out the window.
She grinned at him. “I listened for it every day. I always knew when you got home.”
He smiled back at her, the daylight behind him casting him in shadow, rays of light flowing around him like a halo. “Well, Lisa’s home.” He rested his arm against the windowsill. “We’ll have to finish this up later. I don’t want her to see it.”
“Sure.” She reached to close the computer when Price’s door flew open.
“Price Hudson!” Amy burst in, her blue eyes flashing with fury.
Kylee froze, her hand on the lid of the laptop.
“Uh, Amy,” Price said, his gaze sweeping toward Kylee. “What? Hi?” He made a leap in Kylee’s direction, hand outstretched to the computer.
Amy followed his movements. “What are you doing?” she asked, distracted. She stepped forward. Kylee jumped up and dashed away from the desk seconds before Amy sat where she’d been.
“Um, nothing,” Price said, but it was a pointless denial. Amy was already clicking through pages.
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