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I stared at Tyler.

“He can get it?”

“He thinks so.”

“Thinks?”

“He said give him a couple days.”

I closed the folder.

Slowly.

Seven years.

Two thousand five hundred and some fucking days of my life.

Gone.

I wasn’t looking into my case because I thought I could magically get them back.

Couldn’t nobody give me that time.

I wanted a name.

That was it.

Because somebody had known enough about what I was doing to help the police put pieces together.

Somebody close enough to hear shit they shouldn’t have heard.

Somebody I trusted.

And if Mills found that name?

I was going to find them.

2

AVERY, HEATHER & XAVIER

AVERY

It was Friday morning, and Carter had apparently decided I wasn’t moving fast enough with her damn bottle.

“I’m coming, girl.”

I stood barefoot in my kitchen, swirling her bottle underneath the warm water while she fussed from the little bouncer I had dragged close enough to the kitchen where I could see her.

I lived in East Orange, about fifteen minutes or so from Sam depending on traffic, in a one-bedroom apartment on the second floor of a three-story building. It wasn’t nothing luxurious, but it wasn’t fucked up either. Rent was enough to piss me off every first of the month, but that was Jersey for your ass.

My apartment was cute though.

That was one thing about me. I didn’t give a fuck if I lived in a cardboard box, the bitch was gonna be decorated.

Cream couch in the living room that I regretted buying the minute Carter spit up on it. Gold-and-glass coffee table. Big TV mounted on the wall. Couple pictures. Candles everywhere. Fake plant in the corner because I had killed every real one I ever bought.

Carter’s shit had slowly taken over everything.