One of the most frustrating things about investigating cases like this is that, at any second, the leads could dry up and we reach the point where there are no more breakthroughs. After forty-eight hours, it felt as if all the information we'd gathered was leading us nowhere. The most chilling thing was that we'd missed the crucial twenty-four-hour window to find her alive. Chances are, going forward, we'll recover a body, not a bright, beautiful girl. 

We had questioned Ivy Carmichael's brother, friends, boyfriends, parents, neighbors, teachers, colleagues from her workplace and any rivals of hers on the pageant circuit. Everyone spoke highly of Ivy and none seemed like a possible suspect. Yes, Brady Danvers made me feel uneasy and I'm sure he's hiding something behind that polite mask of his but I wasn't pinning my hopes on him being the culprit in this case. 

"Darby, could you please sit down?" Tommy sighed. He was sitting in the spare chair in my office, having come in to tell me that we didn't have anything new. "If you sit, we can start to go through some of the information we already have."

Tommy was still optimistic that we would have a break in the case, a new lead, something that could help us move this investigation forward somehow. I wasn't so sure that there was anything new to be uncovered but in the interest of bringing Ivy home safe, I took a seat and let Tommy go through the evidence gathered and statements taken. 

We had a timeline of Ivy's day. She woke up six thirty, left for school at seven fifteen, left school at two forty-five. She went to meet some friends at a coffee shop before her hair appointment at four thirty. Zeke claimed that she walked into the house just after six, went straight to her room, and got ready for the Homecoming dance. Her friends arrived at seven thirty. Zeke took photos on his phone. After that, Brady arrived and the group of friends left at around eight to head to the dance. They were there by ten after eight. CCTV had them leave at eleven thirty. Then according to Ivy's friends, they dropped her home at twelve thirty.

"Wait," I say, stopping Tommy before he moved onto the next point. Leaning forward, I narrow my eyes as my brain kicks in. "They left the house at eight and got to the dance ten minutes later. But then later in the evening, they left the dance at eleven thirty but don't get back to the Carmichael's residence for another hour? Where were they during that gap in the timeline?"

Tommy shook his head. "It doesn't say. The officer taking the friends' statements can't have picked up on it," he begrudgingly notes.  His face turned a furious shade of red while his knuckles became whiter by the second. "I'll get them to check this again. But we're looking at a window between twelve thirty and one am as the time of the abduction.  Our crime scene techs took blood samples from the scene and tested it against Ivy's DNA taken from a hair sample on her hairbrush. The lab has advised that the blood came back as being from two different people. Ivy's DNA matched. The second, we don't know. It doesn't match anything in the database."

"Brady's?" I queried, wondering if the lab had got around to testing his DNA yet. In a small town like this, getting the results takes three-times longer than if it was a Federal case, something I wasn't used to dealing with. Tommy shook his head. "So for now, the DNA is pretty useless. What else do we have?"

Sheepishly, Tommy began to tell me about a friend he had from a different jurisdiction that he's asked for help. I was slighted that he didn't think I was good enough to assist him but the second he began to speak about an almost-twenty-year-old unsolved case, I knew why he hadn't drafted me in. 

His friend- the woman that was here yesterday- had taken the files from the cold case and some copies of the evidence collected from Ivy's case, in the hopes of finding similarities. I knew that there would be but according to Tommy, it was better to have an independent person looking at it so that it wasn't compromised and inadmissible in court. So far, what they had managed to confirm was telling. 

The method was almost identical. The only part of Ivy's case that differed was that the person who took her hadn't tidied her bedroom. The same tire tracks had been found behind the two properties from the cases. Even more significantly, the DNA collected from Ivy's crime scene matched DNA found in the bedroom of the girl taken nineteen years ago. 

"Same person?" My voice was barely above a whisper. When Tommy nodded in confirmation, I shot out of my chair and began to pace the room once more, only this time, it was more frantic than before. The adrenaline pumping through my veins had me on edge and I couldn't help but raise my voice. "It was the same person? Who were the suspects back then? Who did they question? Who did this?"

Careful not to give certainties, Tommy told me to calm down. He only spoke once I untensed my muscles. "As you know, they didn't have a real suspect at the time but after a few years, they thought it could be Wiley Preston."

"Wiley Preston?" I scoffed. No way was our high school Biology capable of this. Of all the people that I would consider, Mr. Preston wouldn't even feature in the top hundred. I folded my arms and raised an eyebrow in Tommy's direction. "Why?"

"About five years after you moved away from Beaufort, Wiley Preston was arrested for having sex with his underage student," Tommy explained, shuddering as he curled his lip and looking skywards. He looked like he was going to throw up. "I was new to the force at the time but I remember the details. After he was arrested, we turned his place over, looking for evidence and as it turned out, he was into more than sleeping with his students. He had photos of young girls on his computer, some more individual in taste than others, but there were copies of emails, messages, you know, conversations, with his students. He was offering better grades in return for sex but worse than that, he offered even better grades again if his students allowed him to take humiliating photos and in some cases, videos, of him penetrating them."

He paused and looked at me, running his hand through his hair. "Look, Darby, I don't know how to tell you this-"

"She was one of his girls, wasn't she?" I ask. I was right. Part of me knew it was the case before Tommy had even insinuated it. "What happened to Wiley Preston?"

Imprisoned for twelve years, released two years ago, living in a remote house ten minutes outside of Beaufort. He wasn't allowed to teach, he wasn't allowed near children, and he wasn't allowed to leave the state without prior approval from the police. The likelihood of Wiley Preston being our guy was almost certain, Tommy thought. That's why he sent a few officers out to pick him up this morning. He was sitting in one of our interview rooms. 

"Darby, I don't know if you can be in there," he tells me. It pained him to utter those words but we both knew that I shouldn't be within two feet of the man because I would kill him if it turned out he had done this, not once but twice. Tommy opened his mouth to continue but we were interrupted by a knock on the door. A young officer opened the door and handed Tommy a folder that contained a report from the lab, the headed paper in full view. The officer left and Tommy shook his head as he read what he'd been given. "You weren't lying when you said that you had very good instincts about people."

"That's kind of my job," I remark while keeping my eye on Tommy's hands, or more specifically, the folder he held in his hands. "What was I right about this time?"

Tommy sighed. "Brady Danvers was hiding something from us. His DNA didn't match the blood found at Ivy's house," he commented, reading the next part of the report carefully. The frown line on his forehead deepened. "His DNA, however, did match a sample taken from a rape case Beaulieu PD had from three weeks ago. A freshman was raped at a party after a football game. Her friends took her to the hospital and the rape kit managed to recover a pubic hair that belonged to the rapist. It matched Brady Danvers' sample we sent over. I need to let Jeannie know. It falls under her jurisdiction. While I'm doing that, Darby, please do not go and seek out Wiley Preston. We'll deal with him after I speak to Jeannie."

Despite wanting to go and do exactly that, I stayed in my office, once again going through the evidence we had for Ivy's case. While I was disappointed that the Brady Danvers lead hadn't played out as I'd hoped, it was hard not to see it as a win for someone. We didn't have justice for Ivy, we had justice for a young girl that had been through something traumatic and life-changing. 

The evidence board that I had in my room was only half-filled but the longer I spent in here, looking at it, the more I seemed to be adding. All the while, I kept referring back to the picture of Ivy that was on the board, her smile drawing me in. I still felt that she was familiar to me like I knew her from somewhere, but I couldn't place it. There was something about her. Something.

Why had the abductor chosen Ivy? What did he see in her? How was she linked to a case from nineteen years ago? 

"You're staring at her again," Tommy's voice spoke from over my shoulder. I heard him walk into the office and felt his presence behind me. "Jeannie's going to arrest Brady Danvers and charge him with rape. Darby, are you listening to me?"

Not at all. "Do you think she looks familiar somehow?" I ask, tilting my head as I continue to stare at Ivy Carmichael's photo. "The eyes."

"Darby-"

Finally, realization set in. "Do you have a copy of the file from nineteen years ago? One with the victim's photo?" Tommy frowned at me but retreated to his office and returned with the evidence I needed to confirm my theory. I placed the photo of a presumed-dead girl on the board next to Ivy's and took a step back, gasping when I saw the similarities. "You see it?"

"Yes, but, Darby-" Tommy abruptly stopped as he stepped forward and took a closer look. "She was sixteen when she was taken. We've always believed she died at sixteen so this can't be right. I mean, if this is what we think it is, and Ivy's only sixteen, then that means Carina was alive sixteen years ago. She was alive for three years after she disappeared."

I nod, agreeing with Tommy's theory. "It would also explain why the abductor chose Ivy. There's a connection between the cases because there's a connection between the victims. Carina is Ivy's mother. Which means, the abductor is Ivy's father. That's why Ivy was dumped at the hospital as a baby."

"Look, Darby, this is great in theory but we have no way of proving this."

"We do," I assure him. Tommy's eyes fell on me, a mix of hope and despair swirling within them. He knew exactly where I was going with this. He just didn't like it. "You know it's the only way, Tommy. How else are we going to build a stronger case? We have to find Ivy. We find Ivy, we finally get answers about Carina. Test my DNA against Ivy's, Tommy. I bet my life that it'll come back a familial match to Ivy."