Fiona grabbed a newspaper from the pile of mail that Gage had brought in only a few minutes earlier and began flipping through the pages. Gage finally saw his phone at the other end of the table, so he reached forward to grab it and send Jack a quick message to thank him for his help.
Without any warning, Fiona leapt up from her seat like she’d been burned. “What? What is it?” Gage asked, getting out of his chair and walking around the table to put a hand on her shoulder in case she was having another panic attack.
“She’s dead,” Fiona said brokenly. “The girl, the missing girl, the one taken before Tori—she’s dead. The newspaper says so.” She flung the paper down on the table, knocking Gage’s phone aside in the process. “Sorry,” Fiona mumbled, but he could tell that she didn’t mean it.
It wasn’t front page news. That’s why Gage hadn’t noticed it when he got the mail that morning. It was stuck in the middle of the paper, next to random news pieces about school district changes and garbage collection problems. There she was, the missing girl, the one taken by The Knife, stuck in between stories that didn’t matter. The city didn’t care all that much about what was going on to these girls, not really. It felt like it was just Gage and Fiona, the two of them against the world. Just like the old days.
There was a picture of the girl on the side of the article. Apparently, her parents’ commitment to anonymity faded away after death. She was a beautiful brown girl with a beaming smile and big, dark eyes that shone even in the black-and-white of the newspaper print. “Goddammit,” Gage muttered.
Fiona was panting like she’d just finished a long run. “What are we going to do? What are we going to do, Gage? Tori’s next.”
“I know, I know,” Gage murmured, staring down at the dead girl. “We’ve gotta get the crime scene photos, to start with. Maybe we’ll be able to see if there’s anything different this time. But before we can get our hands on those, we’ve got to go interview the suspects. It’s the only way to narrow the list down.”
Fiona pursed her lips a little, clearly unhappy with that proposition. “What if we’re just wasting our time? What if it’s some random person with no known connection to any of the girls and we’re just floundering around while the real killer cuts Tori up into pieces—” Fiona cut herself off, pressing her hand against her forehead as if she could physically make the bad thoughts stop. Gage knew from experience that it didn’t work that way, unfortunately.
“I don’t know,” Gage answered honestly. “I don’t know if we’re wasting our time or not. But it’s all we’ve got to go on. I’ll make a call to my connection within the police department. He’s not very helpful, but he’ll fax over copies of the crime scene photos in a few hours if he gets the chance. In the meantime, we’ve got to look at the suspects. Otherwise, we’re just sitting here waiting for Tori to be killed.”
Fiona nodded slowly, still staring at the ground rather than looking across at Gage. Even still, he could see the sadness in her eyes, the deep resignation. He knew what she was thinking. What if she’s already dead? It was a real possibility, and Gage couldn’t deny that. Still, he had to say something to give Fiona some hope. Without hope, they weren’t ever going to save anyone. “We have to fight for her,” Gage said softly, stepping closer to Fiona and reaching down to grab her hand. For once, Fiona didn’t pull away. She let him take her hand into his, rubbing the backs of her knuckles with his thumb. “We can’t give up on her.”
“But what if…” Fiona began to say before letting the sentence hang. Her hand began gripping Gage’s back, so hard that it almost hurt him. But he could handle it. He could take anything Fiona could give him.
“Girls are strong,” Gage said. “Much, much stronger than we think. She’s still got a chance. We can do it. We can help her. I believe in us.”
“Me, too,” she whispered back, so softy that Gage could barely hear it, despite standing right next to her. “I do, too. That’s the scary thing.”
Before Gage had a chance to ask her what she meant, Fiona squeezed his hand a little bit before going limp and pulling out of his grasp. “Come on,” she said, heading toward the front door of his apartment. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Nine
Fiona and Gage headed to the mall first to find out if the guy from the sunglasses store was still there. Fiona was practically squirming in her seat on the subway, stuck in a mixture of fear and anticipation. At one point, when she was tapping her feet so loudly that she was attracting the glares of other subway riders, Gage’s hand drifted over to her knee, giving her a reassuring squeeze before pulling back. Fiona felt her entire body flush with heat as a result, but when she turned to look at Gage, he was staring down at his phone rather than looking at her. He was infuriating, really, crossing boundaries again and again yet acting so nonchalant and innocent about it, like he hadn’t done anything.