Chapter 6 - THE WOMAN IN THE GROUND
We left through the back door.
Mark drove.
Lily slept curled under my coat in the back seat.
I sat beside her, staring at Daniel’s voicemail transcript.
Where they buried her.
“Who?” I whispered.
Mark kept his eyes on the road.
“We don’t know yet.”
“Mom?”
“If your mother was buried legally, no.”
“She was cremated.”
“Then probably not.”
That didn’t comfort me.
Mark contacted an old friend at the state police.
Not local.
Not anyone connected to Robert.
At midnight, we met Detective Sarah Knox inside an all-night diner forty miles away.
She listened without interrupting.
Then she looked at Lily.
“We need to get her somewhere safe.”
“I’m not leaving her.”
“I didn’t ask you to.”
Sarah opened her laptop.
“I pulled Willow Creek Holdings.”
“You already found it?”
“Mark gave me the details.”
She rotated the screen.
There were dozens of transactions.
Money moving through companies.
Properties transferred for one dollar.
Loans forgiven.
One address appeared repeatedly.
1478 Willow Creek Road.
Sarah looked at me.
“Recognize it?”
“No.”
Mark did.
His face tightened.
“What?”
He looked at Sarah.
“That used to be Cross Hills Youth Home.”
My stomach dropped.
I had heard the name.
A privately funded residential home for teenage girls.
Robert Cross had donated millions there years ago.
“It closed,” Mark said.
“When?”
“Seventeen years ago.”
“Why?”
Sarah answered.
“Officially? Fire code violations.”
“And unofficially?”
She clicked another file.
“Three girls disappeared within two years.”
I stared at her.
“What?”
“Runaways, according to reports.”
“Were they found?”
“No.”
Sarah brought up three photographs.
Teenage girls.
One had red hair.
One wore glasses.
The third made my heart stop.
I knew her.
Not personally.
But I had seen her face.
In my mother’s old photo albums.
“That girl.”
I pointed.
“That’s Rachel.”
Sarah looked at me.
“Rachel who?”
“I don’t know.”
Mark leaned closer.
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
“Where did you see her?”
“With my mother.”
A dozen old memories returned.
A photograph hidden inside a cookbook.
Mom tearing it in half when she saw me holding it.
Mom once crying in the garage after receiving an envelope with no return address.
“Mom knew her.”
Sarah pulled up the missing person report.
Rachel Mason.
Age sixteen.
Missing since October 2009.
Last seen at Cross Hills Youth Home.
Reported runaway.
I whispered, “Why would Mom hide this?”
Sarah’s phone rang.
She answered.
Listened.
Her face changed.
“Where?”
She hung up.
Mark stood.
“What?”
Sarah looked at me.
“Someone just broke into the county evidence archive.”
“What did they take?”
“Only one box.”
She turned the laptop toward us.
May you like
The evidence number belonged to Rachel Mason.
And the officer caught on camera carrying the box out of the building was my husband.
