Suddenly, the bad dreams and omens of the night melded into Selma’s frightening story of her missing girls to create a terrifying matrix. Twins, celebrating their twenty-first birthdays. Brianna’s hours of rationalization, all the suspicions she had dismissed as paranoia, now solidified into mind-numbing fear.

She could barely look at her friend.

Why New Orleans? Selma had asked.

The answer was simple: Because of frickin’ Rick Bentz.

“You have to go to the police,” Brianna said. “I’ll come with you.”

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 6

“That wasn’t the deal.” Jase Bridges stared his older brother down, but Prescott only shrugged as he stood in the living room of the old house where they’d grown up.

“The deal changed.”

“How?”

“Lena doesn’t like livin’ here,” Prescott said with a shrug. “Says there’s too many ghosts.”

“Ghosts?”

“Ghosts. Memories. Spirits. Whatever.” Prescott, an inch taller than Jase, was a bigger man all around. Thicker in the middle, wider shoulders, heavier face. His hair was near black where Jase’s was a lighter brown. Prescott had been a defensive tackle on the high-school football team, all-state with offers of full rides to several small colleges, while Jase, a running back three years later, hadn’t garnered the notice of college scouts. Now Prescott raked back his black hair and scowled through the window at the surrounding acres of what had once been a large sugar plantation. Over the centuries the farm had been cut into smaller plots, which most recently had been used to produce soybeans and raise cattle. Now the fields had gone fallow, the barns empty, the sheds filled with unused equipment that was rusting. Jase and his brother had inherited the place with the death of their uncle, who had never married or fathered children. The plan had been that Prescott, who had lived here with his family for five years, was to buy out Jase. Now, with payment finally due, the deal had just gone south.

Prescott placed a hand on Jase’s shoulder. “See, what’s happened is that Lena, she wants to live in town near the school so she can keep an eye on the kids and help out. And now that I’m selling insurance, I don’t have time to mess with this place. We need to move on. You understand about that, brother.” Then as if a sudden thought had struck him, he asked, “You run into Brianna since you’ve been back?”

The muscles in the back of Jase’s neck tightened, but he didn’t answer.

“She’s in town now, has a little place in the Garden District. Come home to roost, just like you.” He sent his brother a look only the two of them could understand. “From what I gather, she’s a psychologist now. Been back nearly a year. She has a practice and runs some kind of group for twins.”

“How do you know all this?”