The rain in Oakhaven didn't wash things clean; it just turned the world into a blur of grey. Elias Thorne sat in his daughter's bedroom, the air smelling faintly of vanilla and old textbooks. Maya had been gone for six days. Three days since they found her in the rusted remains of the old canning factory.
Elias was a man of frames and shutter speeds. As a forensic photographer, he had spent twenty years documenting the end of other people's lives. He knew how a body looked when the soul had been stolen. But looking at the police file of his own daughter? That was a different kind of death.
"We're doing everything we can, Elias," Detective Miller had said.
Elias knew what that meant: The trail is cold. The suspects have high-priced lawyers. We are stuck.
He stood up, his joints popping like dry twigs. He didn't need the police. He had the crime scene photos—the ones he had taken himself, illegally, before the yellow tape was even dry. He adjusted his glasses and looked at a microscopic fleck of blue paint caught in the tread of Maya's shoe.