Finding Ashley Briar

Chapter 1

Cammie Reyes's forehead thumped against the car window every few seconds, a dull rhythm in time with the uneven stretch of Georgia highway beneath them. The sky hung heavy and colourless above the trees, soft rain streaking the glass beside her face. She didn't bother wiping it away. Let it blur everything.

In the front seat, Jonathan kept both hands on the wheel, eyes fixed on the road like there was something waiting at the end of it he couldn't look away from. A song played low on the radio—something syrupy and clean from a popstar Cammie didn't recognise. It filled the silence between them like smoke, light but suffocating.

Neither of them had spoken since he picked her up.

Cammie stared out the window, watching pine trees flicker past in green-grey blurs. She pressed her nails into the side of her thumb until a fresh line of blood welled up beneath the skin. The tips of her fingers were already cracked and raw. It was a habit she couldn't break. The guards back at the facility used to slap her hand away when they saw her do it. That stopped about six months in. Everyone stops watching eventually.

She had been locked up for seven hundred and thirty-four days. She knew the number like a tattoo. They had taken her shoelaces, her phone, her privacy. What they gave her instead was a schedule, a cold cot, three half-warm meals a day, and rules that changed depending on who was on shift. Juvenile detention wasn't built to break you—it just wanted to wear you down until you stopped trying. Most days, it worked.

Now she was seventeen and technically "free," but there were strings. There are always strings. She wasn't allowed to leave Marrow Creek without permission. No internet access. Random check-ins with a probation officer. And the small black strap around her ankle that pulsed with a silent authority: a GPS monitor, sleek and unforgiving.

She didn't ask questions about it. The judge had made it clear—this was the only chance she'd get. One mistake, and she'd be finishing the rest of her sentence somewhere a lot less forgiving than juvenile.

She reached down and tugged the cuff of her jeans lower, trying to cover the thing.

"You hungry?" Jonathan asked, eyes still on the road.

It was the first thing he'd said in over an hour.

Cammie didn't answer. She didn't know how to talk to him anymore, maybe never really had. He was her stepdad by title alone. He had married her mum when Cammie was ten, and now her mum was dead, and Jonathan was the one driving her home like it was something he was supposed to do.

After a moment, he shrugged and turned the volume up two notches. Conversation over.

Cammie leaned back into the window again, cold glass pressing against her temple, and tried to picture home. Marrow Creek. A pinprick on the map, hidden in the folds of north Georgia woods. She hadn't seen it since she was fifteen. Back then, the trees were taller, the roads smaller, and her world had been Ashley Briar's laugh echoing down the street and the taste of cherry cola on hot pavement.

She hadn't heard from Ashley in months. Not since before—

Cammie swallowed hard and didn't finish the thought.

The rain thickened as they turned off the highway, the road curling like a snake into the trees. The green looked too bright, like someone had turned the saturation up while she wasn't looking. Everything was louder, more alive, and she didn't feel like she belonged to it anymore.

There was a new weight in her chest, one that hadn't been there the day she was taken away. She didn't know if it was guilt, or fear, or something worse. Maybe all three.

The car rolled to a stop in front of the house.

It wasn't the one she grew up in.

This one was smaller, older—a single storey with warped blue paint peeling off the wooden siding. The porch railings were broken in places, slumped like tired shoulders, and the windows were smeared with grime, their insides greyed out from dust or neglect. A sagging chain-link fence curled around the yard like it had given up trying to stand straight. The letterbox was rusted through, its lid hanging open like a mouth mid-sigh.