A sudden thought pops into my mind, and I run to my office. Snatching the Advent calendar off the table where I put it, so I didn’t have to look at it constantly sitting in my living room, I bring it back to Sam.
“What are you doing?” he asks. “You know the QR codes in there aren’t going to work until the day they’re connected to.”
“I know,” I tell him. “That’s exactly what I’m looking at. The first note said his friends. Plural. That means there is another crime behind each of these doors that he’s going to expect me to figure out. There’s another one coming up in two days. Then there’s this one,” I say, pointing out the final window. “Three days after this one is the day Julia disappeared.”
“That’s the pattern,” Sam says. “You get three days after each one to figure out what happened.”
“Or something horrible happens to someone else,” I say. “At least I have the head start of knowing the date the crime happened. That will at least narrow down the options. I need to go.”
“What do you mean you need to go? Go where?” Sam asks.
“Back to my school. I need to find out what happened to Julia. Angeline is linked to that. And whoever is behind those other doors is, too. I don’t know how, but that’s what I need to find out. I can’t let something else happened to any of them. But especially to her.”
“You think Julia is still alive?” he asks.
“How could you ask me that?”
“Because you need to clarify what it is you’re doing. Are you trying to figure it out because you want to make sure no one else is hurt and you want to find the person who took Julia, if he is the same person. Or are you still looking for her?” he asks.
“I don’t know. Both. I hate that another girl is scared out of her ever-loving mind out there because some asshole with a power complex and a Christmas fetish took her to prove something to me. And that’s if he kept her alive after he took her. But I also hate the fact that Julia had to go through any of this and could still be going through it because no one else was willing to fight for her. They thought they knew her and everything she was doing, but they didn’t.
“Thirteen years ago, I was an eighteen-year-old kid who’d just had my world rattled to hell and was thrown for another loop when my friend disappeared. No one listened to me. Now I’m an FBI agent, and a damn good one. If there’s even the slightest chance that Julia is still out there, I’m going to be the one to find her.”
Sam nods. “What do you need me to do?”
“Nothing right now. You need to keep working. I’ll let you know if there is anything you can do from here. I’m going to pack and head to the school,” I say.
“Tonight?” he asks, sounding shocked.
“Sam, I have two days until the next window. That means I have five until someone else ends up suffering if I can’t figure out who is doing this. All my answers are around that campus. That’s where everything happened. I can’t waste any more time.”
“Are you going to stay at your father’s house?” he asks.
“Yeah. He’s still in Iowa. Besides, that’s where I was when it was all happening. If I’m going to go back, it makes sense to do it all the way,” I say.
“Are you going to be alright there?” Sam asks.
I know what he’s thinking. His mind is still in the days before I moved to Sherwood, when I was living in the house in Northern Virginia and being stalked. At the time, I had no idea who the man was or what he wanted with me. This was before I found my father again and was tormented by seeing a face that looked exactly like his.
“It’s been a long time, Sam. And Jonah is in prison. There’s nothing he can do. I’ll be safe there. And I’ll be close to Eric and Bellamy, so I’m not going to be alone,” I say.
“How long are you going to be gone?” he asks.
“Hopefully not long,” I say. “I want this done. And I want to be home for Christmas.”
He pulls me in for a tight hug and a kiss. “Nothing will keep me from being with you Christmas morning.”
I kiss him in return. “I’ll come by to say goodbye before leaving.”
He nods and leaves, and I head into my room to pack. As I walk out of the house, I stop to look at the lights on the Christmas tree and the presents beneath it. Then I close the door, toss my bags into the backseat, and head in to say goodbye to Sam.
Chapter Forty
Thirteen years ago…
Emma checked her phone for what felt like the thousandth time. Now that she had done four loops through the library looking for her, Julia was officially an hour late. They were supposed to meet up at the library to start studying for their last finals, then they were going to move to Emma’s house so they could keep going even after the library closed.
But Julia was nowhere. This marathon cramming session was her idea. Emma liked any excuse to hang out with her, but she knew her friend was stressed about the test coming up and wanted to make sure she would do well. She hadn’t told anybody else, but she had applied to the graduate program and was also looking into some culinary classes so she could follow both paths.
Emma wasn’t so worried about her last final. It was a class she’d carried a high A in for the entire semester. She could probably take the exam and ace it without
