"Well, if it's only that long," he cracks, kissing me again.
“Oh, and one more thing?” I ask.
“Hm?”
“Let me be absolutely clear: I am smashing cake into your face. Not the other way around. There is no way I am spending all that time and money on a face full of makeup for you to ruin.”
“What’ll you do if I do it anyway?”
“Oh, don’t worry about what I’ll do. Worry about what Bellamy will do.”
That draws a hearty laugh from both of us, and we lean in for a soft kiss as each of us wipes away the tears of laughter.
He puts the book down beside him and turns off the lamp before nestling down with me. I curl into the nook of his arm and rest my head on his chest, happy to just relax there until sleep comes, however long that takes.
The next day, Sam and I go to the station to meet with Noah White, the detective we worked with when we first came to Harlan to investigate the disappearance of internet star Lakyn Monroe. The war room we set up during that investigation is still there. The pictures are different now. Rather than being surrounded by images of Lakyn from her various modeling jobs, or stills from her internet videos, the room is now filled with crime scene photos from the cornfield and the Order temple.
But she isn't completely gone. One corner of the room has an image of her tucked among images of Millie, Lydia, Andrew, and Gabriel. It's still hard to look at the picture of Gabriel. I don't know what I'm supposed to feel when I see his face. He's grinning in the picture, an image we took from the grocery store employee board after realizing he had no social media still active after his death.
I remember that smile. I saw it so many times when I went to the grocery store and went down his lane. I made an effort to get in his lane whenever I could because of that smile. He was happy and welcoming. So incredibly young and full of life. Even when he first came to Sherwood and started working at the store because his grandmother was sick, he was able to be cheerful and friendly.
I don't know why he was there or why he ended up in Harlan. I don't understand why he was behind the wheel of the car that nearly ran me over or why he shot Millie. I don't understand why he took the deadly cyanide pills before I could even get to him after he smashed into a telephone poll seconds after the murder. And I don't understand why he had the key Greg left me.
The Harlan chapter of the Order of Prometheus collects victims. Gabriel could easily be one of them. They manipulate and turn people into weapons for their own gain.
But they also create monsters.
I don't know which Gabriel was. But I am determined to find out.
Sam and I are there with Noah to keep trying to unravel the case. From the outside, it might seem that something like this is simple. We know the Order is behind the deaths of every person in those pictures, including the victims whose bones have still not been given back their names. We even know whose hands destroyed the individual lives of the people used as pawns to show loyalty and create unbreakable bonds.
It should be easy to just show that and solve the case. But it isn't that easy. Facts still have to be proven. Details have to be revealed. Even with confessions, photographs, and witnesses, there still has to be enough that a lawyer whose entire job it is to get wealthy, influential people off for horrific crimes can't slither through cracks.
So here we are. Sealing up those cracks. Finding the absolute proof, the bits and pieces of evidence that pile up together until it is irrefutable. It's not easy. But we'll keep doing it. We'll do it until we find the members of the Order who fled. Until we find the twisted links to the Dragon. Until they're all brought to justice.
We end up staying at the station longer than we thought we would, and I'm juggling trays of cookies as I jog up the walkway to Xavier's house. He texted twelve times over the last hour but didn't tell me what was going on. The door opens as I get to the bottom step of his porch, and he rushes out to me.
"Have you heard?" he asks.
"Heard what?" I ask.
"Elsie is missing."
Chapter Eighteen
"Elsie is missing?" I ask, making sure I heard him correctly.
"Yes," he says with an emphatic nod. "Elsie Donahue from the investigation. Ken Abbott's partner. They just announced she's missing."
We go inside, and I set the cookies on the kitchen counter. Containers of Chinese food fill the dining room table, but I'm not thinking about eating. I'm still processing what Xavier just told me.
"When did she go missing?" I ask.
"The night of the investigation," Xavier says, taking plates out of the cabinet and handing them to me. "That's why the stream stopped so suddenly. When they went down to the lake to find her during her solo investigation, she wasn't there. Look, I have the announcement up."
We head over to his computer, and he presses play on a video already pulled up on the screen. Ken Abbott looks drawn, his stare dark as he looks into the camera.
"I didn't want to have to make this video. For the last few days, I've been hoping I wouldn't have to. That we would be able to resolve the situation without anybody ever knowing what was going on. Unfortunately, that is not how this is working out. We wanted privacy and the police requested things be kept quiet, for what I'm sure
