Today's Promises (Promises #2)(18)

While he makes small talk with Flynn, I look him over. He must be in his early forties. Not a bad-looking man, the detective’s tall and thin, with salt-and-pepper hair that’s thick and neatly coifed.

As we stand on the sidewalk, I start to feel uneasy, though. For some reason, the detective’s attention has focused more and more on me. After a few minutes, he’s eyeing me intently, his pale blue eyes assessing.

So much for putting me at ease.

“Okayyy,” I mutter under my breath as I shift from one sneakered foot to the other.

When the detective frowns, his gaze never wavering from me, Flynn, who’s obviously as curious as I am as to what could be so utterly fascinating about me, clears his throat and flat-out asks the detective, “Sir, is there something wrong with Jaynie? You keep looking at her like something’s really wrong.”

“Oh, no, nothing is wrong.” The detective, averting his gaze, rubs a hand down his face. “And I do apologize.”

He’s clearly embarrassed, and after a long pause, his eyes return to me, albeit in an apologetic manner.

“Again,” he says, “let me reiterate that I’m sorry for staring at you like that, Miss Cumberland. It’s just that you look remarkably similar to the missing girl, Debbie Canfield.”

Immediately disturbed by this revelation, I say, “You’re kidding, right?”

“I’m afraid I’m not,” the detective grimly replies.

“Oh, wonderful,” I say, my voice high and laced with sarcasm. “I look like the girl who went missing. Are you sure about this?”

“Here, let me show you.” Detective Silver fishes what looks to be a small color photograph of Debbie Canfield from the pocket of his trench coat. He hands me it to me. And crap. Sixteen-year-old Debbie, to my dismay, looks an awful lot like me.

“Oh, wow,” I murmur as I stare down at the photo.

The resemblance is truly uncanny. I am older, of course—eighteen, not sixteen. But otherwise we look a lot alike. Debbie has the same wavy auburn hair, similar green eyes, and high cheekbones, just like me.

“Holy shit,” Flynn exclaims when I pass the picture over for him to take a look.

He quickly hands the photo back to the detective, like it’s too difficult for him to peer down at a girl who so closely resembles me. And one who is currently presumed to be dead.

Shit, I kind of feel the same way.

“Maybe this explains why Allison hated me so much right from the start,” I offer, shuddering. “If she’s the one who did do something to Debbie, then when I showed up, looking so similar to the girl she’d offed, it had to have been disturbing to her.”

“To say the least,” Flynn mumbles.

The detective pulls a notepad from his coat and starts asking questions. “Do you feel you were singled out during your time at the Lowry residence? Were you treated more harshly than the others, particularly at the hand of Allison Lowry?”

I glance over at Flynn. He takes my hand, offering his support for whatever I choose to do. Truth is, though, I don’t really care to share the horrible things that were done to me, not with the detective…or anyone else.

“We all had it bad,” I whisper, head bowed.

“Miss Cumberland, even if we don’t find the body of the missing girl, you could help build a case against Ms. Lowry. There’s a good chance she’d remain in prison longer than what she’s currently looking at if she were charged with assault.”

My head jerks up. “Does that mean you have some insight regarding her sentence? Flynn and I calculated that the earliest she’d be up for parole is sometime next year.”

Detective Silver shoots me an apologetic look. “That would be true under normal circumstances,” he begins, sighing. “But I’m afraid with the overcrowding situation as it is at the women’s correction facility where Allison resides, and also with her being in for a non-violent offense, there’s a better-than-good chance she’ll be up for early release this summer.”

“This summer? That’s only a few months away.” There’s real fear in my tone when I turn to Flynn and say, “We should move to another state.”

I am terrified of Allison, but thankfully Flynn sees things more rationally than I.

“Jaynie,” he says, “we’re not letting Allison chase us away, not again. We ran once, but at least we ended up where we always planned to go. We have connections here in West Virginia. Mandy and the twins are up in Morgantown, and Bill Delmont is in Lawrence. Hell, even here in Forsaken, I have a friend in Crick.”

“But—”

“No, Jaynie. We need our support system. Plus, I just landed a decent-paying job. You still have your position at the sandwich shop, and I can pick up a shift there when things get busy. More money will be coming in real soon. We can buy a car, find a better apartment, all those things we talked about. If we run, we’ll have to start all over again.”

Everything Flynn says is making sense.

But there’s still a part of me that longs to flee.

“Hold up,” Detective Silver interjects. “There’s no need for Jaynie to put anything on record today.” He slips the notepad back in his pocket and gestures to his car. “Let’s take that ride up to the property. We’ll simply look around the place like we planned.”