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

Within a few inches of the side of the window.” At first, the wall doesn’t show any signs of anything unusual. Then I notice the slightest hint of a depression. “A few inches from the bottom there is a dip in the wall. Can you touch it?”

“Right here?” he asks, running his fingers over the paint.

“Yes. Does it feel different from the rest of the wall?”

“The texture’s different. It feels like a hole that’s been covered up.”

“Can you go to the top of the window, the same distance out, and see if there’s another one?”

“There is,” he confirms.

“Alright. Thank you very much. Let me know if you find anything else.”

I hang up and tuck my phone away.

“Someone removed the bars and sealed over the holes where the cage was attached to the wall,” I tell Misty and Ashley. “They were trying to cover up what happened there.”

“But why would they leave the broken mirror?” Misty asks.

“A broken mirror in an old house is innocuous enough. The fact that there was no sign of fingerprints isn’t. Someone removed them on purpose.”

“He didn’t want anyone to know I was there,” Ashley says.

“He? Wolf?” I ask.

She nods. “I had an appointment the day I left.”

She says it so casually, as though she’s talking about getting her hair done, but I know full well that’s not what she means.

“An appointment?” Misty asks in a hushed, almost painful tone.

“Yes,” Ashley says. “A regular. I don’t know his name, before you even ask. I called him J. He liked having pictures and would come up with themes. Wolf would dress me up. There were props.”

“I don’t want to hear this,” Misty says, curling away from her daughter, just the thought enough to make her sick. “I don’t want it in my mind.”

“Unfortunately, Ashley doesn’t have a choice about whether it’s in her mind or not. And the more we know, the better we’re going to be able to figure this out,” I say. “What can you tell me about J? His age? Ethnicity? Tall or short?”

I listen as Ashley describes him, jotting on my notepad.

“What else?” I ask. “What else can you tell me about him?”

“He was one of the ones I didn’t mind as much,” Ashley says.

“You didn’t mind?” Misty gasps. Her reaction falls somewhere between horrified and disgusted.

Ashley’s eyes slide over to her mother. She looks at her for a brief second, trying to figure out what the woman is thinking.

“It was my reality. It wasn’t something I chose. It was chosen for me. What I could choose was how I dealt with it. Either I spent every second of my life hating it and being horrified by what was happening to me, or I could try to find some kind of good in it. Anything to keep me going for another day, just for the off chance that one of those days would come with the opportunity to get out. I didn’t say I liked it. I didn’t say it was fun for me. But he wasn’t the worst,” Ashley says.

I’m struck by her calm control as she’s talking about what she went through. There’s a blunt quality to it, but also something almost ethereal. As if she’s pulled herself out of it and is talking about it as if it were something she’d only heard about.

“Tell me more about him,” I say.

“Sometimes he liked to just spend time together. He would call it hanging out. As if we were friends. We’d play games or talk about what was going on in his life. He really liked to scratch lottery tickets. He told me he also did the numbers every week. That’s something I want to do.”

“Play the lottery?” I ask.

She nods. “It’s something everybody does, right? Or at least, everybody over eighteen. That’s what J told me. I wasn’t allowed to scratch any of the tickets because I wasn’t eighteen.”

It sits heavily in my stomach that this man was concerned about not providing lottery tickets to a minor but not anything else that was going on in that hidden room in the cellar.

“You don’t need to be thinking about things like that,” Misty says. She sounds surprisingly harsh, but the tension on her face fades almost as soon as the words are out of her mouth. “I just mean you don’t have to worry yourself so much about being an adult. Not yet.”

“I’m eighteen,” Ashley shrugs. “I’ve spent my whole life with people telling me what to do because I was a child. Now, I’m not under anyone’s control. After what’s already happened to me, what else could?”

“There’s still danger, Ashley. There’s still someone out there who could try to hurt you again,” Misty says. “I can’t stand the idea of something happening to you.”

Ashley’s expression doesn’t change. The calm feels like cold water running down my spine.

“Really?”

Forty-Eight

“What are you doing?” Dean asks, coming out onto the hotel room balcony to sit in the chair beside me.

“Getting fresh air,” I tell him. “I’m also wearing my running shoes, so I’m counting it as part of the jog I missed this morning.”

“I’ll allow it,” he chuckles. “Are you watching the security footage again?”

“Yes,” I nod. “I’ve watched it about twenty times. I could probably recreate it.”

“Let’s not,” he says. “Did you get any sleep last night?”

“Some. Look at this,” I turn the tablet toward him. “This is right before Ashley gets up and walks away. Look right here.”

I point to a spot on the road near the corner of the building.

“It’s a puddle,” he frowns. “Remember, it was raining for days before this.”

“I know,” I say. “Now, watch her carefully. Right before she gets up.” We watch in silence and as she moves to stand, I point at her. “Did you see that? Watch again.” I scan backward and play the few seconds again. “Right before she gets up, her head lifts and she looks in that direction.”

“She’s reacting to something,” Dean says.

I nod. “She didn’t just get up and walk