Following her out of the room, we go into one of the mostly empty offices.
“Get out!” Dutch says in a tone that no one would be stupid enough to disobey. Once the room is cleared, she closes the door, leaning her head against it for a moment before spinning around to face me. “Susannah, I think you need to take a seat.”
My hands start shaking as I back up, my knees hitting the chair before I tumble into it. “You’re scaring me, Dutch. What is it?”
Sighing, she closes her eyes for a moment, then focuses on me with an intent look. “I don’t know how to tell you this gently, so I’m just going to come out with it. The man that was running this whole thing? His name is Tony D’Angelo.”
“I know,” I reply, confused. We had already established the names of “Papa” and “Momma”—Tony and Dolores D’Angelo.
“They’ve traveled all over the US,” Dutch says, looking down at her hands. “It looks like they’ve been here for the last eleven years. Before here, they were in Chicago.”
My hands clench around the handles of the chair, the coincidences almost too much to bear. “Tell me.”
Dutch clears her throat. “His DNA profile just came in. Susannah, it’s a match to the man that killed your sister and her husband.”
Black edges around the periphery of my vision, my breaths coming out in short sharp pants. Dutch falls to her knees in front of me, pushing my head down in between my knees as I start hyperventilating.
Once I’ve got my breathing under control and my heart isn’t racing quite as badly, I sit back up.
“There’s more,” she says, and I can tell she’s worried about this next part. “The little girl in the cage? Her DNA also just came in. Her profile is a familial match—to you.”
I go to stand up, but my knees give out, and I crash to the floor as memories pour over me. Memories that I’ve spent the last eleven years trying to suppress.
“Mommy! I want to see the baby!” I cry out. My big sister, Elizabeth, just had a baby girl, and I’m so excited. Mommy says I’m an aunt now, and that I have to be a big girl and help Lizzie take care of the baby.
Mommy chuckles as she lifts me up to look into the cradle. She’s so little, she looks just like one of my dolls.
“What’s her name?”
Lizzie smiles down at me. “Charlotte. Charlotte Elizabeth Rossi.”
“Charlotte,” I whisper, gently stroking her face with my finger. “We’ll be best friends, I just know it.”
I was seven when Charlotte was born, my sister following the family tradition of having children young. She was just seventeen when she had her. They lived with us until Charlotte was three, then moved into a little duplex just a few blocks away.
Charlotte and I grew up together, she was always following me around, and I loved her like a sister.
When she was ten, her parents were murdered, and Charlotte disappeared. My parents were beyond devastated. Not only had they lost their daughter and son-in-law, but their only grandchild as well.
And now this little girl, who looked to be about seven or eight, is related to me?
My mind is a roiling confusion of thoughts. I just sit on the floor in a daze. If she was related to me, it means Charlotte had a baby. And she would have been pregnant when she was twelve.
Rising to my feet, a scream tears out of me, and I knock a chair over before swiping the desk next to me of everything on it.
Dutch reaches out an arm to me, but I back away from her. I feel disconnected, crazy even. My niece had a baby when she was still a baby herself. And that little girl died in a cage like an animal, her hands and feet bound to the bars, sitting in her own filth.
Dutch walks up to me carefully, then pulls me into her arms as I collapse into sobs. I wish Tony D’Angelo was still alive. I would make him die a very slow, very painful death.
I go very still as I realize something. Charlotte is the missing fifth girl. She’s the killer.
Fuck! After what she’s been through...Jesus. How am I supposed to hunt down my own niece? Pulling back from Dutch, I avoid her eyes.Fuck, fuck, fuck!
“Hey,” she says quietly, making me look at her. “I get it, trust me. Look, I, umm. Shit. I’ve been in this situation before, okay? There was this guy—”
“I know,” I butt in. “Cruz Sandoval, right?”
Shock crosses her face as her brows lower. “You know about that?”
