She shakes her head.
“It’s true. That lock of hair is from a little girl named Harley. She’s been missing for almost a week,” I say.
She stiffens. Her fingers form fast shapes, spelling out the physical signs we used for our code language.
I sign back, promising I’m telling the truth.
Her face crumples and she huddles farther back in the armchair.
“There’s something else,” I say, catching Eli’s eye in case she takes what I’m about to say badly. It’s been all over the news, but Allie is likely too detached from the world to have noticed.
Eli nods and River moves to subtly block the route to the front door as I turn back to my sister.
“Dad is dead.”
Allie goes deathly still. Almost a minute passes before she looks across at me, her hands white as she grips her legs. “He’s gone? Like, forever?”
I nod. “Forever. He can’t hurt you anymore.”
She blinks in rapid bursts then mimics my nod. “That’s good. That’s better.”
I let out a breath. It was honestly hit or miss whether she would see the news that the man who abused us was finally dead as a good thing or not.
“Hey Allie,” I ask my sister, “did Zach tell you to shoot Jude?”
She shakes her head.
“Did he give you the gun?” Eli asks.
“Yeah. He said it was so I could protect myself.”
River looks at Oz. “I’ve put it in my office. See if you can trace where he got it from. We need to get that hair to the lab too.”
“Ten bucks says he’ll have scratched off the serial number, but I’ll see what I can do.” Oz gets up and heads down the hall.
Eli rolls his eyes. “Man doesn’t know how to bet. I’d have gone in for a hundred.”
River walks over and sits down where Oz was. “You’ve lost money every single time you’ve gambled.”
Allie watches the two of them banter, curiosity in her gaze before settling back on me.
“Where is the PO box?” I ask her.
She gives me an address then bites her nails. “Zach’s really bad?”
I nod. “Yeah. We need you to tell us about the time you were with him. It might help us find where he’s taken the latest girl. Can you do that?”
Allie shrugs. “It was only a few days. He didn’t hurt me. But he kept calling me Annie or Little Star.”
“Annie?” River asks.
My chest aches, the nickname feeling a world away from the person I am now. “It’s what Allie used to call me when we were kids. She was Allie. I was Annie.”
Eli taps the back of the couch and looks over at me. “He’s fixated on you.”
“Which could explain why the girls he’s taken are mirror images of your younger self. It might not just be about taunting you,” Oz adds.
I go quiet. The chess piece is heavy in my hand, the warning behind it sinking into my bones. Zach only agreed to leave the people I love alone if I left. And now I’m back.
