I looked down and gripped the edges of my chair tightly. I understood there was a level of danger inherent in my situation that wasn’t normal for seeking out long lost relatives, but I was so tired of feeling like I was spinning my wheels, clawing to get information, only for something to get in the way. I felt guilty for lying to the FBI about speaking to Adam but it didn’t seem as terrible now that I knew I hadn’t talked to a killer behind their backs. My conversation with him would have no effect on their investigation now anyway.

‘Liz, it’s important that you don’t share any of this information with Cristian. Even if it turns out that he is not the killer. If he’s in contact with the killer in any way, we don’t want them to be tipped off and rush the timeline in regard to Zoey and Addie; if they’re still alive.’

I nodded in disbelief at the situation I found myself in, all from doing an ancestry test for fun. I looked down at the photos of Zoey and Addie again, feeling the burn of their frozen stares.

‘Good,’ Hannigan said, standing. ‘Thank you for speaking with us Liz. It’s been very helpful. And please be cautious. We encourage you to stay away from Cristian. But if you do have any contact with him please call us right away should you happen to see or hear anything else that may assist us.’

He made a big show of scooping the two photos off the coffee table, as if I needed another reminder of what was at stake. Beck reached out to shake my hand again as she stood. I was numb, leading them to the door and saying goodbye. Paranoid thoughts chased each other around my head, stringing together the new clues that now all seemed to point to Cris. I was out of alternative suspects. My brain kept envisioning the sad ending all these girls had met. Now I couldn’t get the image out of my head of my uncle standing over them as they lay folded up in storage bins on a bed of rocks like discarded trash. I felt a bit dirty. Knowing I shared genes with such an evil human being felt like a stain I could never wash off. The memory of his victims would cling to me no matter where life took me. He had ripped away the joy I’d felt at finding biological relatives and instead dropped me into a nightmare I could never awake from.