Page 59 of Sinister Secrets

Perching carefully on the edge, muscles wound tight, ready to jump up in an instant, I brace myself.

“You’re off the case.”

I hold his gaze. “Do you believe that I had anything to do with Gordon Massey’s death?”

“No.”

“Then why?”

“Because the locals don’t want you involved anymore.”

“I am one of the locals.”

“The victim’s mother personally requested that you be kept away from the investigation. The sheriff has as well. And given the medical examiner’s discovery, I find myself in the position of being unable to disagree.”

“So that’s it then?” Even though I’d been prepared to spring up, my movements as I stand feel slow and stilted.

“No.” Director Lopez gestures to the chair I abandoned. I look at it for a long, tortured moment before sinking my exhausted body back into its folds, already feeling defeated. Once I’m seated again, he nods his approval and says, “Listen, Agent Knox, I like you. You’re passionate about the job. More than that, you’re good at it. So I want you to listen to me very carefully.”

He gives me an intense look that makes me straighten in my seat.

“I want you to take the rest of this week off to… regroup. Anything that you feel you need to get done, get it done by Monday. There’s no need to report anything you’re up to until then. Do you understand?”

Unfortunately, I think I do. I’m being coddled like the poor little damaged agent that I was. That they think I still am. Dismissed gently, but dismissed, nonetheless.

Well, I don’t need my hand held. I’ve worked too hard to claw my way out of my nightmares to allow myself to be treated as anything other than the equal of my peers. As much as I don’t want to, I might as well salvage whatever self-respect I can and give my notice now.

“If no headway’s been made in the investigation by then,” he continues, “I’ll assign another agent.”

I fight the urge to roll my eyes. Of course progress won’t be made. Sheriff Kingston will be so focused on making the evidence fit me being the guilty party that I doubt he’ll even consider another option. I thought Director Lopez was more astute than that. That he would even think otherwise…

Wait. I run his words back through my head, this time without the filter of the expectations I walked in here with coloring them. Looking up, I meet his gaze with new understanding.

“Are we on the same page?” he asks.

“Yes, sir.”

“I want you to be very careful with your free time, okay? Make the most of it.”

“I will.”

“Go on then. You better get started. The clock’s ticking.”

This time when I stand, there’s not a weak bone in my body as I rise to my full height, posture proud and tall. I feel like I’m practically oozing strength and resolve.

Director Lopez is giving himself plausible deniability. And me free reign to continue investigating Gordon’s case.

I’m sure he must have heard the rumors about me, and even if he hasn’t, he knows I’ve been in mandatory therapy for most of the last year, yet he still has confidence in my abilities. For the first time, I feel truly free of the shackles of that basement I woke up in.

CHAPTER 34

I wasn’t the type of girl who was given dolls to play with when she was younger—I was given matches. Perhaps not the soundest judgment my grandfather had ever shown, but Butch didn’t believe in shielding children from trouble. He believed in teaching them to find their own ways out of it.

If you’re capable of starting a fire, you better know how to put one out. And I had. Repeatedly. But little had I known that he was always in the wings watching, waiting to intervene in case things got out of hand.

I’d been twelve the day it happened. It had been an unseasonably cold February day, the kind that people raised in Florida aren’t prepared for. I remember the way my breath fogged, how the low temperature had turned the skin of my cheeks hard like they had frozen, a real possibility considering the layers of ice I’d had to knock through at the tops of the water buckets in the morning.

I only owned one pair of gloves and I’d gotten them wet. I debated throwing them in the dryer, but I still had chores to do, so I’d stopped at the old metal burn barrel on my way out to Chomp’s pond to feed him. Scraped every bit of dead grass, brush, and leaves from within a ten-foot radius. Used some of them to light a small blaze down at the bottom, speared my damp gloves on a couple of sticks and placed them over the fire, hoping they’d be dry by the time I got back while I carried the rest of the debris a safe distance away.