All the Missing Girls(87)

“What?” he asked.

“Oh yeah,” I said. “Want to know how I know? Because she just came to my house, trying to blackmail me.”

“Calm down. Hold on. What?”

“Your girlfriend! Your f*cking girlfriend! She has pictures, Tyler.” I saw them again on the table, and I sucked in a sob with my breath. “Pictures of a girl. A dead girl. A dead f*cking—”

“Oh, God,” he said. “I’m coming.”

I stared at the pictures for so long, they turned blurry. Trying to talk my way out of what they were. What they meant. Everything was grainy and indecipherable. But it was my porch. And that was a girl, wrapped in a blanket.

That was enough.



* * *



I WAS WAITING ON the front steps in the dead of night when Tyler’s truck pulled in, and I led him straight back to the kitchen. “Look,” I said.

He picked up a picture, held it to his face, twisted it back and forth. “I don’t understand,” he said. “Annaleise gave you these?”

“She’s had them for the last five years!”

“Is that—”

“What do you think, Tyler? Of course it is.” I choked on a sob. “What the hell is she doing on my porch?”

But wasn’t that what Dad had told me when I asked? She was on the back porch, but just for a moment . . .

“Whose shadow is that?” I asked. Wondering whether my dad was the one who put her on the porch, or whether he knew about it from the pictures. Because if it wasn’t Dad, then it was—

“Nic?” The front door swung open and I dove for the pictures, brushing them back into a pile on the table as Daniel walked in.

“What the hell is going on?” he asked.

Tyler rubbed his face, looked between the two of us. “He was sitting next to me at the bar,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“You should go,” I said, my back to the table, desperately hiding the pictures.

“Nic. Move away from the table,” Daniel said.

But I thought of the shadow, which could’ve been from one of two people. “Go home to Laura,” I said. We were all about to break open. The final crack. It was time to understand.

The line between Daniel’s eyes deepened, and his steps took on a slow and dreamy quality, like he wasn’t sure he wanted to walk over and see what was on the kitchen table. He reached around me, picked up a photo off the top, narrowed his eyes as he twisted it back and forth in front of his face. “What is this?” he asked. Then, louder, “What is this?,” like it was my fault. And then Tyler was pushing Daniel out of my face, and I was pushing Tyler, because I had to do something.

“It’s pictures of Corinne!” I yelled back, tears stinging my eyes.

Daniel stared at the picture, his hand trembling, and his eyes slowly, slowly, rose to meet my own. We stared at each other over the dark corner of that photo. Even now I had trouble asking. Silently, I mouthed: You?

He shook his head just once.

Tyler turned around and looked at Daniel over his shoulder, then at me. “Who is this?” he asked, pointing to the shadow.

“It’s Dad,” Daniel said.

It had to be, because otherwise, it was him.

“Did you know about this?” I asked.

“No,” Daniel said, frowning at the other pictures. “No, I swear.”

The woods have eyes.

“Where did you get these?” he asked.

Tyler was silent, staring across the lawn, deep into the woods.

“Annaleise Carter,” I said.

Daniel’s face hardened. “Burn them,” he said.

“She has a flash drive,” I said. “Dad paid before. And now she wants me to pay. She sent a text to Officer Stewart asking about Corinne, said I had until he saw it to make up my mind. I had to say yes.” I felt the tears rising again, and I fought them back down.

Daniel dragged a hand down his face, shaking his head. “Okay,” he said slowly. “Okay, tell me. What does she want?”

“Ten to stay quiet. She’ll give us the flash drive for twenty.”

“Thousand?” Daniel barked. “How the hell does she think we can get twenty thousand dollars?”

Tyler looked down at the floor, but not before I stared at him for too long. “Because, Daniel. We’re selling the house. Everyone knows.”

“We need the money,” Daniel said. “We can’t afford to pay her off and pay for Dad.”

“I know that.”

“Do you?” he asked.

Great. We were going to start fighting about something that had nothing to do with the pictures of a dead Corinne Prescott. We were going to fight about how I didn’t understand basic finances, how I’d checked out of family affairs for the last ten years, how I’d left all the responsibility to him, like always.

“These are just pictures,” Tyler said. “And really hard-to-see pictures. They don’t prove anything.”

“Except they’re enough to investigate,” I said.

“Okay, okay,” Daniel said, pacing the room. “Well, we have some time. Even after we get an offer on the house, it can take months to close. Buy us some wiggle room. I’ll talk to her. We’ll talk to Dad. We’ll figure something out.”