CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

“First of all, you’re lucky my parents didn’t call the cops on you,” Z snapped at Nash before Sabrina had even taken her seat at the conference table. The cops? What was Z accusing Nash of now, Sabrina wondered.

“What are you talking about, Z?” Justin asked, equally confused. Sabrina glanced over at Nash to see his reaction, but he was stone-faced, as usual. After their last conversation or argument, or whatever that was, she had finally accepted that he and she might have had a connection at one point, but it wasn’t one Nash wanted to explore. Too bad she still had to force herself to tear her eyes away from him.

When Sabrina looked back at Z, she was glaring at Nash, her arms folded across her chest defiantly. “You’re watching us.”

“What do you mean we’re watching you?” Nash asked. Why did the black T-shirts he always wore have to seem specifically designed to make him look hotter? Focus, she reminded herself.

“A white van keeps cruising by my house,” Z answered. “My parents assumed it was a reporter stalking my dad, but that doesn’t make any sense. It’s obviously you keeping tabs on us. Ever since we went rogue at Devon’s apartment.”

Nash was still unruffled. “Let me get this straight. You think we’re watching you because you saw a white van drive by your house? The most common color passenger van out there, which is why I rented it in the first place?”

Z looked a little less certain, but she nodded anyway. “Yeah, but it wasn’t just that. The guy drives by only at really weird hours. And my mom said he always makes sure to park just out of range of our security cameras so he doesn’t show up on the video feed. I doubt some random reporter would be that tech savvy about a security system.”

Something shifted in Nash. “Did you get a license plate?”

“No, I never saw the van myself.”

“Was it a man driving? A woman?” The way Nash’s jaw tensed made Sabrina nervous.

Z also must’ve picked up on the serious note in Nash’s voice because she suddenly lost the attitude. “A guy in his twenties or thirties. My mom could never get a good look at him because he sped off when he saw her.”

“So it wasn’t you, Nash?” Gabby asked, threading her fingers together nervously.

“No.”

“The other night …” Gabby started. Then she stopped herself.

Z practically pounced. “The other night, what?”

“I had this strong sensation someone was watching us. I don’t know. I didn’t say anything because it was just a feeling, but it could be connected to this van.”

Andrew was typing furiously on his laptop. “I knew it,” he announced, looking up from his screen. “Devon Warner’s ID was swiped three times at Enterprise over the past year. Every time he rented a white Chevrolet Express cargo van. He rented one a month ago and still hasn’t returned it.”

The room went silent. “So Devon Warner is stalking Z? How would he know about her?” Sabrina finally asked, fear creeping into her voice no matter how much she tried to swallow it.

“What if he was watching us that night at his apartment and started following us?” Andrew wondered.

Patricia held her hand up. “I think we need to calm down. Let’s not get hysterical. We don’t know for sure that it was Devon Warner in that van.”

“But we don’t know for sure that it wasn’t,” Nash pointed out. “We’ve had an APB out on that van since we started looking into Devon and haven’t had a hit yet. If he’s still driving the car, it’s likely he changed the plates out a while ago. All of you need to keep your eyes open and be careful. If something feels wrong, just assume it is and call us. Especially if you see this van.”

Sabrina nodded along with the others. She didn’t want to get spooked when they didn’t have proof either way, but for once she was thankful for Z’s conspiracy theories. Maybe she just had the wrong conspirator this time.

“And just to be clear, Z,” Patricia said, annoyance in her voice for the first time. “We have no reason to spy on you. We’re on the same side here.”

“Then why didn’t you tell us that Lily had a daughter?” Z asked.

Here we go again, Sabrina thought.

She expected Patricia to finally lose it on Z, but instead she paled. “What are you talking about?”

Z nudged Gabby. Gabby hesitated but started talking after the second nudge. “I had a vision about Lily.” Her voice quavered and Justin moved his chair closer to her. “She was visiting her daughter’s grave.”

“When we asked you at the cabin if Lily had kids, you said no,” Z responded, her voice one degree away from triumphant.

Patricia cleared her throat. “You’re right. I didn’t tell you that Lily had a daughter. Sam. She was found dead just after her eighth birthday.”

“How did she die?” Gabby asked.

“And how do you know it doesn’t have to do with the case?” Z had to add.

“It does have to do with the case, but not in the way you think.” Patricia breathed deeply. “Lily’s daughter is the reason we created the serum in the first place.”

Sabrina was now utterly confused. Even Andrew looked lost.

Patricia started at the beginning. “Sam disappeared a little over ten years ago when she was only eight. She was riding her bike home from a friend’s house, and she never made it back.”

“What happened?” Sabrina asked, even though there was a part of her that didn’t want to hear the answer.

“She was abducted. Vanished without a trace. There were the usual alleged sightings that happen with missing persons cases but none we could confirm. We had search parties going for weeks. Lily used every resource she had through the FBI. The chances of finding a missing child go down exponentially every day, but she tried to hold out hope. We all did.

“We ran out of leads quickly. There was literally nothing left. That’s when Lily thought to ask for help from a psychic who’d done great work for the FBI before. Lily gave her some of Sam’s clothes and belongings and took her to the last place Sam was seen, but she wasn’t able to give us anything concrete. A few minor leads that led nowhere, nothing more. Lily was starting to fall apart.” Sabrina knew firsthand what something like that would do to a parent, though she wondered if Lily had it even worse than her own family. It destroyed Sabrina’s mom and dad when that drunk driver killed Anthony, but at least they knew what happened to him. Not knowing would be much worse, an impossible limbo where mourning felt like giving up, but staying hopeful felt like fooling yourself.

Patricia looked down into her coffee mug. “We’d developed the serum already but hadn’t tested it yet. When the psychic didn’t give us anything substantial, Lily insisted on ingesting the serum herself. As I told you before, the adult brain doesn’t absorb it in a way that makes the compound effective. We didn’t know that at the time, though, and we conducted trial after trial trying to figure out what the problem was. We ran out of time. We never got to use it. Sam’s body was found by hikers in a remote area of the Sandia Mountains.” Patricia paused for a moment. “Lily resigned shortly afterward. We divvied up our portions of the serum at that point, as well.”

Sabrina finally understood why Lily had quit her job and retreated to that cabin alone in the woods. “Did they ever find out who did it?” she couldn’t help but ask. Did Lily get the closure that may have come with that?

Patricia nodded, her face darkening. “He was caught a few years later. A handyman who had worked around Lily’s neighborhood at the time of Sam’s disappearance. The police caught him attempting to kidnap another young girl outside of Albuquerque and his fingerprints matched those found on Sam — and, sadly, numerous other victims.”

Sabrina swallowed, imagining the horrors endured by those poor girls and the brutalizing pain their families had been forced to suffer through. She looked up and found Nash watching her, an inscrutable expression on his face. He quickly turned his gaze back to Patricia.

“I’m sorry I didn’t inform you of all this before,” she told the group. “I didn’t want Lily’s past to distract you from the more relevant details of this case. But when I told you this serum was created for good, I meant it.”

Justin gave Z an “I told you so” look and Z rolled her eyes. “I was right that it had to do with the case,” Z snapped.

“Which is exactly what we should be talking about right now,” Nash said, walking to the projector screen. “We are fairly certain Devon Warner killed Lily Carpenter. We have the bracelet that places him there. The gun found at his apartment was used to kill her. But that means nothing if we can’t catch up to him somehow. We know he left Falcon Rock at least a week ago. Where did he go? The more days the serum is out of our possession, the more damage it can do. The only question is how much. We still have no idea if he plans to use it for his own agenda or sell it to someone else.”

As Patricia eagerly launched into ideas for generating leads, Sabrina felt something brush her arm. The sudden contact gave her the chills. She looked down and saw the goose bumps popping up.

Was someone else here? She waited for the horrible smell or the lights to flicker, but nothing happened. She was about to dismiss the sensation when the whispering started. It was a low voice that sounded as if it was coming from nowhere and everywhere, but she couldn’t make out the words.

Then someone yanked her hair so hard that she almost fell out of her chair. He finally showed himself, appearing right next to Nash.

With the beard and long, shaggy brown hair parted down the middle, she knew exactly who it was.

Devon Warner.

And she was the only one who could see him. No wonder they hadn’t been able to find him.

Apparently he — like Lily Carpenter — was dead.

They’d been chasing a ghost.

He was even more shadowy than Lily, looking as if he was standing underneath a rain cloud, his eyes like two pools of blackness.

A putrid sulfur smell overtook her nose as the whispering started again. This time she could finally make out the words.

“‘Nature teaches beasts to know their friends.’”

Devon was saying it over and over as if he was programmed on repeat.

“What does that mean?” Sabrina fumbled, afraid he would disappear before she got any answers.

“‘Nature teaches beasts to know their friends.’”

“What happened to you?” Sabrina practically shouted over him.

He stopped mid-sentence and his lips curled into a snarl. “The Springs.”

He vanished, but the smell lingered. Sabrina blinked slowly, letting everything sink in before she turned to the group staring at her, jaws dropped, even Nash. She couldn’t imagine what that exchange had looked like from the outside.

She sat down, trying to slow her quickly beating heart.

“Are you okay?” Nash asked, his eyes boring into hers in a way that only made her heart beat faster.

“I’m fine,” she managed. “But you guys aren’t going to believe this …”

“Try us,” Z deadpanned.

“I just saw Devon Warner.”

The impact registered on each of their faces, one by one. If Devon Warner was dead, who the hell had killed him? And what did it have to do with Lily Carpenter?

Gabby gasped. “If he’s dead …”

“Then who has the serum?” Justin completed her thought.

Everyone started talking at once, but Patricia cut them off. “Did he say anything, Sabrina?”

“Yes.” She closed her eyes to recall it exactly. “‘Nature teaches beasts to know their friends.’ He said it over and over. Then he said, ‘The Springs.’”

“‘Nature teaches beasts to know their friends.’ That’s a Shakespeare quote!” Andrew exclaimed. “It’s from Coriolanus. I skimmed it last year and got a D on the summary test, but I can recite the whole play now!”

“Devon Warner is quoting Shakespeare?” Justin asked incredulously. “Am I the only one who finds that weird?”

“He did have all those books in his apartment,” Gabby reminded them.

“So what does the quote mean?” Sabrina asked impatiently.

“It means animals are taught the difference between friends and enemies through their experiences in nature,” Andrew answered, going into teacher mode. “A lamb instinctively knows not to go near a wolf because it’ll get eaten. But if for some reason a lamb tested this out and approached a wolf, nature would teach him the hard way that a wolf isn’t his friend. In the play, Coriolanus knows how to be both the lamb and the wolf.”

Justin scowled. “Can you nerd out a little more and tell us what the hell that has to do with Devon?”

“Devon could think he’s both a killer and a victim,” Patricia said gravely.

“Or that someone he thought was a lamb turned out to be a wolf,” Nash suggested. “Maybe a friend stabbed him in the back.”

“What was the other thing he said?” Z asked.

Sabrina ran through the encounter again in her head. “ ‘The Springs.’ He has to mean the Pikes Peak springs, right?” They were the springs their town was named after, located near the top of the Pikes Peak mountain range. They’d completely dried up a decade ago, as temperatures got warmer and the snow packs in the mountains melted faster. But everyone still referred to the dusty remnants as the Springs.

“Maybe someone stabbed Devon in the back at the Springs,” Justin said. “There could still be evidence. Like the knife. I mean, it wasn’t very long ago, right, if he killed Lily?”

“Nash meant that someone stabbed him in the back metaphorically,” Andrew retorted. “Not with an actual knife.”

Gabby perked up. “Wait, Justin could be right,” she said. “No one goes to the Springs anymore. That could’ve been where Devon was murdered. It would be the perfect place to hide a body.”

Nash was already on his feet. “There’s only one way to find out.”