Everyone turns.
Cider is staring at the old photo, her face hollow, one finger pressed to the girl she called Mercy.
Royal moves first, crossing to her with a quiet that makes men nervous. “Cider.”
“How many?” she asks again.
No one answers.
Because we don’t know.
Because the number ain’t a number yet. It’s rumors, old missing reports, church whispers, runaway files, girls who aged out of caring adults, daughters no one fought hard enough for, and now Cider with holes where years should be.
Sophie looks at Cider, and the anger in her face collapses into something worse.
Shame.
“My father may not have known,” she says, but it sounds like a prayer she doesn’t believe.
I look at her.
She feels it.
Her eyes close.
“Or he did,” she whispers.
That is the first honest thing that doesn’t try to protect him.
It guts me.
Because I know what it costs her.
I know what fathers do to daughters long after they are done raising them. Mike is dead, and I still bleed in his shape some days. Sophie’s father is alive, respectable, polished, wrapped in Paradise money and Southern manners, which might be worse. Dead men can’t defend themselves. Living men can lie with witnesses.
The side door opens before I can speak again, and Whiskey comes in with his phone to his ear, Twila Dix right behind him.
That gets everyone’s attention.
Deputy Twila Dix doesn’t usually walk into the old jail clubhouse like she belongs there. She walks in like the place is already under suspicion and she is only deciding whether to charge it before or after supper. Uniform on. Hair pulled back. Eyes sharp. Sheriff Dix’s daughter, Paradise deputy, part-time wrestler in Hell’s ring when she thinks nobody important is watching.
The clubhouse doesn’t soften for law.
It watches her the way a cage watches a key.
Whiskey lowers his phone and looks at me first. Not Sophie. Me.
That means it’s bad.
“What?” I ask.
Twila answers before he can. “You have a problem.”
Oaks snorts. “Always nice when law brings fresh observations.”
Twila cuts him a look. “You want me to start with you?”
Brittany says sweetly, “He doesn’t.”