The Overnight Guest

by Heather Gudenkauf

At the beginning of December, Wylie had made a phone call, discovered that the remote farmhouse where the twenty-year-old crime took place was currently unoccupied, and decided to make the trip.

What lay before them was no animal. It was a little boy, frozen to the ground.

Less than eight hours later, William and Lynne Doyle were dead, and Ethan and Becky were missing.

Sixty minutes later, Deputy Levi Robbins was summoned to the bloodiest crime scene in Blake County history.

Wylie looked down at her own hand, where a matching horseshoe-shaped scar, though less pronounced, marred her palm.

They were leaving. They were actually going to walk up the stairs and out the door. A shiver of excitement went through the girl. They were going to the Out There.

So when she was old enough and she knew she couldn’t be Josie Doyle any longer, she took the W from William, the L from Lynne, the E from Ethan, and her grandmother’s maiden name and had become Wylie Lark.

And that’s when she recognized him. It was Jackson Henley, the man who murdered her family. The man who took Becky.

“It was supposed to be you all along,” Randy said, his voice weak but taunting. “Just you. But your family got in the way and Becky didn’t run as fast as you did.”

“Wylie,” the little girl said shyly. “My name is Josie.” And they stepped out into the brittle sunshine.