“I read your book.”

“Oh yeah?” Megan still hadn’t found the right way to respond to this. “Thanks.”

“Nate, Megan and I want to ask you a few questions about the club.”

“Go ahead.”

“You mentioned that the Capture Club talked about a variety of cases, old and new.”

“Right.”

“Who chose the cases?”

“Anybody. If you were curious about a case, you’d throw out a name.”

“Like Jeffrey Dahmer?”

“Dahmer, Gacy, Bittaker and Norris, Beneke. You name it. But we didn’t spend tons of time on them. They were old news.”

“You guys talked about current stuff mostly?”

“A lot of the time, yeah.”

“Anybody could bring up a topic or a name?”

“Yeah. Mostly we followed the news.”

Livia nodded. “Especially if someone nearby went missing?”

“Right.”

“Nancy Dee, for example.”

“Yeah, we talked about her.”

“You remember how the group got onto the Nancy Dee story?”

“I don’t know. Probably Casey. He was the most up-to-date on the new stuff. Always had a beat on it right when the story broke.”

“So, you’d say he knew about some of the cases before anyone else did?”

“Guess so, yeah.”

“You remember any other cases, newer ones, that you guys talked about.”

Nate wagged his head back and forth, eyes up to the sky. “Sure. Remember a bunch.” He lit his cigarette. “Got a binder full of the ones we talked about.”

“A binder full of missing girls?”

“Not just girls. Some dudes, too. Whoever the club thought was interesting.”

“Where’s this binder?”

“Inside.”

“Can we have a look at it?”

Nate shrugged. “I don’t know. That’s my private stuff from back when the club was in full swing.”

Megan cleared her throat. “I’d really like to see it.” She smiled at Nate. “If that would be okay.”

Nate inhaled from his cigarette and the smoke got lodged somewhere in his trachea, causing him to cough like a teenager taking his first drag. He avoided eye contact. “Be right back.” He pulled open the screen door and disappeared inside.

“Interesting guy,” Megan said.

“I think he’s harmless. Thanks for throwing your star power around.”

“What good is being famous if you don’t use it?”

Nate was back a few minutes later with a black three-ring binder. It reminded Livia of the folder she’d taken from Casey Delevan’s desk drawer. Nate handed it to her.

“Here’re most of the cases we talked about. I’ve kept up on a lot of them. Plus a couple new ones.” He looked at Megan. “Got a bunch of your stuff.” He shrugged, as if offering someone his life’s work. “If you wanna check it out.”

“Nancy Dee in here?” Livia said.

“Oh yeah. Got a few pages on her.”

Livia found Nancy’s pages and skimmed through them. Then she leafed through the binder, looking for information on Paula D’Amato, the other girl from Casey Delevan’s file. Halfway through the pages she found newspaper clippings about her.

“You remember this girl?”

Nate looked at the page, saw Paula D’Amato’s face. “’Course I do.”

“How’d the club get onto this one?”

“Casey was into that one. He was on it right away, and we talked about her a bunch. He was sort of fixated on her.”

“You remember much about this girl?” Livia asked.

“Georgia Tech freshman. Cops found her jacket in the woods off a trail that students take on the way back to campus. Arrested her boyfriend, but let him go after a while. I guess they’re questioning him again now. Plus some other fraternity guys. I’ve been watching that one closely since the other day, you know?”

“Since the other day?” Livia asked, holding the open binder. “What happened the other day?”

Nate let a slow smile form on his face as though Livia were playing a joke on him. He blew diluted smoke from the corner of his mouth. “They found her body. Like, three or four days ago.”

“Paula D’Amato?”

Nate nodded.

“Where?”

“You didn’t hear about this?” His voice carried the excitement of a sports fan reliving an extraordinary play from the previous night. “Thought that’s why you guys were here.”

“No,” Livia said. “We didn’t hear.”

He pointed his cigarette at the binder. “Details are still coming in. Her body was found in the woods, down in Georgia. It was zipped in a body bag and lying next to a hole in the ground. Like someone dug the grave but never buried the body. Really weird!” Nate smiled and then sucked again on his cigarette.

“This was a few days ago?”

“Yeah.”

Livia handed the binder back to him. “We’ve got to run.”

Nate pointed to Megan. “I thought you said I’d get to ask her some questions.”

“Sorry. Some other time.”

Livia took Megan by the wrist and hurried back to the car. “What about signing my book?”

“Another time,” Livia said before pulling away. She took a hard right and stepped on the gas. “Sorry to put you through that. You okay?”

“I dealt with worse during my initial book tour. Who’s Paula D’Amato?”

“Another girl I think Casey took. I’m going to have to make a trip down to Georgia, see if I can meet with the medical examiner who did the autopsy. If the same findings are present that link you and Nancy Dee, you think we’ll be able to get your father on board?”

Megan nodded. “Probably. But I don’t understand. If you think this guy, the guy who was dating Nicole, was involved with these girls and had something to do with their disappearances, and mine . . . he’s dead, right? So what are we looking for?”

“If Paula D’Amato’s body was just found, I want to know when she died. If it was recently, Casey wasn’t alone. Someone else is still out there.”

CHAPTER 35

The thousand-watt twin adjustable LED lights brightened the forest as he dug. The earth was wet and the dig was easy, the shovel slicing effortlessly into the mud under the weight of his foot. The woods were quiet at night, its residents mostly tucked away under the cover of leaves or logs. Of course, the nocturnal hunters would be out—the owls and bats and coyote. But the lights by which he worked would hold them off, despite the lure of bitter odor her body gave off as it lay on the forest floor secured in black vinyl and waiting to be covered by the earth he was moving.

When he heard it, he stopped. With his foot on the shovel, he listened. Heard it again. He looked over at the black bag and then stumbled backward when he saw it move. Crinkling in the middle, the bag creased in a ninety-degree angle, as though she had sat up. He dropped the shovel and staggered away from her body until he fell into the shallow grave he had dug. He scrambled to get to his feet but his limbs were frozen with fear. She had unzipped the bag and her torso appeared above him. With unblinking eyes, she picked up the shovel and dumped dirt onto his shoulders. He clawed and begged, managing for a moment to get to his knees, but she was relentless with her efforts. The weight of the earth was finally too great, and he collapsed onto his stomach as she shoveled more dirt over him. The burden of the soil became so great that his lungs could no longer expand under the pressure. He looked up at her just before a final pitch of ground covered his face and his vision went black.

*

He sat straight up in bed now, grasping at the covers the way he’d been clawing at the sides of the grave in his nightmare. Inhaling deeply, he savored the air that was missing from his dream. Night sweats had soaked his clothes and sheets.

“What’s the matter?” came the groggy voice next to him.

It was amazing how even her concern disgusted him. She did not love him, not any longer, and her feigned worry turned his stomach. Part of him blamed her for what he had become. Blamed her for the emptiness inside of him. The vacancy he tried so desperately to occupy with the girls he held captive and offered to love and care for.

“Nothing,” he said, out of breath.

“Bad dream?”