“Okay,” Mendoza said into the phone as he drove past an abandoned gas station. “Just hold her there; we’ll want to talk to her . . . yeah, I’m sure . . . anyone would be, but still, we need to talk to her . . . okay, we’ll be there in ten, maybe less.” She clicked off. “Apparently we weren’t the first to call in Willow Valente’s death. A coworker was already checking on her when Brown and his partner got there. They’re holding her so that we can talk to her.”

“Good.” Rivers flipped on his lights, blew through the next intersection, and half a mile farther, turned onto Taylor’s Creek Road.

“She—the coworker—is more than a little freaked out.”

“Who wouldn’t be?” Rivers asked, his stomach knotting. The once sleepy little town of Riggs Crossing now was on the map. In December alone, two women had been murdered and one was missing.

And it wasn’t yet Christmas.

* * *

Restless, Rebecca unpacked her bag, folded her few sweaters, jeans, and leggings and placed them once again in the drawers of the small dresser in her hotel room. She had intended to leave.

After doing her duty with the press conference, she’d planned to go home to Seattle, to restart her life, to leave finding Megan to the police and to get as far away from James Cahill as possible. The man messed with her mind, and she didn’t need any of that, thank you very much.

But then her mother had called.

“What?” Lenora had cried when Rebecca had explained that she was returning to Seattle. “You can’t! Not until Megan’s found. You have to find her, Becky!”

“That could take a while.”

“And it will just take longer if you’re not there to rattle the police’s cages!”

“I’ve done enough ‘rattling,’” Rebecca had thrown back.

Lenora had driven her point home. “You let the police know that you won’t take ‘no’ for an answer. Be the squeaky wheel, Becky,” Lenora had insisted. When Rebecca had mentioned she thought Detectives Rivers and Mendoza were all over the case, her mother had scoffed. “I doubt it, but you make sure they’re not slacking off.”

Rebecca had thought about the detectives. She wasn’t sure she liked either one—Rivers seemed odd, and Mendoza had a chip on her shoulder the size of Mount Rainier, but she felt they both were on their game, that they would leave no stone unturned in locating her sister. And being here, stuck in the hotel room, spinning her wheels and sick with worry about Megan, letting her fears assail her, wasn’t healthy.

“Mom—I have responsibilities in Seattle. You know, like a job.”

“Oh, phooey! How many times have you told me you could work from anywhere as long as you have a laptop?”