Page 37 of Our Daughter's Bones

“Are you sure?” Her voice wobbled.

“Yes, ma’am. Clint double-checked it. The battery had been taken out, but we were able to reactivate it. It’s definitely Erica’s.”

“Erica’s phone was never found,” Nick whispered. “Abby had it all this time?”

“What the hell was she doing with Erica’s phone? Why didn’t she give it to the police?” Mackenzie was appalled.

No one answered. They had stilled in the dimly lit office. Joe, the janitor, passed by their office with his cart. The only sounds were of the wheels squeaking against the floor and him singing “Killing Me Softly.”

Sully cleared his throat. “You got what you wanted, Mack. This is concrete evidence linking the two cases. On Monday we’re briefing Special Agent Daniel St. Clair in the conference room at nine a.m. Show up and fill everyone in on what you got. Erica’s murder and Abby’s disappearance are connected. This changes everything.”

Twenty-One

2005

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

Mackenzie was convinced a sentient and sadist form had taken over her brain. Like a child banging its rattle against the bannister and giggling at the noise.

She waited in her dingy apartment building. The lights flickered, and the wallpaper was peeling. The button to the elevator dangled off the switchboard but still worked as the wires were connected. The building had been empty, much to her delight. She didn’t like her neighbors. They were incoherent and best avoided—either drug peddlers or shrewd state spies.

Her throbbing headache made her eyes water. From the corner of her eye, she spotted a shadow. But before registering it, she felt its presence.

Cold and unforgiving.

She turned slowly and saw it—sawhim.

In the cramped elevator stood her father. He wore a salmon-colored shirt and loose beige pants held up by two belts. His skin was bone white; his arms skinny as a whippet. His round belly stretched his shirt. But it was his eyes that drew her in—they were blue pools. She could see her own reflection in the mirrored elevator wall, two feet from him.

She looked like a deer in headlights.

She knew he wasn’t real. A trick of her mind or a punishment from her conscience. But now her heart thumped.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

She felt her heart’s elasticity as it stretched. Paralyzed, her back was plastered to the wall. Cold sweat sprouted on her skin. Air sucked out of her lungs, leaving them shrunk and wrinkled.

Her father’s eyes stayed on her. They gave away nothing. But she felt him—felt Robert Price’s icy presence extend, fixing her feet to the floor and slithering up her legs and arms, finally pooling in the base of her spine.

Was she going to die? Was he going to kill her?

The irrational thoughts slipped in her mind. He wasn’t real—except he was. Why was he here?

Revenge.

Before a scream could claw its way up her throat, the side of his head started bending inward. Slowly, inch by inch, the side of his skull sunk lower into his head. But her father stood frozen and unaffected—glaring at her with emptiness.

Mackenzie’s breaths came in scraps. With wide eyes, she watched blood gush down his face like a waterfall. It spread into his shirt, rolling into a fanned-out pattern and drying up instantly. Next came his eye—it kept expanding like a balloon being filled with gas. It stopped when it was the size of a golf ball.

Then, like twigs snapping under shoes, his nose twisted, and his teeth snapped away into oblivion.