Gibson slept until the morning sunlight crept across the floor and found his eyes. He rolled into a sitting position on the couch. Billy was upstairs in one of the bedrooms. They’d talked themselves out without reaching any conclusions and called it a night. His phone said it was after ten. When was the last time he’d slept this late? On a couch. But after four days in the back of a car, an old couch felt pretty damn good.

There was no doubting Billy’s story. Not now.

Billy hadn’t been kidding when he said the attic was a shrine to Terrance Musgrove’s family. He’d shown it to Gibson last night. Rows of neatly stacked boxes lined the walls, each labeled—“Living Room Pictures,” “Office 1,” “Office 2,” “Master Bathroom Sundries,” etc. As if the Musgroves were expected back and would need easy access to their shampoo.

Billy had gone straight for a row of boxes labeled “Ginny’s Room.”

“Suzanne stayed in Ginny’s room. It was still filled with girl’s stuff, so I guess she just felt more comfortable. I thought she’d be a little creeped out, sleeping in a dead girl’s bed, but she said it didn’t bother her.”

Billy had dug into the box, pulled the pink Hello Kitty backpack out, and handed it to him.

“Are you kidding me?” Gibson asked.

“Told you I had something to show you.”

“Musgrove’s sister didn’t notice it?”

“A girl’s backpack in a girl’s bedroom? Not really. There’s something to be said for hiding in plain sight.”

“And it’s just been here this whole time?”

“Tell me a better place for a single guy in his twenties to keep a kid’s backpack?”

They’d brought it downstairs, and Billy watched while Gibson unpacked it and laid everything out on the coffee table—compact, hairbrush, a jewelry box, an old first-gen iPod, earphones, a couple of T-shirts and pairs of underwear, jeans. The hardcover edition of The Fellowship of the Ring that Gibson had read to her all those years ago. And a beat-up Philadelphia Phillies baseball cap.

Gibson rubbed the sleep out of his face and reached for the cap, handling it delicately, as if it were an heirloom from another era. Even more than the backpack, it gave him the chills. He flipped it over and, for what seemed like the hundredth time since last night, looked at the lining. In faded black marker were the initials “S. D. L.”—Suzanne Davis Lombard. The L written with Suzanne’s distinctive swoosh. This was her cap. The cap.

What did it mean?