The Vanishing Season (The Collector #4)(52)
“Bran—”
“But I gave up on her.”
“You did not give up on her. Every person who’s ever known you knows that.”
“Sachin didn’t give up on Erin. He used the Bureau systems to keep looking. He has a folder full of notes and questions because he didn’t stop looking for her. He joined the Bureau to help find kids like Erin, and he did not stop looking.”
I glare at the water as if that will make it boil faster. Behind me, I can hear the scrape of the stool as he stands, the bang of cabinet doors as he rifles through them, not to find anything but just to move, to make sound.
“Seventeen girls, Eliza. Seventeen.”
A cabinet door slams so hard it breaks its hinges, falling to the ground with a clatter.
“Faith was the fourth. The fourth girl, and because we didn’t find her, all those other girls got taken. All those other girls—”
Died? But he can’t make himself say the word.
Another cabinet door falls to the ground. They’ve needed replacing since before he bought The House, but he was talking about remodeling the whole kitchen, so it hasn’t been done. Now it’s getting a remodel whether it wants one or not.
“I walked them home whenever I didn’t have something after school. All four of them, Faith and Lissi and Stanzi and Amanda. If I didn’t have practice, I walked them home. To keep them safe. I should have been there.”
Just a few days ago, Daniel Copernik was thinking the same thing. Probably still is, poor kid.
“It is not your fault Faith walked home alone,” I tell him. “And it should have been safe for her to do so, and it wasn’t your fault it wasn’t.”
“Seventeen girls, Eliza!”
“Do you think walking Faith home would have kept him from kidnapping someone else?” I snap back. “If this is something he has to do, he would have taken someone else. Would you still be an FBI agent? Would you still have gotten this case, with this team, with the people to make these connections, Ian and Karwan and Addams? Or would no one have any idea this man was out there?”
“Are you saying my sister needed to disappear so we could solve it now?”
“I’m saying if it wasn’t your sister, it would have been someone, and there might not be even the tiny shred of hope we now have of figuring out what happened.” The water’s bubbling now, but fuck it. “Bran—”
“We were agents when Chavi died. We could have stopped him then, but that fucker killed another four girls and then went after Priya.”
“Bran—”
“He killed her sister, and he killed her friend, and then he went after her, and we were agents, and there was fuck-all any of us did about it!”
He paces around the kitchen like a caged tiger, grabbing or kicking at cabinet doors as he passes. Some of them slam shut and bounce back. Others end up on the floor. “Thirteen girls since Faith. Thirteen girls who never would have been taken if I—”
“If you what? If you hadn’t been sixteen? If you hadn’t been a student? It you hadn’t lived in a safe neighborhood with people who trusted each other? If you what?”
“I was supposed to walk her home.”
“On days when you didn’t have practice. And you had practice that day.”
“I should have walked her home.”
“So should Lissi. They were supposed to go straight home together. Do you blame her?”
“She was eight!”
“You were sixteen! You, Brandon Eddison, were still a kid!”
“I was old enough to pay attention!” he bellows. “I could have paid attention to whoever was watching her!”
“You had no way to know anyone was watching her. She wasn’t threatened; there was no note or ominous gift left at the door; there was no rash of kidnappings in the days before. Who were you going to pay attention to?”
“The bastard who took her.”
“You mean the bastard who doesn’t stand out? The bastard who has done this in multiple neighborhoods and never seemed out of place, never aroused suspicion? That’s who you would have paid attention to in the days before the kidnapping no one knew to expect?”
His fist actually goes through one of the cabinet doors, splitting the old, dried-out wood. Fortunately, it’s an empty cabinet and he hit too low to break his knuckles on the shelves.
“Faith isn’t your fault. Not now, and not then. None of these girls going missing is your fault.”
“What the hell do you know about it?” he cries. “You’re an only child; you’ve never had a sibling go missing.”
“I—”
“This isn’t a time for the textbook bullshit we’re all taught to say. You don’t know anything about it!”
“I—”
“It would have been better if she had been your sister. You wouldn’t have given up on her.”
“Bran—”
“You wouldn’t have let go of her. You couldn’t. You can’t even let go of The Damn Dress!”
His hand slams down on the edge of the stove. Along the way, he hits the handle of the pot of boiling water. I shove him out of the way as the pot snaps up from the blow, the water flying out. Damp heat sears through my sleeve, but most of the water hits the floor and the island.