BooksBarbecue
Back Snow Creek
Chapters (57)
  1. Books by Gregg Olsen
  2. Dedication
  3. Prologue
  4. One
  5. Two
  6. Three
  7. Four
  8. Five
  9. Six
  10. Seven
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Twelve
  16. Thirteen
  17. Fourteen
  18. Fifteen
  19. Sixteen
  20. Seventeen
  21. Eighteen
  22. Nineteen
  23. Twenty
  24. Twenty-One
  25. Twenty-Two
  26. Twenty-Three
  27. Twenty-Four
  28. Twenty-Five
  29. Twenty-Six
  30. Twenty-Seven
  31. Twenty-Eight
  32. Twenty-Nine
  33. Thirty
  34. Thirty-One
  35. Thirty-Two
  36. Thirty-Three
  37. Thirty-Four
  38. Thirty-Five
  39. Thirty-Six
  40. Thirty-Seven
  41. Thirty-Eight
  42. Thirty-Nine
  43. Forty
  44. Forty-One
  45. Forty-Two
  46. Forty-Three
  47. Forty-Four
  48. Forty-Five
  49. Forty-Six
  50. Forty-Seven
  51. Forty-Eight
  52. Forty-Nine
  53. Fifty
  54. Hear More from Gregg
  55. Books by Gregg Olsen
  56. A Letter from Gregg
  57. Acknowledgements

I bought into it. I guess the drumming of the same thing over and over ensured my complete acceptance. Like those kids we had seen on TV years ago. They had no other frame of reference for the world. They believed everything they were told. Even when the stories were stretched to breaking point, they still believed.

I know what I know, honey. So please give me that. I know that Alex has killed three girls and those cases were never truthfully solved. I also know why. I know his friends on the police force tampered with evidence. I know all of this because he told me when he held me captive when I was sixteen. I could draw you a picture about what happened during those dark days, but I don’t think I need to. You were conceived in the worst horror imaginable. But I would never want to live without you. I don’t see him when I look into your eyes. I see the face of the daughter that I will always love.

If you decide to try to find me alive—I know I can’t stop you— you will need to follow his trail. I don’t know where he is. I don’t know where I am. But I do know two things: I have seven days. He killed each girl after holding them for seven days. A week. Look into the victims’ pasts to find me.

* * *

I go back to my office, to the bottom desk drawer and pull out more paper, clippings from various newspapers. Though the images have yellowed with age, any one of them could have been a ringer for my mother. Shannon Blume, sixteen; Megan Moriarty, sixteen; Leanne Delmont, sixteen. All were from the Seattle-Tacoma area. All of these murder cases were attributed to different men. All cases were closed. According to the newspaper clippings, none of the men who killed any of the girls was named Alex Rader.

I scoop it all up and return to the kitchen table and restart the tape. I hear my voice talking about my confusion, how stunned I was that one of the other items in the safe deposit box was a gun.