Gone (Deadly Secrets #2)(80)

Alec stopped steps in front of her and stared down into the pit. Nothing about his body language gave anything away. His shoulders didn’t tense or relax. He didn’t even move.

Raegan’s pulse thundered hard, pounding, pounding, pounding in her ears as she moved up at his side and looked over the edge.

Everything came to a screaming halt when she spotted the tiny skull and small bones of what she knew immediately had once been a child.





CHAPTER SEVENTEEN


“No,” Raegan rasped beside Alec. “It’s not her. I don’t believe it.” The forest moved in slow motion around Alec, turning hazy and ethereal. He watched as if in a fog as Raegan stepped back, shook her head, and said, “No. It’s not her. She wouldn’t have been up here. She’s with another family. Charlie said they found kids new families.”

Somewhere deep inside he knew she needed him. Knew he needed her too. But he couldn’t reach that place. It was spinning away from him. Taking with it all the joy and happiness and hope he’d felt only hours before. Leaving behind nothing but . . . nothing.

His gaze drifted back down to the remains in the bottom of the pit, sticking out of the frozen mud. It was a child, he knew it was a child, but he needed to see everything. Needed to see what cloth was in the pit with those bones, needed to see the shoes. They’d still be there. Shoes wouldn’t have decomposed yet. There had to be more. There had to be something—

“We can’t tell gender from the bones of a child,” Bickam said quietly at his back. “We’ll need to run DNA tests against you and Raegan.”

Somehow Alec found the strength to nod. Wasn’t sure how he did. He felt as if he were moving through a thick soup, his limbs heavy, his eyes clouded, his heart—he didn’t know what his heart was doing because he couldn’t feel it. And he wouldn’t let himself feel it until he knew for sure.

“It can’t be her.” Sobs caught in Raegan’s voice as it grew higher. “It’s not her. It’s not her,” she chanted, almost as if to reassure herself. “I know it’s not her. Alec, tell them.”

Snow crunched, followed by a hushed voice.

“No,” Raegan said. “I don’t need to calm down. I’m fine. No, I’m not leaving.”

“Get her out of here,” Bickam muttered.

“No!” More snow crunched, followed by the rasp of fabric. “Oh God, don’t let it be her.”

The heartache in her voice slowly brought Alec around, but he was still moving through that thick soup, unable to process things in real time. By the time he spotted her, an agent was already putting her in the back of a car and closing the door.

Go with her.

His heart raced. In the center of his chest. Right where he’d felt it come to life when Raegan had kissed him and loved him and come back to him. His breaths picked up speed as he watched the car’s lights flip on.

Go with her.

With the heavy beats came a swift whoosh of blinding pain, right in the same spot, but somehow, somewhere inside, he knew he could live through it. As long as he was with Raegan.

He stepped toward the car, already backing up, and was just about to lift a hand to wave the driver down when an agent at his back, one standing over the shallow grave, said, “Does that look like a shoe to you?”

Alec’s whole body froze.

“Yeah,” another agent said in a grim voice. “A tiny shoe. Call Jack over here. We might be able to identify gender after all.”



Raegan ran her fingers through hair still damp from her shower and stared at her reflection in the mirror. Dark circles marred the skin beneath her eyes from lack of sleep, but it was the overabundance of stress and worry that made her look as if she could break at any moment.

Be tough. You can get through this.

Her gaze drifted to her cell phone on the counter, and another wave of fear rolled through her blood. Fear she told herself not to succumb to. She sensed she was fighting a losing battle.

Alec hadn’t come home last night. He hadn’t even looked at her when those FBI agents had removed her from the scene. She’d waited up for him, expecting him to return to her at some point, but he hadn’t. And now, at nine a.m. with no texts or calls in response to her efforts to reach him, she was afraid to think about where he was and what he was doing.

Panic pushed in, threatening to pull her under. She was walking a tightrope between freaking the hell out and trying to stay sane. Didn’t he know that? Breathing deep, she told herself to stay calm, to think rationally, and to focus on the facts.

She’d spent a lot of time doing just that last night alone in her room, and the only truth she knew for certain was that nothing definitively pointed to that child in those woods being their daughter. If there were no other objects in that grave, identifying those bones would take weeks—maybe even months. And after researching online late into the night, she knew that no coroner could even tell them if the bones were male or female because bones alone couldn’t tell gender unless a victim has passed the age of puberty. No, she wasn’t going to believe the worst until she was staring at the proof in front of her. She just hoped Alec didn’t believe it either and that he hadn’t slipped out of her reach, lost in the same guilt and pain that had pulled him away from her so long ago.

Grabbing her cell phone from the counter, she dialed and headed for her living room.