Page 62 of The Hanging Dolls

Off.

On.

Lily stood a few feet in front of her. The marks on her neck visible. Her face gaunt and pale. Dressed in the same clothes she was wearing when they found her.

A scream clawed up Zoe’s throat.

Off.

On.

Tara drew near as Lily disappeared. Her dark hair matted at the back. A more jagged bruising on her neck.

The lights went off again. This time they didn’t come back on. Instead the keening groan from the rod grew louder and louder, until Zoe was crouching, covering her ears. Then the same voice of a girl whispered in her ear.

“Emily!”

Zoe woke up with a jolt. Her head was resting against the cool surface of the table. She adjusted her vision to the dancing dust particles before her eyes. It was a name she hadn’t heard in a very long time. A name she had forgotten and buried deep within inside her. She hadn’t recognized the voice until she finally did.

“How long was I out for?” Zoe rubbed her eyes.

“Just an hour.” Aiden was sitting across from her, going through a thick file. “You looked beat so I didn’t wake you.”

She cracked her neck and stared at her laptop screen. “The motel mattress sucks. Haven’t slept a wink since I got here.”

“Now you get why I bought one.” He winked.

“You still working on that video?” Scott said, appearing from behind her.

“Yeah. FBI is stretched thin on this one, unfortunately, so I’m trying to learn this software. There has to besomethinghere. I refuse to believe we got nothing from this.” Zoe let the irritation slip into her voice as she chewed on her fingernails.

Her phone buzzed. It was Simon.

S: Sorry our conversation got interrupted last time. How’s the case going?

Z: It would go better if IT weren’t blocked.

S: My hands are tied, Z. There’s a lot going on here.

Z: What happened?

S: Remember Bruce from counterterrorism? He was killed.

Panic flared inside Zoe’s chest. She wasn’t close to Bruce but Simon was. They trained together back in Quantico.

She stepped out of the room to call him, with Aiden’s watchful eye tracking her. Simon answered swiftly. “How are you doing?” she said.

“I don’t know. I just don’t know how to feel.” His voice was heavy but muddled around the edges. Hadn’t he slept?

“He had a family, right?”

“A wife and two kids.”

She hung her head low, her teeth chewing on her weathered lips. “Do we know what went down?”

“Not yet. We’ve opened an investigation. Damn, Z. Sometimes I wonder if any of this is even worth it. Dying foryour country when the only people who remember you are your family.”

Family. The bonds that kept pieces of us strung together through the wear and tear of life. And Zoe had wronged her family—a promise made to her mother and that lifelong regret that festered inside her like an infected wound. A sharp thread of pain pulled through her as she thought of Rachel.