documents detailing what was already known about the site.

Would these things hold the attention of five energetic young people who were itching to put their hands in the dirt? Faye was doubtful.

As she racked her brain for more options, Jeremiah’s phone sounded. Giving her an apologetic glance, he walked away to take the call.

Faye sat in silence, watching the young people set their marshmallows aflame, then run around with them held high like torches. They were having so much fun doing something so simple, but none of them had ever done it before. Nevertheless, once Jeremiah had shown them how to strip a green stick of leaves and stick a marshmallow on the end, they were instant marshmallow-toasting experts. When Faye thought of all the other simple pleasures they’d probably missed, she wanted to cry, but she figured her energy was better spent making a grocery list that said, “Buy more marshmallows.”

Quick footsteps sounded behind her and she turned around. It was Jeremiah, and he was crying.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Jeremiah had shape-shifted into a different man. The cheerful, almost goofy, big kid was gone. In its place was a towering man who was both grief-stricken and angry.

“What? Tell you what?”

“Why didn’t you tell me about Frida? Why didn’t you tell me that she was the dead woman you found?”

“Wait. You know Frida?” She corrected herself, awkward and miserable. “You knew Frida? Memphis is a big town. It didn’t occur to me that you would know her.”

“Know her? I loved her. I—” He closed his eyes, shook his head, kept shaking it.

“You loved her? Oh, Jeremiah.”

“That was a silly thing for me to say. It was middle school. We were just kids. Children. But—oh, God, when I think about what happened to her…”

He bowed his head and wept. Their five young charges noticed and the loud shenanigans stopped dead.

Faye answered the question in their eyes. “He just found out that someone close to him passed away.”

Richard lowered the long, graceful hand that held up his flaming marshmallow, blowing it out. “Frida?”

“You knew Frida, too?” Faye said. “I didn’t know any of you were from Memphis.” It didn’t make sense to her that people who lived just a few miles away would be sleeping here at the campground instead of in their own beds. “If I’d realized any of you might have known her, I wouldn’t have been so quiet about her death. I just…I guess I wanted us to get to know each other without that shadow hanging over us. We can talk about it, if you all want to.”

Richard spoke up. “You weren’t wrong. We’re not from around here. Davion’s from Kingsport. Ayesha’s from Chattanooga. The rest of us are from Nashville or thereabouts. But my family’s from Memphis and we came here every summer when I was a kid. Frida was older, but all my cousins were friends with her, so I knew her pretty well. She just lived one street over from my grandma, on the same side of the creek.”

Jeremiah wiped the tears off his cheeks and said, “It’s a big neighborhood, but not that big. People know each other and they care.”

Richard nodded. “Yeah. They do.”

Jeremiah turned his head away to wipe his cheeks again. He kept his face turned away as he talked, as if that would somehow hide the fact that he was crying and everybody knew it. “That’s why I run this program the way I do. The kids get work skills that they can take to a job back home, wherever home is. They may want to move away from Nashville or Chattanooga or Kingsport, or they may not, but I don’t want them to have to move. Not if they don’t want to go. I didn’t. I still live two blocks from my parents, but I’ve got this job that I made for myself. It pays the bills, it lets me live where I want to live, and I only have to leave if I want to. Everybody should have that choice.”

Jeremiah gave up trying to hide the tears. He turned toward the others and let them flow. “Frida should’ve had that choice,” he said his voice rising until it cracked. “She tried. She really did, but life kept throwing boulders at her.”

He hurried away, disappearing into his cabin. The others moved away in a clump, muttering among themselves.

Faye’s snack was cold. The gelid marshmallows had mingled with the soft, cool chocolate, and the graham crackers were getting soft. Thinking of children who would never toast a marshmallow in their lives, Faye threw away the sticky mess and went to bed.

Chapter Sixteen

As the dark night pressed in through windows so big that they let in all the outdoors, Faye looked around her cabin from the comfort of her freshly made bed. She wished Kali had such a nice place to live. The cabin was brand-new and immaculate, with pine floors and pine-paneled walls. It was built for a vacationing family, a big one. It had a full kitchen with a full-sized refrigerator, not to mention two bedrooms that she wasn’t even using. The bedrooms were furnished with bunk beds, and the sofa in the living area had a pull-out couch.

Too bad she was going to have to leave it. She was going to have to take Jeremiah and his crew of happy young people away from the campfire and the s’mores and the fresh air, because they weren’t safe here.

The day stretched out behind her forever, from her futile attempts to save Frida’s life to this moment. It was only now that Faye had enough silence to focus. It was only now that she could see the truth.

It made absolutely no sense for her to keep her crew in this lovely—not to mention free—place, not when an unsolved murder of exceptional violence had just happened a few miles away, on the far side of this self-same park. She had to take these people someplace safer.

Like anyone

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