Ashes to Ashes - Chapter Thirteen

The lab worked its magic and soon they had identified eight of the eleven bodies from the Chase property. Three had been reported as runaways from Hartford, Boston, and New York City, while the rest were sex workers from the Bridgeport area. Only one of the bodies found was male, and he’d been identified as Matteus Chase. He’d also been dead at least six years and was the most recent burial in the collection. The problem they now had was that they’d found Matteus’ DNA on several of the other bodies, and the question being asked was did Matteus kill the others or what?

As intriguing as that puzzle was, they couldn’t do much else with the information from Rock Beach until the lab could come up with a more definitive answer to the tangled mess. The abductions seemed to have stopped and the panic started to fade. Life went on and the winter formal dance at the high school became the main focus of the Wylder household.

“I can’t believe you found me a silk suit in dark purple,” Hayden said as she hugged the garment bag to her chest.

“It’s eggplant,” Harper corrected.

“I called a friend in New York who went and found it for me, then had it shipped here. Don’t crush it – silk wrinkles easily,” Evan said. “Go try it on, would you? I want to see if we need to do any alterations before the dance.”

Hayden ran to her room and Harper turned to hug Evan. “Thank you for not making her wear a dress. She was worried that you would.”

“Why would she think that?” Evan said.

“Because not everyone is okay with people being different,” Harper replied.

“I love how unique you both are,” Evan said. “And I understand that’s a bit harder for you two because you were born identical.”