Page 16 of Five

I scratch the back of my head. “Maybe. I guess…”

Cope looks like he’s about to die restraining himself.

Fucking goober.

“Next question?” I scan the crowd.

A pretty blond raises her hand.

“Can you tell us a little about what you’re working on now?”

Finally, a decent question.

“Well…this story is a little different from my other projects. It is about finding your true home and how, sometimes, that might end up being with more than one person—“

“I have a question.”

A man stands up the back, beyond the glare of the lights. I squint to try and make him out. “What’s that?”

I can’t see his face clearly, but as he continues speaking there’s a familiarity to his voice that makes the hair stand up on my arms.

“The story I am here for is the one that every person around these parts wants to know: what happened on that island?”

My blood runs cold, and I half rise in my chair. Oscar and Jesse do the same, and I wave them back down. “Show yourself.”

“Don’t you remember me?”

The voice taunts, and the man steps forward a few steps, until the light falls across his features.

Beck.

Whispers begin to circulate through the crowd, and after a protracted moment where we stare at each other, unblinking, I press my lips together firmly and retake my seat.

“You’ve got the wrong person, man. The only thing I’m here to talk about is a book.”

Beck takes another step forward. “And I’m here to talk about a serial killer that targets kids. What’s more important,Mr. Hunt?“ His tone is filled with contempt. “What do you have to say about the boys that are going missing in the Keys?”

My horrified gaze turns to Oscar.

What boys?I ask him silently.What is he talking about?

I look at the reporter. “Someone needs to get that asshole out of here.”

Scenting blood in the water, she merely regards me curiously. “What’s he talking about?”

I stand, yank the mic from my shirt. “None of anyone’s damn business.”

One

Neve

Mood:craptacularyuckarooni.

Gray morning light slants through the blinds of my office, echoing my overall state of mind as I stare at the computer screen in front of me and scan my email and morning news alerts.

Little Pilots Daycare and Pre-K just won the grant I applied for last year, which is fantastic, but apparently, the media has already picked it up and run with it—which is not fantastic.

The article open before me now was written by someone who wasn’t happy with a simple little piece about a local childcare program making good. The author had dug into my past and thought it would make a great story, as she put it, about “rising from the ashes of tragedy.”