One restless hour after my mother left my room, something prods me to get up, put on a robe, and walk down to the kitchen. I’m not sure whether I heard something or nervous hunger is driving me. As I move up the hallway in my bare feet, I hear tapping coming from the kitchen. Sliding left, I slip into the dark den and peer through the far door at the kitchen table.

Serenity Butler is sitting at the table with a cup of steaming coffee, her eyes locked on her computer screen. Seeing her bent over the machine, her fingers flying faster than mine ever do when I’m writing, I wonder if she’s somehow found her way onto the same trail where Caitlin fell, just as Caitlin stepped into Henry’s footsteps after he was nearly beaten to death. Serenity’s passion for her work burns as fiercely as Caitlin’s, and this frightens me. I can’t let this young woman lose herself in those old cases and go rogue the way Caitlin did. As tough as Tee is, she might just stumble upon her own Bone Tree in the forests that line the Mississippi River . . . and meet a similar fate.

“You gonna stand there in the dark all night?” Tee asks, never lifting her eyes from the computer. “Or come in here and have some coffee?”

“Can you see in the dark?” I ask, walking into the kitchen.

She holds up her coffee mug. “You want a sip? Just made it.”

“No, thanks.”

Without missing a beat she goes back to typing.

“Something inspired you?” I ask.

“Not exactly. Just getting down some notes and observations. I like to do it when they’re fresh.”

I smile, but I’m envious of her work habits. “So where have you been? I was worried. I think everybody was.”

“Sorry about that. For a while I was where I couldn’t text, and then my battery went dead.”

A teenager’s reply. “I see.”

She glances up, still typing, then suddenly stops and leans back in her chair, faintly amused. “Look, I was out interviewing some people.”

“Hey, I don’t want to pry.”

“You deserve to know. But you won’t like it. I was talking to Lincoln Turner. And his aunt, Cora.”

Nothing she could have said would have shocked me more. “Seriously?”

“You think I’d kid you about that?”

“I guess not.” I reach and turn on the sink tap, then turn it off. “What the hell, Tee?”

She slides her chair back with a screech. “Penn . . . I don’t know what idea you have about me, but I’m not here to tell your family story the way you see it. I’m here to find out the real story—the truth, whatever that is. And to find that, I have to go where the story takes me. You’re a writer, for God’s sake. Do you disagree with that?”