Page 9 of Rescued By Midnight

When we get to the house, there’s a brunette standing on our doorstep. My old friend. My old, pregnant friend.

“Wait here, please.” Brayden’s tone of voice doesn’t invite argument.

I wait until he’s all the way to the front step before striding forward. This is my house. My husband.

The magnolia tree by the front door provides enough cover that I can eavesdrop.

Jericha sounds annoyed. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m just getting a few things.”

“Jericha, I told you not to come here,” he says in a low voice.

“This isn’t fair. I belong with you—we talked about this?—”

“And I said we need to be patient.”

Patient, I think. Patient for what? I step forward from behind the magnolia.

Jericha sneers in disgust, like I’m a cockroach curtseying on her kitchen counters. “This is a private conversation.”

I always knew she had the capacity for cruelty. I’ve seen her unleash it on countless other women at church. I never agreed with it, but I should have spoken up, told her how wrong it was.

Then again, a part of me always knew that if I intervened, she’d unleash that cruelty and vitriol on me.

I’m tired of being treated like shit. “Maybe you could have your private conversation somewhere that isn’t my front doorstep? This is my house, last time I checked.”

“Alice,” Brayden says sharply, before turning back to Jericha. “We’ll talk later.”

She rolls her green eyes, huffs, and walks away.

She’s still wearing her engagement ring.

4

LANDON - NOW

After checking in at our headquarters and ensuring everyone’s investigations are on track, I drive straight to the foothills south of Clear Springs. Someone at SEPD leaked info to the media. Now everyone knows the precise location where Alice was found.

It’s a little side road off the highway, leading farther up into the hills. Lots of long grasses, some pine trees. The forest gets thicker the higher I travel.

I couldn’t miss this spot if I tried. Five news channels have vans on the site, and several law enforcement vehicles are parked nearby. Operators have their cameras pointed at polished, heavily-make-upped men and women who gesture at the surrounding area. I overhear, “Twenty-six-year-old Alice Meeks was found in a dirty wedding gown, malnourished and collapsed on the side of this remote highway. She had been missing for thirteen months.”

That sounds about right. Except it wasn’t a wedding gown; it was a stuffy, white nightgown. But “wedding gown” sounds far more sensational. It irks me that they’re misrepresenting her. It irks me that they’re talking about her at all. Her life isn’t some circus. She’s been through more than any one of these people could possibly imagine. But fine, focus on the dress.

I keep out of the cameras’ reach as I walk along the edge of the highway. Carl Baldwin, my detective friend with SEPD, sees me at the same time I see him. He waves me over.

“Isn’t this a little out of your jurisdiction?” I ask.

“I asked a favor.” He runs a hand over his brown, curly hair. “Alice’s disappearance hit me hard. I’m relieved she’s alive, and I want to make sure we find the asshole who took her.” He pauses. “I know it hit you and Cody harder, since you knew her and all.”

“Yeah. It hit a lot of people pretty hard.” Even her church. They’d put up a half-million-dollar reward for any information about Alice’s disappearance. Up until that point, I hadn’t realized how loaded the Seven Blessed Days church was.

Baldwin nods. Something unintelligible comes over his radio, and he silences it.

“What else can you tell me, man?” I ask. “Something that hasn’t already been leaked to the media.”

“When I find the asshole who talked…” He takes a deep breath, exhales. “There’s nothing else. Not because I can’t share it, but because I don’t know it. We had a sketch artist work with Alice in the hospital, but we aren’t releasing the sketch yet.”

I’d love to get my hands on that.