Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 93723 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 469(@200wpm)___ 375(@250wpm)___ 312(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93723 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 469(@200wpm)___ 375(@250wpm)___ 312(@300wpm)
How do I know this?
“Jesus …” Colten whispers at my back. “How … how did you know that name?”
I don’t answer because I don’t have the answer. I only have these terrible visions and the growing pain that comes with them. He’s inches from me, yet … I’ve never felt so incredibly alone. “Where’s my shovel?” I mumble.
“You shouldn’t be shoveling. You’re not healed.” He stabs his shovel into the ground. It brings a new round of tears to my eyes. He’s risking everything for me.
I hold the light while he unearths the vision that’s been haunting me for nearly two months. He’s unearthing every night of stolen sleep. He’s unearthing the unimaginable.
The dirt piles up next to me, the hole hollowing by the second. It’s starting to feel as hollow as my soul.
“Stop,” I whisper.
He doesn’t hear me.
“Stop!”
Colten wipes his sweaty brow. I feel his questioning gaze on me, but I can’t tear my eyes off the hole he dug. He climbs out of the hole.
“Josie!”
I jump into the hole. Falling to my knees, I claw at the cold dirt until my fingertips graze the brittle remains. Feeling tortured into submission, my mind stretches past its limits, grasping for truth, for reason. An explanation.
Pulling the last layer of dirt toward me, the human remains come into view.
“Josie, get out of the hole.”
I start to cry again, but this time, I can’t stifle it.
“Josie, don’t touch anything else. Get out of the hole.” When Colten’s hand slides around my arm, pulling me to my feet, I try to find my legs, but I can’t. He drags my limp body out of the hole like I imagine he pulled me out of the water after I died.
“I have to call this in. Josie, do you hear me?”
“C-Colten …”
He cradles my tear drenched face while my lower lip quivers.
My gaze makes a painful ascent to his as my mind finds that explanation that’s been just beyond reach until now. “I’m still in that hole.”
“What are you talking about?” His face scrunches into confusion, his breathing as labored as mine.
“I think I was one of those girls Winston Jeffries murdered.” My gaze averts to the grave again before quickly returning to Colten. “I found … myself.”
After a few breaths, he takes a step back and brings his phone to his ear.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
This trip to Nashville was supposed to be closure, the end to Josie’s wandering thoughts. This trip was supposed to give her mind a sense of relief so she could sleep.
Heal.
Work.
Marry me.
As suspicious and downright eerie as the journey to the oak tree felt, the owner gave us nothing definitive, and that allowed me to keep things in perspective, even if it only fed Josie’s obsession.
Purchasing shovels? Fine. It wasn’t a crime … yet.
Letting her guide me to the cemetery? Suspicious, but possible. After all, she’s done so much online research.
Even as I felt my career crumbling with each shovelful of dirt, I clung to a hope for closure. If I dug long enough, I would reach Elizabeth Allen’s casket. I knew it in my gut.
Now, while officials arrive at the scene, while I watch them tape off the area, call in more experts, do all the things I’ve done so many times … reality finds its way into my head. A brain worm infesting every inch of space.
“Tell the truth, Josie. No matter what they ask you, tell your truth. Tell them about your accident. The visions. The sleepless nights. The tree. Tell them about the unrelenting need to come here. Because if those remains belong to girls who were murdered well over a century ago, then you’re not the killer. Tell them the truth, and let them deal with the rest.”
She says nothing.
We reach the road, and they escort us to the back of a police cruiser. They have questions to ask, and we’ll give them answers, even if they aren’t going to like said answers. They will despise Josie’s explanation, but they won’t be able to formulate a better one. The unexplainable, sometimes “other-worldly” explanation for an event is something that haunts every investigator. We can’t solve crimes without tangible proof, an eyewitness, or a confession that matches the crime.
On the way to the station, I reach for her hand and squeeze it, but she doesn’t squeeze mine back. When we’re questioned, she tells her truth, void of all emotion, and I tell mine. We’re looked upon with skepticism because, after all, I’m a homicide detective from Chicago, and she’s a medical examiner. We came a long way to dig up the unsolved mystery from a crime that was committed way before anyone alive today was even born.
“Josie, you’re going to have to talk to me,” I say when we reach the hotel after being told to not leave town until they can question us more tomorrow.