We Are All Guilty Here (North Falls, #1)

by Karin Slaughter

That would change in a few months when she was operating on zero sleep and Brett was taking double shifts because the risk of being shot during a traffic stop was still better than dealing with a screaming baby.

If Emmy knew the town like the back of her hand, her father knew it like the arteries inside of his heart.

Her body was registering the horribleness of the situation before her mind would let her go there.

“Cut my arm on a damn wild rose bush trying to look through the kitchen window.”

To Emmy’s thinking, that sounded a lot like the behavior of a teenager.

“No.” Ruth sounded emphatic. “Never.” Emmy would’ve missed Pamela’s furtive look had she not been staring directly at the child.

Posters of every band and singer you would expect had been taped on the walls.

There are so many bad people out there that . . .” Emmy watched his face collapse as he realized that the bad people had gotten to his daughter anyway.

She’d only thought about the town coming together to search for the girls. She hadn’t considered that fear would make them tear each other apart.

Don’t get me wrong, they ate up a lot of runway, but given time, they would’ve eventually found a soft landing.”

Celia pulled one from a stack of papers. She didn’t have to be asked to twist it around so that the pointy end was sticking out. Emmy slid the paper clip into the tiny hole on the side of the iPhone. The SIM card slot popped open. The tray was empty.

“You stayed in the same hotel as Madison. The Marriott Marquis on Peachtree Center Avenue. Your room was right next to hers.” “My wife was right next to me in bed.” Dale seemed to enjoy the wordplay.

After six years of grueling, relentless decline, there were so few moments lately that Myrna was truly herself. These tiny sparks of personality were starting to feel more like callous reminders of all that had been lost.

Emmy looked down at the ground. Her mind kept playing tricks on her, separating Gerald’s death from the fact that both Hannah and Paul had been arrested for his murder.

Jude kept her opinions to herself. “Is Paisley involved in sports?” “Oh, no, Elijah doesn’t want her to bulk up like that.” Carol gave Nate another weak smile. “It’s not feminine, is it?”

“Paisley never did anything like that, Father. You can ask Dr. Carl. Elijah had him check after the rumors started because you never know, but Dr. Carl says she’s still intact.” Nate’s mouth opened again, but not to speak. He actually looked concerned.

“Sweetheart, we’ve almost hit the twenty-four-hour mark. This isn’t a parent or acquaintance abduction. Paisley didn’t run away. She’s not hiding somewhere. A predator took her. We’re not in a sprint anymore. This is a marathon. All we can do is hope to find the body so that Carol and Elijah can hopefully know some peace.”

“I would’ve married you if you’d asked me to.” He rinsed the soap off her back. “I would’ve asked you if you’d wanted me to.”

He wanted to beat the shit out of you, but I wanted to get drunk. I passed out and he went into the water. We didn’t find his body for six days.”

Emmy let her tears roll unchecked. She had been too exhausted to dream in Dylan’s bathtub, but waking up in the water had been disorienting enough to send her back to Millie’s pond.

The blankets and sheets were thin and scratchy, and Emmy was ashamed to realize she’d never cared about any of these things until the moment she saw Hannah using them.

“We didn’t really get to meet her. Madison will always be trapped between those two people. The woman we didn’t get to meet, and the girl we used to know.”

Virgil had joked about how raising girls could kill a man, but he had no idea how fucking hard it was to grow yourself into a woman.

breaking the taboo

some things were easier to endure than to examine.

Cheyenne Baker had been a fifteen-year-old girl. She didn’t need to be strong. She needed to be safe.