The Girl and the Unlucky 13 (Emma Griffin™ FBI Mystery) A.J. Rivers (historical books to read TXT) 📖

Every one of them has been abandoned for more than a decade and a half. None of them has electricity.

“Ashley has mentioned on multiple occasions that Wolf watched the news. She knew to get to the school at the time of the vigil because she watched it with him. He couldn’t have done that in a house that doesn’t have any power. Ashley was moved. She doesn’t want to admit it right now, but there was another place.

“But maybe even more important than all of that, you’ve damaged the relationship with Ashley.”

“How did I do that?” she asks.

“I told her I want her to be involved. She’s the only one who’s going to be able to give us the information and insight we need to find this guy and bring the case to a close. Seeing what happened the night she went missing, and hearing me say that, was making her feel strong. It was empowering her. But your going over there to talk to her without me and asking her to tell you about the house rather than having her show us, you told her that we don’t trust her. That she isn’t important or capable.

“You isolated her further and took away her power again. This is a girl who was treated as someone else’s property with no choices of her own. She was offered the chance to reclaim some of what was taken from her and turn the tables on Wolf and whoever else might have hurt her during that time. I asked her to trust me. Then you stuck yourself into it and took that away.”

Ava stammers for a few seconds.

“I’m sorry,” she finally says.

Forty-Six

The door opens and Xavier’s head appears.

“Everything alright now?” he asks. “Did our diversionary tactic of dismissing ourselves under the guise of going for second breakfast give the two of you enough time to talk things out?”

“Thanks, Xavier,” Dean says, gently pushing him the rest of the way into the room and looking at me. “They stopped serving breakfast. So, first breakfast is going to have to be enough.”

“I wanted pancakes,” Xavier pouts.

Dean looks between Ava and me, trying to measure the tension and figure out what to do next.

“Where do we go from here?” he asks.

“I’m going to get some coffee,” I say. “Then we’re going to go to the house.”

“We are?” Ava asks, sounding almost hopeful.

“At this point, you’ve diminished their faith in me and potentially compromised Ashley’s willingness to cooperate, and to stand up to her mother, who doesn’t want her to have anything to do with the investigation. We do what we can and then we fix the rest later,” I say.

“This place is horrible,” Ava mutters, looking around the dry, neglected front yard of the abandoned farmhouse.

“Savor it now,” I tell her. “You’ll see worse in your career.”

The description Ashley gave of her escape from the house had us trekking through the woods and across an overgrown field I envisioned having grown crops for family who’d lived here. As I do any time I see an empty house that looks hastily deserted, I wonder what happened. What those last few moments were like before the door closed for the last time and the place was left to sit alone.

“There are tire impressions over here,” Dean notes from the side of the house. “They’re recent.”

“Can you tell what kind of vehicle?” I ask.

“Not with any real specificity, but by the width and the depth, I’d say a truck,” he says.

I nod, looking around. “Fits the atmosphere. People wouldn’t be surprised to see a truck in a place like this. It would just look as if someone had decided to revitalize the house.”

“Emma,” Xavier calls from somewhere out of sight. “What constitutes breaking and entering when it comes to an abandoned house that has potentially recently been occupied? Do squatters’ rights come into play?”

“Xavier, where are you?” Dean calls.

“Back here,” he says.

We hurry to the back of the house and find him precariously balanced in front of an old-fashioned cellar door. He’s holding his arms out to his sides as if trying to keep himself upright. One leg has cracked through the door and is on the cellar steps below up to his knee.

“What happened?” I ask.

“Well,” he starts, looking down at the door, “I seem to be in a legally ambiguous situation. I wanted to look in that window up there, so I was going to climb onto the door. However, its structural integrity leaves a lot to be desired, and so it seems my foot has both broken and entered. But the vast majority of me is still on the outside, so I’m not sure of the precedent here.”

Dean takes him by the wrist and helps him pull his leg out of the splintered wood.

“I think you’re probably good,” he says.

“Good,” Xavier nods. “We’ll fix the door later.”

Dean pats him on the back, but I don’t hear his agreement to the plan. Not that I doubt for a second there’s a strong possibility of tools and lumber in his future.

“Why did you want to look in that window?” I ask, stepping back to get a better perspective of the window positioned above the cellar door.

“The curtain is different,” he explains.

“They’re all old white lace,” Dean says.

“All white lace, but that one isn’t as old. It was replaced a lot more recently than the others. Look at the edges that are together in the middle,” Xavier points.

“They aren’t yellow,” I say after a few seconds.

“The lace yellows after coming in contact with the oils on human skin. That particular place on the curtain would be touched repeatedly when opening the curtains. But that curtain doesn’t have any discoloration. It wasn’t touched as much as the others.”

“Come on,” I say. “I want to go inside.”

“I’d suggest the cellar door, but with the exception of my foot hole, it’s chained,” Xavier says.

“That’s alright,” I tell him. “We’ll go through the front.”

There hasn’t been any sign of anyone in