She glanced up at the balcony where the tall, gray-haired guy had been smoking. He was still there, lighting up another cigarette and staring at her through the smoke he exhaled. Her skin crawled. Why the hell was he staring at her, and why was he standing so close to Jase’s apartment? She’d thought it was because he lived in a neighboring unit and that still could be true, but as she moved slightly so that her line of sight was obstructed by the stairwell, she noticed Jase’s door was open wide though his truck was nowhere to be found on the street or in the lot.

Not a big deal.

Or was it?

“No one could prove it. Myra just disappeared. Here in New Orleans, around the time of our twenty-first birthday,” Milo was saying. “We were going to celebrate together, but never got the chance. When all this talk about Selma’s daughters being abducted when they were turning twenty-one happened, I wondered, of course, but—” He shrugged, sunlight and shadow playing over his face as the wind rustled through the branches overhead, causing the leaves to turn. “Then I saw Jacob and that’s when I tried to get into contact with you.”

“You did a piss-poor job of it,” she said, thinking of him standing outside her window. Her cell phone jangled in her hand. Jase’s number flashed onto the screen. “I need to take this. I’ll just be a second,” she said, though Milo had started to protest.

“Hey, wait, I want to tell you—”

“I said, just a sec.” With an uncompromising look in Milo’s direction she held up a hand, saw that he’d snapped his mouth shut ostensibly to pout, then thought, Too damned bad, and turned her back on him.

“Hi,” she said, expecting Jase to launch into the story surrounding Donovan Caldwell’s death.

Instead, he said, “Zoe Denning is alive and here at the police station.”

“What?” she whispered, not thinking she heard correctly. “Zoe?” Tears of relief sprang to her eyes and she leaned against the trunk of the live oak for support. “What about Chloe?”

“Not yet . . . we don’t know. Are you at my apartment yet?”

“Yes.”

“Wait for me. I’m driving. On my way.” And then he launched into a bizarre tale of his learning he had a twin brother who could be the 21 Killer or a copycat or his own kind of freak because Zoe had first misidentified Jase as the killer. She listened in shock as the tale unfolded. “. . . and so the police have narrowed it down to a couple of places. They’re checking out a cabin owned by Myra Tillman first.”

“Wait. Tillman?” she repeated, and from the corner of her eye saw Milo’s head snap up. “That’s got to be it,” she said, pieces of the puzzle starting to tumble into place. “I’m . . . I’m with Milo now.”