Page 67 of A Sea of Unspoken Things

“And what kind of relationship was that?” Amelia asked.

“Nothing you don’t already know. He was helping her out with school application stuff, teaching her about photography. That kind of thing. Olivia is the one who set it up. But they were spending a lot of time together, and I just wanted him to be careful.”

Amelia’s face betrayed the fact that she’d had her suspicions about Johnny and Autumn. Maybe the whole town did. “You’re not the only one who was concerned.”

I could feel the defenses rising up in me. I couldn’t help it. “What does that mean?”

“It means”—she gave me a pointed look—“the same concern was brought to my attention by another individual.”

Micah looked surprised by that.

“And?” I pressed.

“And I looked into it. I spoke to Autumn and she insisted that there was nothing sexual or romantic going on between her and Johnny.”

My first thought was that Autumn could have been protecting him. If she was, there was little Amelia could have done about it without any evidence.

“Either way, this changes things,” I said. “What are the odds that Autumn going missing and Johnny getting shot are just a coincidence?” That was the question hanging over me. It just felt like too much of a stretch.

I could tell by the look on Amelia’s face that she was wondering the same. There’d been nothing circumstantial to frame what happened at the gorge that day, and accidental firearm deaths were nothing new to a forest ranger. But this was more complicated than a wilderness photographer out at a remote location, caught in the path of a stray bullet.

“The first step here is confirming that Autumn is, in fact, missing.” She scooted the chair back, reaching into the cabinet behind the desk. Then she took out a box of blue latex gloves, fitting them on her hands. “But it’s important to keep in mind that anything’s possible.”

Micah and I watched as she slipped the backpack into a plastic bag. It was exactly like the one she’d given me when I got to Six Rivers. The one with Johnny’s things. Now, Autumn’s backpack and everything inside was evidence.

“Do you have any reason to believe that someone would want to hurt Autumn?” she asked.

Micah shook his head, but I hesitated, and Amelia caught it.

She fixed her eyes on me. “What is it?”

I swallowed. “Maybe nothing. But Sadie told me that Ben was devastated when Autumn broke up with him, and that he’d tried to hurt himself after she left.”

The thought had crossed my mind more than once. Maybe Ben had done more than get upset when Autumn told him she was leaving. Maybe he’d done something he hadn’t meant to. Lashed out in a way he couldn’t take back. I’d seen the exact same thing happen that night in the gorge when Griffin Walker died. If Ben had done something he regretted, it was plausible that he might try to take his own life.

There was a shift in Amelia’s expression now. “You think Ben Cross—”

“I don’tthinkanything. I’m just telling you what Sadie said. If Autumn went missing when she left for school, that lines up with Ben…I don’t know what he did. A suicide attempt? She didn’t give me specifics.”

But if the incident had made its way through the town rumor mill, then Amelia already knew what those details were.

“All right. And who exactly touched all of this?” She looked between us, setting a hand on Autumn’s things.

“Both of us.” I cleared my throat. “And Johnny, I guess.”

I tried not to think about how his prints being on the backpack could be used. What kind of picture it could paint.

“And where exactly did you find it?” she asked.

“It was in a closet. Up on a kind of shelf.”

“Any idea why he would have put it there?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

“Would you say from where you found it that you think Johnny was”—she paused—“hiding it?”

The question was constructed carefully, spoken in a tone that I couldn’t decipher. My eyes narrowed on her, the meaning of the question clicking into place. “What are you implying?”