The Running Girls(43)

“How old was Natalie when you broke it off with her?”

“I don’t see the relevance—”

“How old?”

“Eighteen, nineteen,” said Glen, color returning to his cheeks.

“Eighteen years old, Glen. A few weeks before her nineteenth birthday.”

Glen raised his voice as he leaned in toward Laurie. “And your point is?”

“You like them young, Glen?”

Glen recoiled in disgust. “Nothing illegal. She was very mature for her age.”

“And Bonnie? Sandra knows about Bonnie, doesn’t she?”

Glen shook his head, his clenched teeth making it clear he wasn’t used to being spoken to this way. “This is none of your business.”

“Would your company see it that way? Both women—I say women, but they were little more than girls—were the same age as Grace.” Laurie wasn’t there to moralize. Glen was right in the fact he’d done nothing legally wrong, but he was nearly three times the age of the women in question and had been in a position of power over them. “Something you’re not telling us, Glen?”

Glen’s thought process was evident on his twitching face. “What are you saying? You think because I slept with some slutty college girls that I killed my daughter?”

At last, the man appeared to be revealing his true self. Laurie wondered what Grace would have thought of him, talking about the college girls that way. “No one mentioned you killing Grace. Is there something you want to tell us?”

“You should have told me you were going to ask these questions,” he said, getting to his feet.

“You’re free to leave, Glen, but we will need to continue this interview. Maybe you should appoint a lawyer.”

“Don’t you worry,” he said. “I’ll be retaining a full team of lawyers, and when they’re done with you, you’ll no longer have a job.”





Chapter Twenty-Two


Every time Randall closed his eyes, all he could see was Annie’s mutilated body. It was like those first months after her death, when his memories of her felt forever tarnished by all he’d seen that day. Over the years, he’d been able to compartmentalize those images so they only appeared in his nightmares, or at moments of stress. Now, like then, every time he tried to think of their life together, the memory of her gentle beauty morphed in the space of a strangled breath into that lifeless figure in the sand.

It was so cruel that death had ravaged her in such a way. They’d occasionally talked about what would happen when they died, Randall readily accepting Annie’s pact that they both be buried. “I want to be worm food,” she’d told him. “I want to be part of the earth.”

She’d become food for more than worms in those three days she’d been left alone in the weeds by the dunes. Animals of all sorts had had their fill of her, until only the left side of her face had been recognizable, her red hair, still ablaze in the autumn sunshine, covering the savage wound that had bled her dry. Randall tried to shake that vision, clinging on to happier times. Forcing himself to recall their wedding day—the short ceremony in the Strand followed by a party on the beach, Annie impossibly beautiful as they ran hand in hand toward the gulf.

From the other room, a fresh salvo of Maurice’s snoring shook him from his reverie. Mr. Mosley had suggested they remain on the island, not wanting to give the authorities any grounds to incarcerate them. Already it was claustrophobic having his brother pressed into these rooms with him. In prison, he’d grown to accept tight quarters, but having Maurice in the house felt like a disservice to Annie. He still couldn’t pinpoint the source of her hatred for him, but she’d never allowed Maurice to stay here when they’d been together. Despite the circumstances, it felt like a betrayal to have him sleeping in David’s old room.

He left his bedroom and set water to boil on the stove. Funny how having someone stay over could make him feel so lonely. The only person he would have liked to see now was Laurie—or David, if he would ever consent to such a thing—but that was something unlikely to ever happen again. He’d seen the disappointment on her face as she’d shown him the photographs of that poor young girl. He’d tried not to look, but his eyes had sought out the images as if they wanted to punish him. The similarities were unmistakable and he’d struggled to keep the scream lodged within him from escaping. The girl had been a runner. She shared Annie’s long legs, her hair a darker shade of Annie’s fiery color. Like Annie, she’d been placed in that strange position, as if she’d been running on the sand; like Annie, her legs had been cruelly broken, and her neck severed.

It was as if time had come full circle, and as he sat in his armchair, the sound of Maurice’s snoring competing with the shrills and hoots from the wildlife outside, a never-ending kaleidoscope of images played through Randall’s mind of Annie and Grace, and the other girl who had started this all off.





Chapter Twenty-Three


Glen Harrington’s threats were nothing new to Laurie. She’d heard similar hundreds of times before, usually from those in privileged positions who didn’t think the law fully applied to them. She didn’t care how uncomfortable the questioning made him, or anyone else for that matter. All she cared about was finding Grace’s killer and if that meant upsetting some people on the way—and in particular those conducting sordid affairs with young women the same age as their daughters—then so be it.