Page 121 of What She Saw

Outside sunlight warmed his chilled skin. He wanted Rafe Colton to spend the rest of his life in jail, and he wanted to find those women. He would have to tread carefully to accomplish both.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Sloane

Wednesday, August 20, 2025, 9:00 p.m.

Grant and I sat in his truck down the street from the Dance Studio’s back parking lot. He opened the tracking app on his phone that he’d used to keep tabs on me.

An hour after I left the studio, the app showed movement. Susan’s van was soon headed west. We stayed a good distance from her, letting the tracker do the work. We drove to a suburb outside of Leesburg, Virginia.

He parked in the parking lot of the community’s recreation center. “You okay?”

“It’s a lot. I never thought I’d find one of them alive.”

Maybe on some level, I’d hoped that if anyone had made it out alive, it would have been Patty. Even if her living meant she’d abandoned me, I wanted her to be the lone survivor.

“It’s going to take a DNA test to prove it’s her,” Grant said. “And I’d bet she’s not going to give one up.”

“Hair or saliva samples are easy enough to get.”

“You need to do this part by the book, Sloane. Taggart’s search methods were always suspect.”

There had been suggestions that he’d planted the evidence. The defense attorney had argued Taggart could have obtained all the trinkets from searches he’d conducted of the victims’ residences or from the festival site. Taggart had been alone when he’d made his initial discovery. But when state police arrived, he was waiting outside, and he played it all by the book. It had taken fifteen minutes for them to find the evidence.

“Susan’s shocked reaction to her old name was all the proof I need.”

“You sound like Taggart. Got to have more than a feeling. The police will require more.”

“Is she still in the same place?”

He glanced at his phone. “Yes.”

I searched the address on my phone. “She incorporated her business twenty years ago. I would bet her home is owned by the corporation.” Hiding behind a corporation was an effective way to dodge searches for a name or Social Security number.

“Layers of corporate identities are a good way to hide in plain sight.”

“She’s not going to stay in her house long. Her cover has been blown,” I said. “Her legal troubles have just begun.”

“She’s calculating the damage now,” he said.

“Taggart voiced suspicions about Brian Fletcher. He always wondered why the guy was so late filing his daughter’s missing person report.”

“Brian’s reasons were plausible,” Grant said. “Taggart was in the center of a shitstorm, so he never pressed or followed up. Brian Fletcher never attended the trial. His wife had died. They held a funeral for his wife and Tristan at the same time. Tristan’s empty coffin was laid to rest next to her mother’s.”

“If Tristan survived, her father must have known,” I said. “But he deliberately broke several laws and reported her missing.”

“He thought he was protecting her,” Grant said.

“She was fearful for her life,” I said. “Or maybe she knew she could be arrested for helping Colton lure the girls to their deaths?”

“We need to talk to her,” he said.

“First thing in the morning.”

“We’re going to need to find somewhere else to wait. We’ll get noticed here, and someone is going to call the cops.”

“I want to make sure she’s still in her house,” I said. “Do you have a screwdriver?”