Chapter 55

By the time we made it back to the house, most of the tears had stopped rolling down my cheeks and my breathing finally slowed down. I didn’t need a mirror to know that I probably looked like an emotional wreck. But, honestly, what did it matter?

I could feel my eyes were puffy and doubt still red and swollen from all the excessive crying I’d let out. Poor Lorenzo’s shirt was nearly soaked through, but he didn’t seem to care.

He’d managed to console most of my whimpers and torn-up words I’d inflicted on myself, but wasn’t able to stop the tears from flowing.

Nonetheless, he helped me out of the car and tried to touch me up where he could. He fixed my clothes back into place and wiped away what little makeup had smudged. I kept the awful letter gripped tightly in my hand white we ascended the front steps.

I could tell that many of the staff were looking at us through the windows, trying to snag a proper glance at me.

Keeping my head tucked down toward my chest, the two of us made it inside and avoided any possible confrontation. My face flushed with a mixture of sadness and shame for my weak behavior around everyone.

‘This is not how a Luna is meant to act in the face of others,’ I thought wearily to myself. ‘I’m expected to be strong and reliable, but I can’t even bring myself to look at anyone.’

I took the crumpled-up letter I’d been hanging onto and folded it up before stuffing it in my pocket. With a steady breath. I lifted my eyes from the floor and glanced tiredly at Lorenzo.

“I’m going back to the study,” I told him.

Lorenzo gave me an incredulous look and shook his head. “No, Eleanor. It’s late enough as it is. You need to rest.”

I gently pushed back from him, trying to put some distance between us. I shook my head in refusal.

“No,” I told him firmly. “I’m not stopping until I work this out.”

I knew I was being stubborn. I probably did need to rest just so that I could properly tackle the case again tomorrow. But with all the new information still freshly floating around in my mind, I wasn’t about to risk losing any of it.

I swiftly headed off toward the study before Lorenzo could try and stop me. Poor Agatha’s death made me come to the hard, cold realization that I needed to take my evidence-gathering to the next level.

Over the next few hours, I’d gone through both my dad’s digital blog site as well as all the notes I’d gathered and found a way to put everything conclusively together. With a top-of-the-line printer, I made various copies of everything from the previous reports and began lining them all around my workspace. I specifically labeled each missing girl with a number and attached their personal report beneath their photos.

As my work continued, I could partially hear the muttered whispers and hushed conversations beyond the door. No doubt, I caused quite the scene when Lorenzo and I returned from the coroner’s office.

I’d been in the middle of adding my newest information on Agatha when the door creaked open. I didn’t need to glance over my shoulder to know that it was Lorenzo standing there.

“I’m almost done,” I muttered.

There was a surprising hint of humor in his voice as he spoke.”It’s alright. I was actually coming here to see if you needed any help.”

I took a moment to step back from the piles of papers and other supplies to take a look at my work. Lorenzo raised his brows in shock.

“You did all this? Eleanor, it’s brilliant.”

“Really? It’s not too confusing to follow?” I asked nervously. “I tried my best to make everything work as cohesively as possible.”

He stepped forward to stand in front of Agatha’s portion of the board. “Are these all the notes you gathered from earlier?”

“Yes.” I ran my hand roughly through my hair. “The more I went over everything, the more questions started to pile up in my head.”

“Like what?”

“Well, according to what the coroner told us, Agatha Wilde was obviously killed recently. Which means that she has been held captive somewhere for the past three years.”

I was both grateful and put off that we hadn’t gotten a real decent chance to actually see Agatha, as morbid as it sounded. A thick, white sheet covered her body when Lorenzo and I were meeting with the coroner before.

I’d noticed just a small part of her arm peeking out from under the cloth. Her pale skin was tinged with both dirt and possessed dark purple bruising.

“Wherever she was had to have been a place with great violence because from what I could see, her skin was covered in marks and bruises,” I told him.

Lorenzo shook his head solemnly. “But why kill her?”

Having her neck be snapped, suggested that whoever it was was in a hurry and needed the most efficient way.

I let out a sigh. “I don’t know. I mean, hell, they managed to conceal her from the world for three years,” I pointed out. “It seems rather unlikely that she would have succeeded in escaping.”

“You think she was killed and then placed out in that field?”

I slowly nodded. “Between the note that was attached to her and the feeling in my stomach, I believe so.”

I glanced around at everything I put together and shook my head in frustration. After everything, I still felt like there was a huge piece to the puzzle that we were missing. A connector. A bridge.

But no.

All I had were notes written by some deranged lunatic and a poor girl’s dead body lying in the morgue. We didn’t know if this was the work of just one person or a dozen.

Whoever was responsible, was using Agatha’s body to send us a message. Too bad that I wasn’t going to let it stop me.

“We’re looking for much more than just a kidnapper,” I said grimly. “Now, we’re searching for a killer.”