Juicy Secrets Forbidden Tales of Lesbian Love

The Story Thus Far

Chapter One: Mallory Kalvornek and her lover Julie Hanson have returned to Bronning, Minnesota, for the first time in years to catch up with friends and family. Meanwhile, their old friend (and occasional sex partner) paramedic Nettie Hastings fights to save a life, her lover Hannah drops by with an unexpected surprise, Terry Wilder grapples with writer’s block… and two little girls living in a trailer park named Heather and Gina are being carefully observed by a hidden stranger.

Chapter Two: Mallory and Julie get together at Nettie’s home with Nettie and her lover Hannah, Nettie’s friend Terry Wilder, Terry’s teen daughter Halee, and Mallory and Julie’s friend (and occasional sex partner) Cindy. Gossip is exchanged, memories shared, and an unexpected attraction between Mallory and Terry Wilder reveals itself. Meanwhile, the mother of the two trailer park girls Heather and Gina goes out for a night on the town, oblivious to the presence of the man spying on her home.

Chapter Three: At Nettie’s place, Nettie and Hannah leave the others to indulge in a bit of romantic pleasure, while Julie and her old friend Cindy get it on with Terry’s teen daughter Halee. As for Mallory, she has repaired to Terry’s place for one of her occasional bouts of heterosexual action. Appetites are indulged, confidences shared. Meanwhile, Heather and Gina are abducted from their trailer home by a mysterious and very scary man.

Chapter Four: At Nettie’s place, four women and Halee Wilder greet the morning after an evening of lesbian abandon. Later that day, Mallory rejoins Julie, Nettie, Cindy and Hannah for a day of fishing. Halee returns home and spends the day upgrading her internet in preparation for promised to be a fun night of video chat sex with her girlfriend Bethany. Meanwhile, Grace and Heather are in the custody of the mysterious man, who seems to takes delight in terrorizing them.

Chapter Five: After their day of fishing, Nettie, Julie, Cindy, Mallory & Hannah engage in a five-woman sexfest inside a tent… and with the use of Cindy’s phone, their old friend and occasional bedmate Emma attends the orgy virtually. In the midst of their abandon, Nettie has a weird, vague memory flashback that leaves her shaken, but she conceals it from the others. Back home, Halee and her new love interest Bethany (Hannah’s daughter) are having long-distance sex via their laptops. 

Chapter Six: Nettie has a heart-to-heart with Hannah about her personal demons. Later, she gets a call from Agent Bridgett Ramscone, who has an unsettling request: for Nettie to go through the documentation of her own childhood kidnapping — and the murder of her sister — as a possible way to gain insight into the abduction of Heather and Gina (who are still being emotionally abused by their kidnapper, but are also taking steps to escape). Nettie is shaken, but agrees to do what she can. 

Chapter Seven: Many years after the fact, submerged memories of Nettie’s kidnapping began to make themselves known — memories of a possible accomplice to the original crime. She shares her thoughts with Bridgett. Meanwhile, Heather and Gina work on a potential escape from their makeshift prison.

Chapter Eight: Nettie unearths more hints that kidnap victims Heather and Gina were abducted by the same man who kidnapped and brutalized Nettie and her deceased sister over a decade ago — but that man was known to have died in prison.  Gina manages to escape captivity. But Heather can’t fit through the opening they dug, and must remain behind. Nettie gets a possible fix on the girls’ captor who, while out and about, gets a flat tire — then he discovers the spare is flat as well. 

Chapter Nine: The man who kidnapped Gina and Heather must get his flat spare tire fixed, not knowing the police have been alerted to him and are searching the area. Nettie, who is also hunting for the man, manages to find his abandoned car — then, some time later, makes an even more startling discovery: little Gina, alone and weeping by an abandoned road. In the meantime, the kidnapper manages to make his escape from the area by phoning a mysterious woman to pick him up.

Chapter Ten: Mallory meets with her mother, Sharon, for the first time in months, but fails to learn the cause of the recent distance between them. Nettie is still obsessed with Jacob Brentshaw, the man who kidnapped her and murdered her sister Annamarie so many years ago, sensing he is also behind the recent kidnapping as well… but can’t get past the fact that Brentshaw was killed in prison. Her actions saved the lives of Gina and Heather, but she remains determined to keep working the case on her own. For the first time, Nettie tells her lover Hannah about her own kidnapping and Annamarie’s death, events she has refused to discuss with anyone for years.

Chapter Eleven: Terry finds himself at loose ends, questioning his current life path, and decides to open up to than his dear friend and former sex partner Nettie. She and Hannah lend a sympathetic ear, then their conversation turns to kidnappings — the recent one, as well as Nettie’s own horrific abduction over a decade earlier, when her sister was murdered. She is fast coming round to the conclusion that both kidnappings involved an accomplice.

Chapter Twelve: A sleepover is in progress at Terry’s place while he is out. When the girls retire to their rooms, Halee phones her girlfriend Bethany and puts her on speaker to hear her younger sister Naomi and Chelsey going at it through their adjoining walls, and a good time is had by all. Upon returning home, Terry does some work on an idea for a new novel after months of inaction. Mallory is still unsure what to do with the family farm, and Nettie runs some ideas about the recent kidnapping case past Agent Ramscone.

Chapter Thirteen: Four members of the Pussy Posse — Mallory, Julie, Jamie, and Emma — are spending quality time together, along with Julie’s younger sister Vicky. News, gossip, memories, and innuendo are bandied about. Vicky hesitantly speaks of a recent sleepover where she overheard a couple of the girls saying hurtful things about her, an incident that still stings badly. The four women offer her comfort and understanding, which soon becomes something more.

Chapter Fourteen: Mallory, Julie, Jamie, Emma and Julie’s younger sister Vicky are having a barbecue and sleepover. Vicky loves hanging out with the Pussy Posse, but feels a little self-conscious, knowing that the women will very likely be having group sex later that evening. But Julie boldly her sister to join the sapphic festivities. Vicky is hesitant at first, especially at the prospect of coupling with her older sibling, but Julie manages to put her at ease. The four women and one teen adjourn for the master bedroom. Clothes are removed, bare bodies mingle, pleasure is shared.

Chapter Fifteen: Halee and her new girlfriend Bethany (daughter of Nettie’s lover Hannah), spend time roaming the town, getting to know one another better. Later on, they spend time together in a more intimate way. Meanwhile, Mallory and her partner Julie get a piece of surprising, potentially life-changing news.

Chapter Sixteen: Mallory is pregnant, and Terry Wilder is the father. She visits Bronning to give him the news, then they join Julie at Nettie’s place to discuss the situation. Terry chooses to leave the final decision in Mallory’s hands, but makes it clear that he is willing to raise the child as his own if Mal doesn’t want to be a mother.

For a list of the characters from the story you are now reading, visit this page. 

For a list of the characters from the previous two stories that you will encounter here as well, visit this page.

And now, dear readers, we make our way into the next installment. Read on…

by Rachael Yukey

One more to count in
Wake up the mountain
All colour’s slowly turning to grey
Our world is darkening
Wake up the mountain
And we will find it once more again
Helloween, 1996

“Nettie! Nettie, WAKE UP!” 

Nettie doesn’t want to wake up. It’s so cold, yet every breath she draws is flame. The last time she coughed, blood came up. There’s a bizarre floating sensation, like she’s on a boat, gently rocking back and forth with the swell of the waves. 

She becomes aware of Anna’s hands on her torn, filthy pajama top, and realizes the rocking motion is her sister trying to shake her into something resembling consciousness.

“Nettie!” Anna hisses in her ear. “A car just pulled up outside. If you’re asleep when he comes in, he’ll hit you till you wake up, just like last time. Nettie, come ON!” 

As the fog shrouding her mind gradually dissipates, Nettie becomes aware of an engine rumbling outside. It cuts off abruptly, followed by the sound of a car door slamming shut. Then another. Then HIS voice filters through the moldy walls, saying something too muffled to catch. 

“We’re running out of time, you know,” a female voice replies. Muffled though it is, this voice is closer, louder, just barely intelligible. 

Creepface speaks again, and although Nettie strains to hear, she still can’t quite make out his words. 

“I know that,” says the woman’s voice. “But we’ve got other problems, too. I didn’t expect Jacob to hang around as long as he has—I think he’s getting curious. We’re gonna have to figure out—”

The voice is now echoing as if from the depths of a well, a well from which Nettie is bizarrely falling up from the bottom, instead of down from the top. In some dim part of her mind, Nettie realizes it isn’t the woman outside who has changed, but her own perception. She’s drifting away again. 

She tries desperately to reverse course, to dive back down into the well, because that’s where Anna is, that’s where sanity lies, where…

“Nettie, please!” Anna screams. “WAKE UP!”

Nettie sat bolt upright, gripping the steering wheel with both hands, knuckles white and trembling from head to toe. Her Kia was idling in the side parking lot of a rundown convenience store about eight miles shy of the Forbes Mobile Home Park. She’d decided to stop for a bathroom break and a quick bite before presenting herself at the Dulcey residence, but had apparently closed her eyes and fallen into a light doze the moment she’d put her car in park. Small wonder; she’d slept badly the night before. A glance at the dashboard clock revealed that she’d been sitting there for a little over fifteen minutes.

“Fuck,” she mumbled.

The dream had been vivid, powerful, and was still sharp and clear in her mind. Was it truly just a dream, or perhaps a flash of suppressed memory elbowing its way to the forefront? She had no way to know.

Then Nettie realized that she did. That bit about Jacob being curious was the tell-tale. Because the monster, the man she and Anna had dubbed Creepface, the one who had gone to prison for their kidnapping and her sister’s murder, was Jacob. Even if this was a memory, it was an inaccurate one, distorted by the haze of fever.

She closed her eyes, trying to focus on the images that lingered in her head. If there was any scrap of truth to be had here, she wanted to find it and pin it down. Anna’s face seemed to loom before hers. Sweet, beautiful, doomed Anna, staring into her eyes, and from there down into her soul. Trust yourself, Nettie, and for this one moment she could fucking hear Anna, her subconscious insisting that this really was the voice of her lost sister. Trust your memories. Let them guide you.

Thoroughly shaken, Nettie opened her eyes, squinting a bit as the sun emerged from behind the clouds to glare through her windshield. She shook herself, trying to lighten her mood by comparing the motion to that of Terry’s big, hairy dog after being forced to endure a bath. The humor fell flat.

Shaking her head at her own idiocy, she killed the engine, popped the door open, and stepped out into the daylight. One thing was for sure: splotches of memory that might not even be memory at all were not going to get her any closer to learning what she needed to know. The mission she was on today just might. But first things first—she really needed to pee.

***

Twenty minutes later, Nettie was pulling in next to April Dulcey’s half-rotted deathtrap of a Honda Accord, its original light blue paint liberally besmirched by splotches of rust. Looks like a giant ate a village full of Smurfs, then took a massive shit in this woman’s driveway. She had to suppress a fit of laughter. Focus, girl. 

Emerging from the car, Nettie took a moment to appraise the yard as she slung a large white satchel over her shoulder. It had been recently mowed; a sloppy job that did not include edging. Two kids’ bikes were tucked up against the porch, and the plastic table, chairs, and tea service were exactly where they’d been when she’d driven by before, only a few meters from the woods. Whoever mowed the lawn had just gone right around the table and chair set.

Squaring her shoulders, she made her way up the walk. She was just shy of the front steps when the door flew open. The woman who stood in the doorway matched Nettie’s mental image of trailer trash to a tee. Her hair was the victim of an awful red dye job that was sufficiently past its prime for one-inch roots to be visible. A pair of ragged jeans two sizes too small cinched her belly in a way that made Nettie think of a rubber band wrapped around a marshmallow. A nondescript white tank showed off three inches of fleshy midriff. Nettie knew from the files that April Dulcey was thirty-one, but the lines on her face suggested early forties.

She peered at Nettie through bloodshot eyes. “Who the fuck are you?”

Coming up short at the bottom of the steps, Nettie put one hand on the rail, holding up her wallet with the other, the DEA consultant card she carried on display. “I’m—”

“Oh, hell no,” the woman snarled. “No more. I don’t want any more of you silly fucks in my house, so you can just—”

“I’m Nettie Hastings,” Nettie cut in, raising her voice. “I’m the one who—”

“Nettie?!” A small face stuffed itself into the narrow space between her mother’s waist and the doorframe. The face looked freshly scrubbed, the light brown hair neat, clean, and loose around the shoulders. This was such a far cry from the bedraggled creature Nettie had plucked from the ruins of County Highway Eight that it took a moment to recognize her.

“Nettie!” Gina Dulcey squealed, squeezing past her mother and hurtling down the porch steps. Nettie caught her on the way down, scooping the child into her arms. Tears stung her eyelids, tears she knew better than to shed.

Then Heather was there, brushing past her mom with a little more grace than her sister had, but then picking up the pace. She was down the steps in a flash, arms around Nettie’s waist.

“Oh,” said April, with total ill grace. “You’re Nettie. I guess you can come in.”

***

Terry unfolded his body from the driver’s seat of his recently purchased Honda Pilot, now parked outside the five-story edifice that was the Pinewood Clinic in Johnstown. Julie was clambering out of the passenger’s side. Terry popped open the rear door, offering Mallory a hand as she slid to the ground.

She took it, but rolled her eyes. “You should probably save that stuff for when I’m too big to see my feet.”

Terry laughed. “This is but the tip of the iceberg, my dear. Should the hallways be crowded, I intend to clear the way by shouting, ‘Lady with a baby!’”

Chuckling, Julie came around the front of the car and elbowed him in the ribs. “Out of the way, baby daddy. I got this.” Terry obligingly moved aside, then trailed along behind as the two women approached the building hand in hand.

***

“Are you two doing okay? Is there anything you need?”

“Maybe a mom who isn’t a bitch,” said Heather with a sardonic twist of her lip. Nettie was seated on the center cushion of the Dulceys’ couch, a girl pressed close to her on either side. Dear old Moms had exchanged token pleasantries, offered Nettie a drink which she’d politely refused, then retreated outside to smoke a cigarette.

Nettie offered the girl a wry smile. “How are your hands?” The first, second, and third fingers of Heather’s right hand were swathed in bandages. The left first and second fingers were similarly bound. The unbandaged digits bore the lingering aftermath of deep abrasions, but appeared to be functional.

“Getting better, but I still need one more operation on my right hand fingers,” Heather replied. “I really messed them up, and you guys still had to finish getting me out.”

“You got Gina out,” Nettie reminded her. “I think that makes you the best big sister ever. Besides, you had no way to know we were coming. What you did was incredibly brave, and exactly the right thing.”

Heather was looking up at her, hands twisting in her lap. “Have they caught him yet, Nettie?”

Nettie sighed. “No. Actually, that’s why I’m here.” Extracting a folded piece of printer paper from the satchel on the floor between her feet, she spread it out on the coffee table, smoothing the crease. It was Jacob Brentshaw’s arrest mugshot.

Heather awkwardly picked it up between the thumb and unbandaged two fingers of her left hand, examining the photo at arms length. Leaning across Nettie’s lap, Gina looked on.

“This was taken fifteen years ago, so he’d look older now,” said Nettie.

“It’s not him,” said Heather with an air of finality.

Nettie opened her mouth, but no sound came out. She hadn’t realized, not until right this second, how sure she’d been that Heather and Gina’s kidnapper was the same twisted fuck who had taken Anna’s life.

Nettie squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them again. She forced the words out. “You’re sure?”

“Yeah. I mean, it’s close. Like they’d probably be related. The nose is the same. But some things are different, and it’s not just because he’s younger.”

“The cheeks are wrong,” Gina put in. “If it wasn’t for that, it might fool me.”

“Damn,” Nettie muttered. “You think they look like relatives, though?”

“Oh, for sure,” said Heather. “It’s close enough that it’s giving me the creeps.”

“But they’re definitely different people.”

“Yeah, definitely,” said Heather.

“Uh-huh,” Gina agreed.

Nettie let her head droop forward, staring down at her hands while she forced her recalcitrant brain to accept this new data. “Okay,” she said, “Thanks. At least we know.”

“Who is this, anyway?” Heather inquired, rattling the paper in her hand.

“A horrible, horrible man,” said Nettie. “Best to leave it at that. Anyway, I brought some stuff for the two of you.” Reaching back into her satchel, she came up with a pair of large insulated lunch boxes, one green and the other orange, but otherwise identical.

“One for each of you. Anyone got a color preference?”

“Can I have the orange, Heather?” Gina pleaded. “It’s the same as Nettie’s glasses!”

Heather smiled a sad little smile. “All yours, Gina.”

“They’re both full of snacks,” said Nettie, handing Gina the orange and Heather the green. “All stuff that’s bad for you, so enjoy. Oh—and both boxes have a card with my phone number and email address inside. If you have questions, or think of anything I might need to know, or if you just plain need someone to talk to, you can get in touch with me anytime. Okay?”

“We’d better hide ‘em good,” Gina declared, “or our mom’ll eat all of it.”

Nettie felt a twinge of anger, but did her best to keep what she was thinking from showing on her face. “Maybe you’d better run them to your bedroom before she comes in.”

Heather rolled her eyes. “No worries. She’ll find an excuse to stay outside till you leave. It’s what she did with all the other people who came to talk to us.”

Fighting tears, Nettie wrapped an arm around each girl, pulling them close. “You have my contact info,” she said. “If you girls need anything, you get ahold of me. Okay?”

***

“I’m sorry, but I’m not clear on the dynamic here,” said Doctor Nadine Belgarde, the chubby brunette seated on the examination room stool. By sheer happenstance, Mallory had gotten a cancellation appointment with Terry’s own primary care physician. “Not that I want to pry or anything, but—”

“It’s okay,” said Mallory. “Julie is my domestic partner. I have the occasional heterosexual fling, that she knows about. Terry was one of them.”

“Well for starters, honey, your taste in men really sucks,” Dr. Belgarde said cheerfully, jerking her thumb in Terry’s direction. She and Terry both laughed. Julie and Mallory joined in after a moment’s hesitation.

“Anyway,” the doctor continued, “the results just came back. It’s a sure thing; you’re pregnant.”

Mallory nodded. “I know.”

“Okay, then. Something tells me you’re not a person who needs an exhaustive list of all your options, but do you want me to review them for you?”

“I think I’m good there.”

“Excellent,” said Dr. Belgarde. “Are you planning on carrying to term?”

“Yes.”

“All right, then,” the doctor said with a smile. She had a pleasing smile, one that spoke of a cheerful outlook on life. “Now, you live in Colorado, is that right? When are you planning to return?”

“When classes start at the end of August.”

“You’re a student, then?”

The corners of Mallory’s mouth curled upward. “Professor.”

“Oh, okay. Sorry about that. What do you teach?”

“Music.”

Dr. Belgarde flashed that wonderful smile again. “That is so cool. I played the viola with the U of M Mankato orchestra during my undergrad. I still miss it. Anyway—” she glanced at the notes on her tablet. “Looks to me like you’re in excellent health, so that’s a plus. Would you say you maintain a pretty balanced diet? Fresh fruit, veggies, that sort of thing?”

Mallory smiled back; the woman was infectious. “No problems there.”

“Terrific. I’d recommend you get started on a daily course of prenatal vitamins, but so long as you’re eating well and there are no other problems, the over-the-counter stuff ought to be just fine. I won’t tell you to avoid caffeine completely, but it should be kept to a minimum. Think you can handle no more than two hundred milligrams a day? That would be—”

“I’m just going to cut it out altogether. No big deal.”

“Do we need to have a conversation about alcohol or other intoxicants?”

Mallory shook her head. “Not a drop until I have the baby. It goes without saying, right?”

The doctor’s smile turned sour. “Sweets, I’m a family doc in an economically repressed rural area. Unfortunately it absolutely does not go without saying, and it’s a little depressing how often saying something doesn’t make a difference.”

“No worries,” said Mallory. “I won’t be using. And I don’t smoke, if that’s your next question.”

Nadine’s smile returned to sunny in an eyeblink. “You’re my dream patient. Too bad you don’t live here; you’d be a shining example to everyone else. Speaking of which, if you stick to the itinerary we talked about, you’ll be getting initial prenatal care here in Minnesota. We usually like to do the first ultrasound anywhere from seven to eight weeks after the start of your last menstrual cycle, so that’ll be a few weeks from now. You’re down in the Ottertail County area, correct?”

“Dickson. I grew up there.”

“That’s about three hours southwest of here, isn’t it? How did you meet this guy?” She waved her hand at Terry.

Mallory indicated Julie with her thumb. “Her cousin Nettie Hastings lives in Bronning. She’s friends with Terry.”

The doctor’s smile widened as she turned her attention to Julie. “Oh, I knew you resembled someone I know! I just couldn’t put my finger on it. I did an emergency medicine fellowship, so I sometimes pick up shifts in the ER when they’re shorthanded. I know Nettie. She’s everyone’s favorite paramedic down there.”

She peered more closely at Julie. “Wow, you really do look like her. I think it was the different hair that threw me. Anyway—”

She took another moment to peruse the chart. “You’re not too far from Alomere Health in Alexandria, then. Dr. Sanders down there is a terrific OB. Want me to give you a referral?”

“That’d be great.”

“Okay. It should show up in your MyChart before the day is out. Just one other thing then.”

Dr. Belgarde hesitated, her smile fading. “Here’s where I get told to mind my own business, but I need to ask. This is what we’d definitely call a non-traditional situation. An unplanned pregnancy, and you’re in a same-sex domestic relationship with someone who, obviously, is not the father. Meanwhile, the actual father is sitting right in front of me. My concern is any sort of situation that will lend itself to unusual levels of prenatal stress. It’s not good for the baby. I can give referrals for group counseling, individual therapy, whatever you have to have.”

She threw Terry a wicked grin. “Except I don’t have a cure for the father being a complete tool. I’ve been wanting to have that organ removed ever since your first appointment, Terry, but the surgeons tell me they don’t have a long enough drill.”

Julie and Mallory shared a laugh. Terry raised an eyebrow. “How long have you been waiting to use that line?”

Dr. Belgarde chuckled. “Oh, I’ve been sitting on it for a few months.”

Terry inclined his head, then met her eyes. “Well played,” he said cheerfully, “but the real gold standard is coming up with them on the fly.”

“Oh, I’ll get there.” She turned her attention back to Mallory. “Seriously, though—do you think you might need any sort of mental health services?”

Mallory took Julie’s hand, squeezed. “I think I’m okay.”

The doctor looked to Julie. “I haven’t heard much from you. Your good health, including your mental health, is going to be important for Mallory, and once again—this is a situation that I can’t help but be a little concerned about. I can set things up for you, if it’s needed.”

Julie shook her head. “I’m in a good place with it. If that changes, I promise I’ll get help.”

“I can’t ask for more than that.” The doctor stood. “Mallory, Julie, it was a pleasure meeting you. Even though I’m not your primary, if you need any little thing, you just call my office.”

She cocked her head at Terry, the corners of her mouth curling upward. “As for you—get the hell out of my exam room. You’re stinking up the joint.”

Terry cocked his head. “Why? So you can start crying yourself to sleep while desperately counting the minutes until my next appointment?”

“So I can drink myself to sleep while desperately trying to figure out where I went wrong in life, being stuck in a position where I have to treat douchey people like you.”

Doctor Nadine Belgarde exited the room with a self-satisfied spring in her step, leaving Terry staring after her open-mouthed.

“Well, goddamn,” he murmured, staring at the closed door. Then he broke into a grin. “Well played, madame.”

Julie and Mallory were both laughing. “How fun was that?” said Julie.

***

Nettie’s phone rang as her car descended the long hill that comprised most of Keenan Lake Road, leading her out of the trailer park and back to County Seven. She glanced at the infotainment system on the dash; ‘Unknown Number’ it said. She debated not taking it, then thumbed the accept button on the wheel.

“Hello?”

“Ms. Hastings, this is Latisha Miller with the FBI. I’ll come right out and say it: what the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

“Wait—what?”

There was a moment’s pause. “Okay, honey, we need to talk, and I’d prefer a secure line. Can you drive to Virginia? Not the state, thanks very much.”

Thirty minutes later Nettie was seated at a desk in the ad hoc offices the FBI was maintaining in rented space in downtown Virginia. The contingent had been whittled down to just two agents, one of whom Nettie recognized. Agent Tso was the East Asian gentlemen who had been there a month ago, part of the search for Heather and Gina Dulcey. He’d ushered Nettie into this office with exquisite courtesy, setting her up behind a large computer screen that was already conferenced in to wherever the fuck FBI Special Agent Latisha Miller was at the moment. Location notwithstanding, Miller had a damn fine work space.

On the screen, The FBI agent looked up from whatever it was she’d been doing. “Ms. Hastings. Good to see you again.”

“Likewise. What’s this about?”

“Why did you pay a visit to the Dulcey residence?”

Nettie folded her hands on the desk. “How did you know?”

“We have the place under 24-7 video surveillance. The Dulcey girls are considered to be at risk, because they’d theoretically be capable of identifying the perp. There’s always the chance he or someone close to him will come back and try to neutralize that threat.”

Nettie was mentally kicking herself. Of course the place was being watched. “I wanted to see how the girls were doing. I, um, brought them some presents.”

“Is that all? For real? Because that was a damn short visit for a social call.”

Nettie sighed. “Fine. Since nobody else was going to do it, I wanted to show them Jacob Brentshaw’s mugshot. I figured we needed to rule out the possibility.”

Miller slowly nodded. “I was going to, but my bosses nixed the idea. What did you learn?”

“It wasn’t him. Both girls agreed there were differences aging wouldn’t account for. They also thought it was scary close, like it was probably a relative or something.”

Miller appeared to give that a moment’s thought. “I looked through all the old files after our debriefing, the day the Dulcey girls were rescued. Brentshaw doesn’t have any male relatives that would be even close to the estimated age of the perp.”

“I know that. But an almost identical crime, committed by someone who almost looks like him? You have to admit, it’s a hell of a coincidence.”

“That’s putting it mildly.”

“So what’s your next move?”

“A number of things, but nothing I’m at liberty to discuss. I’ll go out on a limb and tell you that we’re not following up on the alleged Brentshaw connection. There simply isn’t enough to go on that I can justify it.”

Nettie chewed on the inside of her cheek. “Okay—if you could justify it, what would you do?”

Miller was shaking her head before Nettie was done. “Oh, no you don’t. What I need you to do is butt out, Hastings. I appreciate what you’ve done—tremendously—but I can’t have a civilian putting herself at risk on a high-stakes case like this. Especially on a line of investigation that’s likely to lead nowhere.”

“You really believe there’s not a connection here?”

“I didn’t say that. But resources are limited, and we can only devote so many agents to this now that the immediate crisis has been averted. Hell, we’re maybe two or three days away from being ordered to close down the Virginia office, possibly even discontinue surveillance of the trailer park. That’s just how it is. It’s an open case, but it’s not going to get much priority going forward because it has low odds of leading to an arrest. We can only do so much.”

“Put me in the game,” said Nettie, throwing caution to the wind. “Look, I know there’s something to this, so do you, so let’s go after this fucker before he does it again.”

No response. Agent Miller’s face might have been carved out of granite.

Nettie tried another tack. “Look at it this way: the only way you can stop me from doing this on my own is to arrest me, so you might as well offer some guidance.”

Miller let out a long, slow breath. “What information do you already have, and what do you feel that you lack?”

Nettie felt a surge of triumph at the unexpected victory, but she kept her face still. “I got Bridgett Ramscone to hook me up with current information for Brentshaw’s living relatives, but she made me promise not to contact any of them before she gave it to me. I was particularly interested in female relatives, because I’m pretty damn sure Brentshaw had a female accomplice when I was kidnapped. I—”

“Hold on,” Miller’s eyes narrowed. “Except for a comment made by your sister about ‘bad people’ only minutes before she died, there’s not a single word in any of the Brentshaw files hinting at a second person being involved. You didn’t tell anyone at the time.”

“I wasn’t able to give a statement when I was found,” Nettie countered. “And by the time I was in any shape to talk about it, I’d blocked it out. When Bridgett sent me the case files during the Dulcey search, it brought back a few things that I hadn’t been able to remember before. I never saw a second person, and I don’t think Anna did either, but I remember hearing him talking to someone with a female voice, and I remember Anna talking about hearing the same thing. Several instances of each.”

“And you trust that these memories are genuine?”

Nettie sighed. “I won’t say a hundred percent, but it’s a damn sight higher than fifty. Also—” she hesitated, unsure how much she wanted to say. Miller raised her eyebrows, cocked her head.

“I am less than fifty percent on this one,” said Nettie, “but I seem to remember hearing him talking—recognizing it as his voice—to the female, and her saying something about Jacob staying longer than expected, and getting curious. As in a third party, not someone present at the time.”

“But she was talking to someone whose voice you recognized as that of Jacob Brentshaw.”

“No,” said Nettie, leaning forward in her chair. Now that she was processing the imagery from this morning’s dream aloud, a deadly suspicion was forming. “She was talking to someone whose voice I recognized as that of Creepface. That’s what Anna and I called him. He never gave us a name, not that I remember, anyway. And you know, I didn’t see his fucking mugshots, or any pics of him at all, until just a few weeks ago. I’ve always avoided all the press stories and shit like that. I didn’t see pictures until I was far past the point of being able to accurately remember what he looked like. When I saw his mugs I was like oh yeah, that’s him—but if it’s as close as Gina and Heather just told me it is, I wouldn’t have noticed any discrepancies after so many years.”

Miller gazed at her steadily for several long moments before she spoke. “Ms. Hastings—Nettie—are you seriously suggesting that Jacob Brentshaw wasn’t the one responsible for—”

“I don’t know,” said Nettie. “It doesn’t make sense, does it? He was there, he got arrested, he was convicted. And again—I’m a long way from convinced that’s even a real memory.”

“So what is it you’d like to do?”

“Questioning Brentshaw’s relatives would be one hell of a good start.”

“What would you want to ask them?”

Nettie rocked back in the chair. “I’d have to sit down and think that over. I’m not even sure who I’d start with. I’ve looked over the info we have on them, and most of them seem to be located in various parts of Iowa and Wisconsin. None of them looks less likely to be a suspect than any of the others. Except possibly his sister Melissa. She’s a hell of a lot younger than him, and a systems analyst for a big company in Cedar Rapids.”

“You realize, of course, that if there even was a female accomplice, it’d most likely not be a relative?”

“I get that, but Brentshaw doesn’t appear to have had much of a social life. Very reclusive, lived by himself, no known close associates. From the files I have, I can’t even find a starting point outside of family. If I could question his relatives, that’d maybe be a good first question.”

Latisha Miller smiled. “You really do think like an agent. So what’s stopping you from following this up?”

“Basically, I promised Bridgett I wouldn’t. I told her I’d contact her if the info itself gave me any leads, and it really doesn’t.”

Miller pursed her lips. “We may be able to get around that. I’ll contact you later in the day. Any other lines of investigation come to mind for you?”

Nettie hesitated, then plunged ahead. “I’m still not convinced that the perp in the Dulcey girl’s kidnapping wasn’t Jacob Brentshaw. Yeah, the girls say it wasn’t, but they also say it’s a pretty damn good likeness, and they’re little girls who might not be clear on how much aging can change a face.”

“So—what do you want to do?”

“You mean short of digging him up and running DNA?”

Miller’s face took on the contemplative look of someone actually thinking it over. “For now, yes. Short of that.”

“Prison records, then. I know, he was killed in a high security facility, and that ought to be gold standard, but right now I’d like to see some proof that whoever was shanked in that shower room was in fact Jacob Brentshaw.”

“That’s not as simple as it sounds. Consider what the very request implies. We’d be accusing them of gross incompetence at best. At worst—well—something a lot more sinister.”

“But can you get it?”

“I have the authority to demand the records, but that makes it sound easier than it is. If there is anything hinky, you couldn’t trust that they wouldn’t cherry-pick what they send. There are very few checks and balances in that environment, and there’s a culture of covering each other’s asses. I’d have to send an agent, or more realistically a couple of agents, to make sure we get everything we want. The prison would then issue a formal complaint, and unless the information we came away with contained something damning, my ass would be grass. Sorry, honey. I need a lot more than what we have now to go in with all guns blazing.”

Nettie ran a hand across her face. “That’s basically what Bridgett said, too.”

Latisha offered a wan smile. “Look, you’re thinking in all the right ways. But if you’re as smart as Bridgett thinks you are, then you’re seeing the same thing I’m seeing.”

Nettie spread her hands. “I know. Everything we have is either circumstantial, or based on memories that I don’t even trust, and they’re my memories. And none of the lines of investigation we’re looking at are likely to lead anywhere.”

“But?”

“But I’d still like to talk to some of Brentshaw’s relatives.”

Miller nodded. “It’s the only reasonable angle of attack, for the moment. What’s your schedule like for the rest of the day?”

“I’m going home. My cousin and her partner are visiting, and we’re going out for dinner tonight.”

“Okay,” said Agent Miller. “I’m going to see if I can set up a conference call with Ramscone this afternoon. How long is your drive home?”

“Ninety minutes or so.”

“I’ll make sure it’s after that, then. Can you squeeze it in?”

“Yeah, I’ll make it work. Bridgett is gonna be pissed, though. I didn’t tell her I wouldn’t go talk to Heather and Gina, but she’ll still be mad I did it without talking to her first.”

“You knew that, and you did it anyway because…”

Nettie sighed. “Because she would have said no.”

Miller chuckled. “I figured. Okay, why don’t you be on your way. Is the email we have on file for you correct? Nettie underscore Hastings at Gmail?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. I’m going to send you a link to download a messaging app a little more secure than the stuff you more ordinarily use. It’ll work on a PC or a phone. Get that, and we’ll talk this afternoon.” Without another word, Special Agent Latisha Miller terminated the conference call.

On to Chapter Eighteen!