I met his eyes. “I’m Gibson Bodine, Sheriff. How do you think her daddy would have felt about his sixteen-year-old daughter spending time with the worst of ‘those Bodine boys’? Do you think he’d have believed us if we said we weren’t doing anything wrong? Do you think anyone would have believed that?”
He cleared his throat. “Tell me about the photos.”
“There was a band we both liked playing out in Perrinville. It was a big outdoor thing, festival style. We met in secret and I took her out there to see them play. Afterward, we saw a photo booth, so we jumped in and took these.”
“And that was the day before she disappeared?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“Gibson, you need to level with me here,” he said. “Did you have anything to do with her disappearance?”
I met his eyes again. “No.”
“Where were you when she disappeared?”
“I was at home. I didn’t even see her that day, I had to work. She was with all the high school kids down at the lake. Plus, she was worried about getting caught after leaving with me the day before, so I kept my distance.”
“I’m still tryin’ to wrap my head around no one knowing,” Sheriff said, more to himself than me.
I shrugged. “The town doesn’t know everything. Hell, an entire person disappeared and no one knew what happened. Or at least, no one who knew anything spoke up.”
My damn father. I didn’t know what to think about Jenny Leland’s story—that my dad had helped Callie get out of town. The asshole had taken that secret to his grave. He’d let me believe all those years that she was dead. Of course, I’d kept a secret about her, too.
Jenny swore she was alive. She had postcards with her handwriting. I remembered it from her song journals. She’d even said she’d met Callie in person—a year ago, in Seattle. She swore up and down that Callie was alive.
I believed her. Maybe it was just because I wanted to believe her so badly. But I did.
“Do you have any idea what might have happened to her?” he asked. “Why she was hurt? Why she was trying to get away from home?”
Clenching my teeth, my nostrils flaring, I fought back the surge of anger. Someone—signs seemed to be pointing to her father—had hurt her. Badly. Enough that she’d begged my dad for help on the side of the road, and he’d apparently helped sneak her out of town. There was no kind of Bootleg Justice good enough for a man who’d hurt his own daughter. Made me furious.
I cleared my throat. “No. She never said anything about her parents or what things were like at home. I wish she would have.”
I would have dealt with that asshole.
“Why didn’t you tell anyone, Gibs? You had to have known this could come out someday. It’s suspicious.”
“Because I knew people would assume the worst. That I was preying on a teenage girl. That we had an inappropriate relationship.” My voice rose with every word. “What did Gibson Bodine do now? Did he get her pregnant? Is he keeping her in a cabin in the woods somewhere? Did he kill her and dump her body in the lake?”
“Gibson, enough,” Jayme said.
“I didn’t do anything wrong, unless playing music with a girl is a crime.”
“Have you had any contact with her since she disappeared?” he asked.
“No. Not a word.” I thought she was dead. All this time, I didn’t think there was any hope.
The sheriff sat back in his seat and pitched his fingers together. “All right, Gibs. You’re free to go.”
Without a word, I scooped up my wallet—and the strip of photos. Jayme’s heels were already clicking their way out the door.
I paused in the doorway and glanced over my shoulder. “Sheriff?”
“Yeah?”
“Is this investigation aiming to find her? Or to bring down whoever hurt her?”
His gaze went steely and his voice was hard. “Both.”
I nodded once. “Good.”
“Let me remind you that this is a matter for law enforcement,” he said, shuffling some papers on his desk. “You need to let us handle it.”
“I know.”
I did know. But I wasn’t making any promises.
2
GIBSON
It took all of an hour before someone—Scarlett, probably—started banging on my door. I’d turned off my phone as soon as I’d left the sheriff’s office. Come straight home and contemplated barricading my driveway to keep people away.
This was the part I’d been dreading since I’d realized Misty Lynn had taken my wallet. Everyone coming at me