Jason went back into his room. He opened the window to let in some air. The rain had slacked off, but the sky hadn’t given up the sun in days. He checked his bedside clock, unsure whether it was morning or night. Midnight was only a few minutes away. A stiff wind was blowing, but he had been holed up inside for so long that he welcomed fresh air, even if it was cold enough to make his breath appear as a cloud in front of his face. Outside, he could see the empty student parking lot. In the distance, a dog barked.
He sat back down at his desk. He stared at the lamp by his laptop. The neck was broken. The shade dangled from two wires, hanging its head as if in shame. The light cast weird shadows in the room. He had never liked the dark. It made him feel vulnerable and lonely. It made him think about things he didn’t want to think about.
Thanksgiving was a few days away. Last week, Jason had made the usual call to his mother, but she wasn’t interested in seeing him. She never was. Jason was from his mother’s first marriage, to a man who’d gone out for beer one day and never come back. Her second husband made it clear from the start that Jason wasn’t his son. They had three daughters who barely knew Jason existed. He wasn’t invited to family get-togethers. He didn’t get invitations to weddings or holidays. His mother’s only connection to him was through the U.S. Postal Service. She mailed a check for twenty-five dollars every birthday and Christmas.
Allison was supposed to make things different. They were supposed to spend all of their holidays together. They were supposed to create their own family. That’s what they’d done for the last year and eleven months. They went to movies or ate Chinese food while the rest of the planet was holed up with relatives they didn’t like, eating food they didn’t enjoy. That was their thing—they were two against the world, filled with combined glee because they had each other. Jason had never known what it was like to be inside something good. He was always on the outside, his face pressed against the glass. Allison had given him that, and now she had taken it away.
He didn’t even know if she was still in town. She might have gone home to visit her aunt. Maybe she had run off with another guy. Allison was attractive. She could do a hell of a lot better than Jason. He wouldn’t be surprised if she was screwing some new guy right now.
A new guy.
The thought cut him like a knife. Their legs and arms entangled, her long hair draped across another guy’s chest. Probably it was a hairy chest, the kind of chest that men had, not a concave, pasty white chest that hadn’t changed since junior high school. This new guy would have balls the size of grapefruits. He would pick Allison up in his arms and take her like a beast whenever he wanted.
How could she be with another guy? Jason knew from the first time they kissed that he was going to marry her. He’d given her that ring with the promise that as soon as all of this was over, he’d buy her a better one. A real one. Had Allison forgotten that? Could she really be that cruel?
Jason chewed at his tongue, rolling it around with his front teeth until he tasted blood. He stood up and started pacing again. The broken lamp traced his movements in an eerie shadow that swung back and forth across the wall. Six paces one way. Six paces back. The shadow hesitated, stopped and started, clinging to Jason like a bad dream. He raised his hands, hunched his shoulders, and the shadow grew into a monster.
Jason dropped his hands, thinking he was going to freak himself out if he didn’t stop this.
If he could just get through Thanksgiving, all of this would be over. He and Allison would be rich, or at least not as poor. Tommy would be able to buy enough equipment to start his own gardening business. Allison would be able to quit her job at the diner and concentrate on school. Jason would … What would Jason do?
He would buy Allison that ring. He would block that other guy and his stupid hairy chest from his mind, and he and Allison would go on and live their lives together. They could get married. Have children. They’d both be scientists, doctors. They could buy a new house, new cars, leave the air-conditioning on sixty all summer if they wanted to. The last three months would be a distant memory, something they would talk about in ten, fifteen years when it was all behind them. They would be at a dinner party. Allison would’ve had a little too much to drink. Talk would turn to wild college days, and her eyes would sparkle in the candlelight as she looked at Jason, a smile tugging at her lips.
“Oh, we can top that,” she would say, and proceed to shock them all with the crazy mess they had gotten themselves into over the last few weeks.
That’s what it would end up being—a party story, like the one Jason told about the first time his papa took him duck hunting and Jason had accidentally maimed two decoys.
He needed to finish his paper for that to happen. He couldn’t just settle for a degree now. He had to be the best, the top in his class, because Allison didn’t say it, but she liked having nice things. She liked the idea of being able to go into a store and buy whatever she wanted. She hated having to balance her checkbook down to the last penny every month. Jason wasn’t going to be the kind of husband who asked how much a pair of shoes cost or why she needed another black dress. He was going to be the kind of husband who made so much money that Allison could fill ten closets with designer clothes and there would still be money left over to go to Cancún or St. Croix or wherever it was filthy rich people went on their private jets for the holidays.
Jason rested his fingers on the keys but did not type. He felt feverish. Guilt had always been a problem for him. There was no punishment that anyone could mete out that was worse than the distress brought on by Jason’s own disappointment in himself. And he should be disappointed. He should be feeling horrified by what he had done. He should have protected Allison from all of this, told her that no matter how much money was involved, it wasn’t worth it. He’d endangered her. He’d gotten Tommy mixed up in it, too, because Tommy was stupid enough to go along with anything as long as you pushed him in the right direction. Jason was responsible for both of them. He was supposed to protect his friends, not push them into oncoming traffic. Were their lives really worth so little? Was that what it boiled down to at the end of the day, twenty-something years of life for less money than what a janitor brought home?
“No,” he said, the sound of his voice drowned out by the howling rain. He couldn’t let all of them get dragged down into this. Allison was wrong. Jason had balls. He had balls enough to do the right thing.
Instead of working on his paper, he opened his Internet browser. A quick search brought him to the right place. He found the contact information buried in the site map. Jason clicked on the icon to write new mail, but changed his mind. He didn’t want this traced back to him. It was the coward’s way out, but Jason would rather be an honest coward than a jailed whistle-blower. There was no denying his culpability in all of this—extortion, fraud, who knew what else. The feds would be involved. This might even count as attempted murder.
Jason opened up the Yahoo account he used for porn and pasted the contact address into the email. He spoke aloud as he wrote, “I don’t know if you are the right person to talk to about this, but there is something seriously wrong going on at your Grant County …” Jason’s voice trailed off as he searched for the right word. Was it a site? A location? Facility?
“Hey.”
Jason jerked up his head, surprised. “You scared the crap out of me.” He fumbled for the mouse to close the browser.
“You all right?”
Jason glanced nervously at the computer. “What are you doing here?” The stupid email program was asking if he wanted to save. Jason moved the mouse again to minimize the page. It still asked if he wanted to save.
“What are you writing?”
“School stuff.” Instead of hitting Save, Jason pressed the Delete key. The program closed down. He could hear the laptop’s fan clicking, trying to cool the processor enough to complete the request. His dissertation flashed up, then disappeared. The screen went black.
“Shit,” he
whispered. “No, no, no …”
“Jason.”
“Just give me a minute.” Jason tapped the space bar, trying to wake the computer. Sometimes that’s all it took. Sometimes, it just needed to know he was paying attention.
“You asked for this.”
“Wha—” Jason pitched forward, his jaw snapping shut as his face slammed into his computer. The plastic was hot against his cheek. Dark liquid pooled around the keys. He had the crazy thought that the computer was injured, bleeding.
Wind gusted in from the open window. Jason tried to cough. His throat wouldn’t comply. He coughed again. Something wet and thick came out of his mouth. He stared at it, thinking it looked like a piece of pork. Pink flesh. Raw meat.
Jason gagged.
He was staring at his tongue.
CHAPTER NINE
Will felt like a thief as he sneaked across the Linton yard and climbed into his Porsche. At least the driving rain gave him an excuse to keep his head down and move quickly. He jammed the key in the lock and was inside the car before he realized there was something trapped under his windshield wiper. Will groaned. He pushed open the door and tried to reach around to the wiper, but his arm wasn’t long enough. His sleeve was nearly soaked through by the time he got out of the car again to retrieve the plastic sandwich bag.
Someone had left him a note. The paper was folded in two, safe inside the plastic. Will glanced around, trying to see up and down the street. No one was milling about, which was unsurprising, considering the awful weather. There were no parked cars with the engines running. Will unzipped the bag. He caught a whiff of a familiar scent.
Fancy soap.
He stared at the folded piece of paper, wondering if Sara was playing some kind of joke. He’d paced the floor of her family’s romper room half the night, replaying in his mind the last five minutes of their conversation. She hadn’t said anything, really. Or had she? There was definitely a look in her eyes. Something had changed between them, and it wasn’t a good change.
Other than Will’s wife, there were only two people in his life who knew about his dyslexia. Both of them had found their own special ways to make him miserable about it. Amanda Wagner, his boss, threw out occasional bon mots about him being professionally incompetent at best and mentally incapacitated at worst. Faith was more well-meaning, but she was too nosy for her own good. Once, she’d peppered Will with so many questions about the disorder that he’d stopped talking to her for two whole days.
His wife, Angie, was a combination of both responses. She had grown up with Will, helped him write school assignments and work on papers and fill out applications. She’d been the one who reviewed his reports and made sure he didn’t sound like a backward chimp. She was also prone to dangling her help in exchange for things she wanted. And they were never good things. At least not good for Will.
In their own way, all three women made it clear that they thought something was wrong with him. Something not quite right with his head. With the way he thought. With the way he handled things. They didn’t pity him. He was pretty sure Amanda didn’t even like him. But they treated him differently. They treated him like he had a disease.
What would Sara do? Maybe nothing. Will wasn’t even sure if she had figured it out. Or he could just be fooling himself. Sara was smart—that was part of the problem. She was a hell of a lot smarter than Will. Had he tripped up? Did she have some kind of special doctor’s tool to trap unsuspecting morons? He must have said something or done something that had given himself away. But what?
Will glanced back at the Linton home to make sure no one was watching him. Sara had developed a weird habit of lurking behind closed doors. He unfolded the notebook paper. There was a smiley face at the bottom.
Did she think he was a child? Was she out of gold stars?
He pressed his fingers to his eyes, feeling like an idiot. There was nothing sexy about a barely literate thirty-five-year-old man.
He looked back at the note.
Thankfully, Sara didn’t write in cursive. She didn’t write like a doctor, either. Will put his finger under each letter, moving his lips as he read. “Fun …” His heart did a weird double beat in his chest, but quickly he realized his mistake. “Funeral.” He knew the next word, and numbers had never been a problem for him.
He stared back at the front door. The window was clear. He checked the note again. “Funeral home 11:30.”
And a smiley face, because apparently she thought he was intellectually disabled.
Will stuck his key into the ignition. Obviously, she was talking about the time for the autopsies. But was this also some kind of test to see how well he could read? The thought of Sara Linton examining him like a lab rat made him want to pack his bags and move to Honduras. She would feel sorry for him. Worse, she might try to help him.
“Hello?”
Will jumped so hard he slammed his head into the ceiling. Cathy Linton was standing outside his car with a pleasant look on her face. She had a large umbrella over her head. She motioned for him to roll down the window.
“Good morning, Mr. Trent.” She was all smiles again, but he had fallen for her sweet-southern-lady crap once before.
“Good morning, Mrs. Linton.”
Her breath was visible in the cold. “I hope you slept well.”
He looked back at the house, wondering why this was the only time Sara wasn’t lurking behind the door. “Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”
“I just went for my walk. Exercise is the best way to start the morning.” She smiled again. “Won’t you come in and have some breakfast with us?”
His stomach rumbled so loudly he was sure the car was shaking. The energy bar he’d found at the bottom of his suitcase this morning hadn’t exactly hit the spot. A woman like Cathy Linton would know how to make a good biscuit. There would be butter and ham. Probably grits. Eggs. Sausage patties. It was like she was inviting him into the woods to visit her cottage made of candy.
“Mr. Trent?”
“No, ma’am. I need to get to work, but I appreciate it.”
“Dinner, then.” She had a way of saying things that sounded like a suggestion at first but ended up being a strict order. “I hope the apartment wasn’t too horrible last night.”
“No, ma’am. It was fine.”
“I’ll just slip up there later and do some dusting. Eddie and I haven’t used the place since the girls were here. I cringe to think of the state it must be in.”
Will thought about the dirty clothes he’d left piled on the couch. He’d packed in Atlanta thinking he’d wash everything at the hotel. “That’s all right. I—”
“Nonsense.” She tapped her hand on the car door like a judge passing down an edict. “I can’t have you breathing in all that dust.”
He knew there was no way to stop her. “Just … uh … Just ignore my mess. Please. I’m sorry.”
Her smile changed to something much kinder than he’d seen before. He could see now where Sara got her beauty. Cathy reached into the car and gently rested her hand on his arm. Sara had touched him on the arm a lot last night. They were obviously a touchy-feely kind of family, which was just as foreign to Will as if they were from Mars.
She squeezed his arm. “Dinner’s at seven-thirty sharp.”
He nodded. “Thank you.”
“Don’t be late.” Her smile changed back to the one he was more familiar with. She winked at him before turning on her heel and walking back toward the house.
Will rolled up his window. He put the car in gear and headed up the road, too late remembering that he was going in the wrong direction. Or maybe not. Sara had told him that Lakeshore was just a big circle. Will had lately gone around in enough circles to last a lifetime, but he wasn’t going to risk driving past the Linton home again.
The road was empty, he assumed because of the early hour. Will was timing his arrival at the police station so that he’d get there before most of the cops came on shift. He wanted to look eager and alert.
He wanted them to feel like he was stepping on their toes.
He slowed his car as he rounded a curve. The road was more like a stream, rainwater flooding across the asphalt. He maneuvered the Porsche into the opposite side of the street to keep his floorboards from flooding. Will had spent ten years of his life and a chunk of his savings restoring the 9-11 by hand. Most of that time, he was bent over manuals and schematics, trying to figure out how the car was supposed to work. He’d learned to weld. He’d learned to do body work. He’d learned that he wasn’t particularly fond of either.
The engine was solid, but the gears were temperamental. He felt the clutch slip as he downshifted. Once he was out of the floodwaters, he idled the car, thinking he’d let the undercarriage drain, wondering if such a thing was even possible. Up ahead, a blue mailbox with an Auburn University logo painted on it rocked in the strong wind. He recalled the first house number Sara had written on the outside of the folder when she was giving him directions to her parents’ house. Will had always been good at remembering numbers.
In Atlanta, Sara lived in the old dairy factory, one of those industrial complexes that had been turned into luxurious lofts back during the real estate boom. He’d remarked then that the place didn’t really seem like her type of home. The lines were too hard. The furniture too sleek. He had imagined she lived somewhere warm and welcoming, more like a cottage.
He had been right.
The Auburn mailbox belonged to a shotgun-style, one-story home with plants overflowing in the front yard. Sara had lived on the lake, and the sky was just light enough so that Will could see the glorious aspect of her backyard. He wondered what Sara’s life had been like when she lived here. She didn’t strike him as the kind of wife who would have dinner and a dry martini waiting when her husband got home, but maybe occasionally she had filled the role out of kindness. There was something about her that indicated a tremendous capacity for love.
The Will Trent Series 7-Book Bundle Page 141
