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Emmy sat beside her father in the viewing room inside the sheriff’s station.

The lights were off. There were two monitors on the table in front of them, both showing different angles of the interrogation room thirty feet away.

One camera was focused on Dale Loudermilk, who was sitting ramrod straight in a chair, hands folded together in his lap.

The other was on Lionel Faulkner, the lead FBI agent from Atlanta who’d spent the last three hours trying to get Dale to confess to the kidnapping and likely murder of Cheyenne Baker and Madison Dalrymple.

So far, all that he’d gotten were emphatic denials.

“Dale.” Lionel’s voice was gratingly calm through the cheap speaker between the monitors. “Where are the girls?”

Emmy watched Dale shake his head, the same as he’d done each time Lionel had asked him the question before.

The man who’d panicked when she’d walked into the stage manager’s office was a distant memory.

This version of Dale was the one Emmy remembered from school: smug and condescending, annoyed that you dared even speak to him.

He clearly thought he was smart enough to talk his way out of trouble when the truth was, if he was really smart, he’d shut his mouth and get a lawyer.

“Agent Faulkner, I’ve told you this a million times,” Dale said. “My answer will not change. I have no idea where the girls are. I had nothing to do with their disappearance. I am wholly innocent.”

“Why do you keep lying to me?”

“I am not lying. I’m telling you something you don’t want to hear.” Dale sounded as if he was lecturing a student. “I am an educator. I would never harm a child. The very idea is anathema to my system of beliefs.”

“Let’s get into that.” Lionel sat back in his chair. He crossed his legs, acting as though he had all the time in the world. “What made you want to become a teacher?”

Emmy huffed out her frustration. She had picked up Lionel’s pattern early on.

The agent would lean in, physically intruding into Dale’s personal space, as he aggressively questioned him about the missing girls, then pull back and ask an innocuous question about choral arrangements or what it was like to work at the rec center.

The technique was textbook, designed to gradually destroy the suspect’s sense of control.

You set the tone. You chose the topics. You told them where to sit, where to stand, when to talk, when they got to eat, when they could pee, and eventually, they broke down out of desperation and confessed.

It was a variation of good cop/bad cop meets Stockholm syndrome, but from where Emmy was sitting, Dale Loudermilk wasn’t buying it.

He wasn’t sweating. He wasn’t pleading or begging. He wasn’t shaking and crying. His leg wasn’t jiggling. His hands weren’t wringing. For all intents and purposes, he could be in a student–teacher conference where a parent was trying to get him to change a grade.

Dale wasn’t going to change anything.

“Dad, this is crazy.” Emmy couldn’t hold back her irritation. “Faulkner’s been doing the same yo-yo back and forth for the last three hours. Dale hasn’t cracked an inch. Why isn’t he using any of the information we gave him?”

“Don’t know,” Gerald said.

“Look at him.” Emmy waved at Dale’s imperious face on the monitor.

“He still thinks he’s walking out of here.

Faulkner needs to start turning the screw.

Talk about Cheyenne’s phones, the SIM card, the sex, the drugs, the CCTV from the school.

Half the FBI is busy tearing up Dale’s house and car, doing a colonoscopy on everybody he’s ever met.

Faulkner needs to start making it clear that Dale’s entire world is closing in on him. Madison could still be alive.”

“Frustrating,” Gerald said.

“You’re damn right.” Emmy felt her temper ramping up. “Can’t we go in there?”

“Nope.”

“Dad, he needs to throw the book at him.”

“Book’s not always heavy enough.”

“What does that mean?” Emmy demanded. “You’ve always told me if something isn’t working to try something new. Madison could be baking in the trunk of a car or tied up in a hunting cabin. How long can she last in this heat without water?”

Gerald didn’t answer. He was laser-focused on the monitor that showed Dale Loudermilk sitting in the catbird seat.

Emmy was about to press her father for an assignment that got her out of this stifling, dark room when a sharp cough rattled the speaker.

Dale’s hand went to his mouth. He coughed again.

Emmy watched Lionel Faulkner point to the plastic cup on the table.

He told Dale, “Drink some water.”

Dale made a show of lifting up the cup. He sipped loudly. Smacked his lips. Returned the cup to the table.

Emmy squeezed her hands together until she felt the bones shift.

She kept thinking about holding Madison’s hand under the oak tree.

She had failed the girl once. Now she was watching another cop fail her again.

Dale was never going to tell Faulkner where they were.

It took every ounce of her willpower not to run down the hall, burst into the interrogation room and slap the pompous look off his face.

Lionel said, “You recruited Cheyenne and Madison when they were ninth graders.”

Dale gave a heavy sigh. “It’s not a recruitment. I hold auditions. Any child can try out. Cheyenne is a solid contralto. Madison has a very rich tessitura that goes well with my senior tenors.”

“That’s just a fancy way of saying she’s a good singer, right?” Lionel waited for Dale to dip his head in a nod. “They’re pretty girls, aren’t they? Cheyenne in particular.”

“Don’t be disgusting.”

“Madison, though …” Lionel clicked his tongue against his teeth. “Got those nice curves on her. Gives you something to hold onto.”

Emmy felt the acid burning in her stomach.

Lionel said, “Madison was in your show choir. You took her to the state championship in Atlanta last year.”

“I took an entire busload of students on that trip. Madison Dalrymple was but one of them.”

“You stayed in the same hotel as Madison. The Marriott Marquis on Peachtree Center Avenue. Your room was right next to hers.”

“My wife was right next to me in bed.” Dale seemed to enjoy the wordplay. “Mrs. Loudermilk helped chaperone the trip. You can talk to her. She’ll tell you she didn’t see anything.”

“I dunno if Esther is the best judge of character.” Lionel let a sense of familiarity play in his tone. “After all, she had no idea she’s been living with a pedophile for twenty years.”

Dale’s hands had drawn into fists. He slowly extended his fingers, a kind of reminder to himself that he needed to stay calm. “You had no right to talk to my wife without my permission.”

“I feel like you don’t understand the situation you’re in,” Lionel said. “You’ve been arrested for possessing child pornography. You were caught red-handed.”

“I think you’re the one who misunderstands,” Dale countered. “I’ve told you repeatedly that I donated my old laptop to the drama department. I haven’t seen it in over a year.”

“The head of the drama department doesn’t remember you giving it to her.”

“I’m not surprised. She’s a flighty woman.”

“Dr. Clifton says the laptop is still registered to you.”

“I wouldn’t trust her record-keeping if I were you. She’s very sloppy.”

“We checked the laptop for prints, Dale. We only found two sets. Dr. Clifton’s are on the keyboard, which makes sense, because she unlocked the computer. We found your prints on the inside, the outside, and the thumb drive you were using to download the porn.”

“Ah, I see the misunderstanding. The machine was covered in dust. I wiped it off before I used it.” Dale picked up the cup of water, but he didn’t drink. “I told you I haven’t seen the thing in a year. Not since I got the new one.”

“Right,” Lionel said. “The PTA bought you a brand new MacBook Pro after the Choral Club won first place at regionals. We found it in the briefcase inside your vehicle.”

Dale placed the cup back on the table. “I’ll give you the password. You have my permission to check it. All you’ll find is lesson plans, choral arrangements, and sheet music.”

Lionel leaned forward again. “Let me tell you what the FBI does when we get a case like this. Can I tell you?”

Dale gave a heavy, put-upon sigh. He hadn’t put it together that Lionel asking for his permission to relay information, and repeatedly using the phrase let me , were meant to give him the impression that he always had a choice.

He waved his hand, saying, “I’m listening.”

“We search your house. We search your vehicles. We search your place of work, your storage unit where you keep your garden tools, your gym locker at the rec center where you keep your jar of Gooch Guard. We talk to your wife. We talk to your family. We talk to your neighbors, your co-workers, your preacher, the men on your softball team, the dude at the feed store who loaded six bags of mulch into your truck last week, the woman who trimmed your hair on Friday.”

Emmy hissed out a stream of air between her teeth. Faulkner was finally laying out the details that would let Dale know his life was under a microscope.

The agent said, “Dale, let me be brutally honest with you.”

“Does that mean you haven’t been brutally honest prior to this moment?”

“You’re going to prison.”

Dale shook his head. “I’m not going to prison.”

Lionel guffawed in the face of his certainty. “My dude, you were literally caught in the act by a sheriff’s deputy.”

“Emmy Clifton is a child. She only got the job because of her father.” Dale seemed to think he’d scored a point. “My dude .”

“Seriously, man, you sound high on your own supply. Should I drug test you?”

Dale snorted in disgust. “I don’t even drink alcohol.”

“Listen to me, Dale. I don’t know what unicorn fantasy world you’re living in right now, but let me tell you how the real world operates. Let’s take what you did to Cheyenne and Madison out of the picture for a minute, okay?”