The Girl and the Deadly End (Emma Griffin FBI Mystery Book 7), стр. 14

“Especially not in Feathered Nest, Virginia,” Dean affirms.

“These are in Feathered Nest?” I ask, shocked.

Dean nods and pulls his tablet out of his satchel. He pulls up the Feathered Nest website, the same one I used to find Clancy the handyman what felt like a lifetime ago. From it, he enlarges a map of the area. He circles one finger around the upper portion of the map, to a section I barely ventured into during my time there.

“Right here,” he says. “The houses were two streets down from each other.”

“Were?” I ask.

“Yeah. They were both demolished.”

“When?”

“Six months after your mother died.”

A surge of heat rushes across my skin so intensely I have to stand up to get away from the fabric of the couch and the feel of Sam’s body close to mine. I cross the living room, desperate for air. Everything is closing in on me, and yet I feel like I have nothing to grab hold of to anchor me.

“I don’t understand,” I say. “My parents were in Feathered Nest? Not just once or twice. That list has at least eight visits over a few years. And while they were there one of those times, my mother went to the hospital because she was afraid she was going to get pregnant. But apparently not afraid enough to stop me from happening just a few weeks later.”

“There’s one more detail,” Dean says.

“What?” I ask.

“Those houses. The owner…”

I don’t need him to say anything else. I know what’s coming.

“Spice Enya,” I say.

“Like the house in Iowa,” Sam says.

“What house in Iowa?” Dean asks.

“The house my parents lived in when they were in Iowa was owned by Spice Enya. Bellamy found that out after I visited and couldn’t find anything. It wasn’t listed like a person but as a company. We could never find anything about a company with that name,” I explain.

“What is your uncle’s name?” Dean asks.

I resist the urge to growl in frustration, reminding myself he’s only trying to help.

“I didn’t even know I had an uncle. How would I know his name?” I ask.

“It starts with a ‘J’,” Sam adds.

My pacing strides back and forth across the living room stop.

“How do you know that?” I ask.

“Remember the picture?” Sam asks. “The one Christine sent along with the Easter card from Florida? When we first looked at it, we thought it was your mother and father.”

Realization hits me.

“But the inscription on the back didn’t look right. It should have said M and I, but it looked like it said M and J.”

“You’re right. It’s a start,” I say. “It’s something. Maybe it will help us find out who he is. But that doesn’t explain this Spice Enya thing, and it doesn’t get me any closer to Catch Me. He pointed me to the medical records because he wanted me to know about my mother getting the emergency contraception, but he specifically called out Alice. That’s the big thing he highlighted.”

“He knows your link to the Jake Logan case,” Sam points out.

“Everybody knows about my involvement in that case. It’s on the news. The question is, how did he know about Alice?”

I’m suddenly dizzy. I can’t get my brain to focus, and I’m trembling just under the pressure of standing. Sam comes up and takes me by the shoulders, squeezing them until I look him in the face.

“You need sleep,” he tells me. “After everything you went through today, you have to get some rest. All this will be waiting for you when you get up.”

“I can’t go to sleep,” I reply.

“Yes, you can. Just for a couple of hours. Everything will seem clearer after you get some rest.”

Dean starts packing everything into his satchel again.

“I’ll come back in the morning,” he says. He glances at the clock. “Later in the morning.”

“Where are you going?” I ask.

“I’m going to grab a hotel room and catch some sleep,” he says.

“You don’t have to do that,” Sam says, then looks at me.

“No, you don’t. There’s a spare bedroom. Stay here.”

“Are you sure?” Dean asks.

We both nod.

“I’ll feel better keeping as many of us close together as possible,” I say.

“She would pile Eric and Bellamy in here, too, if she could,” Sam jokes, with a little less enthusiasm than usual. He rubs his eyes.

“He’s teasing me, but don’t think I wouldn’t roll out sleeping bags if they would come.” I point to the end of the hall. “The room is down here. Bathroom across the hall. Make yourself at home.”

“Thank you.”

Sam and I go into my bedroom, and as soon as I see the bed, I feel like I can’t even move my feet enough to get to it. The adrenaline left me faster than I thought it would, but those seconds were valuable, if even more confusing. I finally make it to the bed and slide between the sheets. My head hits the pillow. I can’t even lift my hand to turn the light off before I fall asleep.

My mother appears in my dreams. It’s not uncommon. I’ve dreamed of her many times in the years since she died. Sometimes it’s as if that night never happened, and I’m living my life the way it would have been if she was still alive. But tonight, it’s memories. Like home videos playing out against the backs of my eyes, my dreams let me dip back into the happiest days of my life, when I didn’t know there was anything to be afraid of. When the world was still full of color and light. When the thought of a life in the FBI was so far from my mind, it wouldn’t have even occurred to me.

I dream of smiles and laughter, of carefree joy. In the dream, I play with my mother through all the seasons and the places we lived in. We sled together down bumpy hills that send us tumbling off the curved red plastic and into the snow, then make