She waited several seconds and got no answer. She tried again, rapping loudly this time. She leaned in, her nose almost to the door, and said: “Dad, open the door.”

  Again, there was no answer. Expecting nothing, she tried the door and was surprised to find it unlocked. But as the door swung open, she realized how odd that seemed. And suddenly, the fact that the door was unlocked added yet another notch to her worry.

  She stepped inside, closing the door behind her. The townhouse was quiet and tidy. She stepped into the living room, eyeing the place as if she did not quite trust it. She looked around for any signs that anything out of the ordinary had happened but could find nothing—other than the fact the front door had been unlocked.

  She exited the living room and walked down the small hallway to his bedroom. Again, she could find nothing out of sorts. The bed was made and there was a small pile of dirty clothes by the side of the dresser. She realized that she was getting something of a private peek into her father’s new life and it made her feel uncomfortable. She did not want to think of him as new; she’d come to terms with the kind of man he had truly been and as far as she was concerned, that was how she wanted to remember him always.

  She left the bedroom, regretting her decision to come over here. But while she was here, she figured she might as well give the place a full once-over. She made her way into the kitchen and before she entered, she saw the first thing that looked out of place.

  The teakettle was on the floor. There was no water around it and it was easily eight feet from where it should have been placed on the stove. Slowly, she bent over to pick it up. Her fingers hesitated in the air, hovering just a few inches away from the handle.

  There was a smudge on the side—something that looked like a dark shade of red against the stainless steel body. It was not really a splatter, but more like a single drop of something, about the size of a quarter. It was a shade of dark red she had seen numerous times during her time with the bureau so she didn’t even waste time wondering what it might be.

  It was blood. It was dried blood, meaning it had been on the kettle for at least eight to ten hours. Probably longer.

  She knelt by the teakettle and tried to come up with a hypothesis in her mind. The place she instantly wanted to go was that Danielle had come over for some reason and their father had attacked her—had perhaps driven off with her. But that made no sense because his car was still here. Also, if it was a planned attack and abduction, he would have been more careful about not leaving evidence behind. And the teakettle was a pretty glaring piece of evidence.

  So if that’s not what happened, what did happen?

  She wasn’t sure. There were many avenues to consider. One thing she did know was that with the unlocked door, the blood on the teakettle, and now two missing persons, she had enough speculative evidence to officially file a report.

  Chloe took her phone from her pocket and nearly placed a call to Director Johnson. But that, she knew, would be a mistake. Any case that started this way was always handled by the local PD first. Even if she felt the bureau could better handle it because she knew the history behind the two missing people, it was a police matter—for now.

  She called the police and as she listened to a woman answer the phone on the other end, she stared at that drop of blood and wondered if it belonged to her father or her sister.

  ***

  It felt surreal to be the one being questioned. The detective who was taking her statement seemed to be very aware of what sort of ground he was treading on. Taking the statement of an FBI agent about a family-related issue could, after all, be a huge chance to put a gold star on his career. On the other hand, he was surely also aware that this FBI agent was likely sizing him up as he did his job.

  Chloe felt bad for the guy, really…because she was sizing him up. He was very tall and somewhere near fifty years of age. He looked bored but also very alert—the same look she had seen in countless other detectives in the past.

  He was doing a decent job, though he seemed dubious of the whole situation. He had arrived with two officers, both of whom were still looking the place over. Chloe was polite, not telling them that she had already done a thorough job of it.

  “And you say the door was unlocked?” the detective asked her.

  They were sitting on barstools in the kitchen, both looking the place over as if they might have missed something. “Yes,” Chloe answered.

  “Do you know if he usually left it unlocked?”

  “No, I have no idea. It wouldn’t seem likely, though. He’s only been in DC for like a month. I doubt he felt safe and secure just yet.”

  “Can you think of any reason your father might have invited your sister over?”

  She was not going to mention Danielle breaking into her own apartment to steal their mother’s diary. Doing so would put Danielle under far too much scrutiny and it was her father who was the villain here. She was well aware it would impede the investigation, but she had no choice but to lie.

  “None that I can think of,” Chloe said. “Dad has been trying to reach back out to us, wanting to patch things up. We have a strained relationship, the three of us. Danielle was always a little more willing to buy his crap.” There was the lie. “So maybe he just had her over to reconnect. I don’t know.”

  “But judging from the teakettle and the blood on it, it might not have gone so well,” the detective said.

  “That’s my worry.”

  “The only thing that bothers me is that the kettle is all we have,” the detective said. “Yeah, there’s blood there, but where’s the evidence of a struggle?”

  “I’d say the blood is the evidence.”

  “And you know for certain your father is the one who wielded it? Any chance that might be his blood?”

  “Highly doubtful,” Chloe said.

  But even as he asked, she started to explore the other alternative—an alternative she had been blind to because she was so concerned with Danielle. If the door was unlocked and there was no sign of a struggle…more signs pointed to Danielle being the attacker rather than the attacked. She would have left in a hurry, neglecting to lock the door. And it would have been easier for her to get the drop on their father with the kettle because there was no way their dad would have even suspected she might attack him.

  She kept this all to herself, though. She could not place Danielle in the position of being the attacker here. She noticed the detective eyeing her suspiciously, was if he knew where her mind was going. After a few moments he scribbled something in a little notepad he’d been holding the entire time, and got to his feet.

  “Well, you know how this goes, Agent Fine,” he said. “All we have to go on is that blood. We’ll have it analyzed, as you know. And you can probably get the results faster than I can. But we’ll collect it and get it going.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Also, please let us know if you think of anything else. If, you know…if anything else comes to mind.”

  His tone indicated that he felt like she was keeping something from him. But his expression also told her that he was fine with it. She was sure that being a detective in DC, he had at least encountered other agent-based cases or had worked with others who had. As far as Chloe knew, it could be common for him.

  She had to remind herself of that. He was likely not seeing her as the panicked sister, but as a rational agent who knew there was a process. And damn it, she did know there was a process. She could not expect everyone to forget all the rules and regulations for something that was incredibly personal to her.

  “I will,” she said. “And thanks.”

  “In the meantime, we’ll put an APB out on your sister and her car.”

  The detective walked off toward the bedroom to join the other officers. Chloe also got to her feet, unsure of where to go or what to do. She still felt certain her father was the one in the wrong here; Danielle had done some deplorable things in her past but Chloe did not think she was capable of murder.

  Their father, however, was. Their past had proven this.

  And if he and Danielle were together under tense circumstances, Chloe felt sure that there were no limits to what her father might do to ensure he remained a free man.

  She headed for the door, figuring a trip to Danielle’s place was the next logical step. Maybe she’d find some clues there, maybe some evidence that—

  Her train of thought was once again interrupted by her cell phone. She grabbed it quickly, reading the name on the screen before answering this time. She was unsurprised to not see Danielle’s name there, and was equally disappointed at the name she did see there.

  Dir. Johnson.

  She answered it with caution, not wanting Johnson to have any indication that she had called the police. The less Johnson knew about her family problems, the better.

  “This is Fine,” she answered.

  “Fine, it’s Johnson. You in town right now?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Feeling well-rested? Did the past two days treat you well?”

  “I’m feeling great, sir.”

  “Good. Look, I know it’s short notice and pretty much stacked directly on top of your last case, but I need you to come in. I want to go over another potential case with you. It’s pretty urgent, so I’d appreciate some speed.”

  She felt overwhelmed for a moment as she tried to imagine working another case with this whole new ordeal with Danielle and her father. But she knew if she declined to come in, Johnson would ask questions. And the more questions he asked, the closer to the truth he would come.

  “I can be there in ten minutes,” she said.

  “Perfect.”

  Johnson ended the call, leaving Chloe to look around her father’s apartment. She stood there in silence for a moment longer before finally heading for the door, feeling as if she was abandoning not only the mystery within, but her sister as well.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Danielle knew that she’d once led a toxic life—a life directed by her poor taste in men, her soft spots for excessive alcohol and drugs, and a distaste for authority. She knew this and she claimed it. Claiming it was, she knew, an important part of moving on from it. But one of the good things about that nasty past of hers was that it had kept her moving, from one residence to another. From one state to another.

  Between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five, she had lived in nine different cities in five different states. That’s how she knew about Millseed, Texas.

  Millseed was a shithole. When she had lived here four years ago, the tiny town had been on its last legs. The population of under four hundred was barely enough to support the convenience store and general store that sat in the town’s center like two splatted flies on a dusty windshield.

  There wasn’t even any real residential part of the town. There were several houses sporadically placed along the unmarked two-lane roads and then, just before the town limits promised better places beyond, there were two trailer parks. Danielle had lived in one of those parks for a very rough seven months of her life. Meth had been run through the park and how she had managed to avoid the lure of that particular drug was beyond her. The man she had been living with at the time had gotten addicted to it and was currently doing time in prison for multiple charges of distributing it.

  But upon arriving in Millseed a little less than two days ago, Danielle had driven right by that trailer park. She was actually rather surprised the place was still standing. She’d ventured about a half a mile farther up the road, to a building that she had been told was once a slaughterhouse. It was a nondescript building tucked away behind a vacant lot overgrown with weeds, vines, and prickle bushes. The building looked even worse than she remembered it; its very bland and grimy appearance made it evident that it had once been used for nefarious purposes; after the slaughter of thousands of pigs, it had also been used for the creation of meth and second-rate ecstasy. She knew this because of the crowd she had once run with, the lame-ass crowd that had drawn her to Millseed in the first place.

  But now Danielle wondered if she had been brought to Millseed for some other reason—perhaps some divine reason. She hated that it was the first place she thought of when she got her initial idea, but it did seem perfect.

  Standing outside of the slaughterhouse and looking out across the overgrown field, she thought of how life sometimes seemed like a circle that brought her back to some place she had just narrowly escaped. She was smoking a cigarette, something she had not done since she had left this miserable excuse for a town, and thinking of what to do next.

  She’d brought her father here to kill him and now she had reached the point of no return. A very large part of her wanted to call Chloe and fill her in. At the very least, she wanted her sister to know she was safe. She supposed she owed Choe that much.

  Besides…what she had just done affected both of them. For Danielle, she assumed she’d never escape what she had done…that she would face the repercussions for the rest of her life. But for Chloe, it would be different. There would be a whole different kind of trauma there as she lived the rest of her life trying to understand why her sister had done such a thing.

  Danielle hated that she missed Chloe. She’d lived nearly ten years of her life without her sister and had done just fine. Only, just fine was a hell of a stretch. She had survived during those years and nothing more.

  She took one final drag from her cigarette, dropped it to the ground, and stomped it out. She hated the taste of it but the familiarity seemed fitting somehow. She’d gone through half a pack in the last day or so and while it helped calm her, it further convinced her that when she was done with the task at hand, she’d never be able to fully return to the habit.

  When she walked back inside the slaughterhouse, it was like stepping into another world. Maybe one of those post-apocalyptic worlds that were so popular on TV these days. At some point in its past, the office end of the abattoir had been demolished and hauled off in pieces; small sections of concrete and scrap iron could be seen on the far edge of the field, nearly consumed by the thick and unyielding vegetation. The only thing that had been left behind was the large concrete rectangle where the slaughters had occurred. There were stains on the floor, all pointing in the direction of rusted metal grates in the floor. Even in her current mood, Danielle could not fathom the sorts of things that had gone sifting through those grates.

  She walked across what she thought of as the “kill-floor” and to one of the two large chambers at the back of the building. They were separated from the kill-floor by only a half wall, creating separate rooms with easy access to the floor.

  Inside this room, Aiden Fine hung by his arms from a rope that was connected to a metal track in the ceiling. Danielle assumed the tracks and ropes had, at one time, been used to tie pigs and slowly move them toward their death. For now, though, they were holding her father in place. His arms were held almost perfectly vertical, the rope bound around his wrists.

  “Danielle,” he said. “Please…think about this You don’t have to do this.” His voice was haggard and dry. At least he wasn’t crying anymore. God, she’d hated it when he had cried just as they had crossed over into Texas, the sounds of his weeping from the trunk even creeping in beyond her loud music.

  “This again?” she asked. She sat on a low stack of old wooden pallets that had been tossed into the far corner. She looked at her father, understood that she had done this to him, and wondered what sort of monster she was becoming.

  “Danielle, I…”

  “You what?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She stepped toward him and looked him in his eyes. He was in pain from the way his arms were pulled upward and he was clearly tired. His feet were firmly on the ground but the angle his arms were forced to take surely made him more than a bit sore.

  “Sorry for what?” Danielle asked.

  He seemed to think about it for a moment. She wondered if he was actually considering whether or not he might admit to all of his crimes. But in the end, he said nothing. Danielle nodded with a frown and walked to the side of the room where she had a small plastic grocery bag. There were bottled waters and crackers inside. She opened one of the plastic bottles of water and walked over toward him.

  “Open,” she said.

  He narrowed his eyes at her and for a brief moment, she thought she saw anger there. But it quickly turned to some sort of muted mercy as he opened his mouth for the first water he’d had in over twenty-four hours.

  She slowly poured the liquid into his mouth and he swallowed it down greedily. She continued to pour until he started coughing against it. When she was done, Danielle recapped the water and returned to her stack of pallets.

  “What do you want?” Aiden asked. “I don’t know what you think I’ve done, but…”

  “Let’s not play dumb, Dad. You’ve had this coming for a while. I know it breaks your heart that I’m not the eight-year-old little girl you can bully and push around. It must sting to know you can’t tower over me anymore. God…what I would have given to be able to do this to you back then…”

  “This is about your mother?” He sounded almost surprised and that pissed Danielle off even more.

  “Partly. Mostly. We know, Dad. We’ve seen the diary.”

  “What diary?”

  Danielle slowly got off of her seat of pallets, walked over to him, and slapped him hard across the face. His body swayed a bit from the force of it, the rope and the overhead beam creaking.

  “Try again,” she said.

  Aiden Fine looked around the empty room, startled and clearly trying to come up with some bullshit to keep her happy.

  “Don’t bother,” she said. “I want the truth. We have the diary and we have read it. We know, Dad. We know everything.”

 

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