Bitter Falls

by Caine, Rachel

  PRAISE FOR STILLHOUSE LAKE

  “In this rapid-fire thriller . . . Caine spins a powerful story of maternal love and individual self-realization.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Amazing.”

  —Night Owl Reviews (Top Pick)

  “A chilling thriller . . . Stillhouse Lake is a great summer read.”

  —Criminal Element

  “Stillhouse Lake is a true nail-biter right up to the end.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “Highly entertaining and super intense!”

  —Novel Gossip

  “What a fantastic book!”

  —Seattle Book Review

  OTHER TITLES BY RACHEL CAINE

  Stillhouse Lake Series

  Wolfhunter River

  Killman Creek

  Stillhouse Lake

  The Great Library

  Paper and Fire

  Ink and Bone

  Ash and Quill

  Smoke and Iron

  Sword and Pen

  Weather Warden

  Ill Wind

  Heat Stroke

  Chill Factor

  Windfall

  Firestorm

  Thin Air

  Gale Force

  Cape Storm

  Total Eclipse

  Outcast Season

  Undone

  Unknown

  Unseen

  Unbroken

  Revivalist

  Working Stiff

  Two Weeks’ Notice

  Terminated

  Red Letter Days

  Devil’s Bargain

  Devil’s Due

  Morganville Vampires

  Glass Houses

  The Dead Girls’ Dance

  Midnight Alley

  Feast of Fools

  Lord of Misrule

  Carpe Corpus

  Fade Out

  Kiss of Death

  Ghost Town

  Bite Club

  Last Breath

  Black Dawn

  Bitter Blood

  Fall of Night

  Daylighters

  The Honors (with Ann Aguirre)

  Honor Among Thieves

  Honor Bound

  Honor Lost

  Stand-Alone Titles

  Prince of Shadows

  Dead Air (with Gwenda Bond and Carrie Ryan)

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2020 by Rachel Caine, LLC

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542042338

  ISBN-10: 154204233X

  Cover design by Shasti O’Leary Soudant

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  1 GWEN

  2 GWEN

  3 CONNOR

  4 GWEN

  5 LANNY

  6 GWEN

  7 GWEN

  8 LANNY

  9 LANNY

  10 GWEN

  11 GWEN

  12 SAM

  13 GWEN

  14 GWEN

  15 SAM

  16 GWEN

  17 GWEN

  18 SAM

  19 LANNY

  20 CONNOR

  21 GWEN

  22 SAM

  23 GWEN

  24 CONNOR

  25 SAM

  26 GWEN

  27 CONNOR

  28 GWEN

  29 GWEN

  SOUNDTRACK

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PROLOGUE

  It was just coming up morning when they fetched him from the cell.

  He’d spent all night on his knees shivering in the cold in that thin white nightgown they’d made him wear. The few times he’d fallen asleep, a prod from the barrel of a rifle had been enough to wake him right up.

  He ached all over, but then he did most days from the hard work. He’d gone from strong and athletic and cut to . . . this. He could see knobs of bone on his wrists, his fingers. His collarbone was showing sharp enough to slice paper. They hadn’t even fed him the handful of rice they usually did this time. No water either.

  It’s a fast, they’d told him, but nobody fasted when they were already starving. They just starved more.

  He tried not to think about food. About how he’d used to not even worry about where the next meal was coming from, about burgers and pizza and sandwiches any damn time of the day or night. French fries and beer. That whole time seemed a hazy dream. Going to classes. Girls. Parties. Flag football and Frisbee golf and the bar, the last bar that was so damn crowded with his friends. Did they ever miss him? Did they even notice he was gone?

  God, he was hungry, and he just wanted to sleep.

  Then they came for him.

  Six men, shadows in the dark, but he knew they had clubs and guns. They always did. They pulled him to feet that he couldn’t even feel anymore and made him stomp until the numbness went away. It hurt so bad it stole his breath. It felt unreal. This isn’t me. I have a life. I have a family. I can’t be here.

  Outside the shed, dawn was a faint whisper over the trees, but it was still dark, and he could hardly see the ground as he stumbled over it. Music rose up like fog. The whole damn camp was singing. He didn’t recognize the hymn; he’d been raised Catholic and right now he wanted desperately to pray. He hadn’t prayed all night, even though they’d ordered him to. God, please help me. Please.

  His feet were bare, and the rocks on the path cut deep and left blood behind, but they dragged him on anyway. Downhill. Off to his right a solid metal fence rose impossibly tall and featureless. The heavy wall that kept the whole world out. The one he’d thought he might be able to climb, once upon a time when he was a different person. He still had the scars.

  Maybe they’re letting me go, he thought. Deep inside he knew it wasn’t true. Didn’t want to know, so he stumbled along praying and hoping, all those singing voices falling behind. Now it was just him and the faithful with their guns and silence. All he could hear was his breath rattling in the bony cage of his chest.

  Trees closed out the fragile light. It felt like he was going into a grave, and he wanted to run, scream, fight, do anything because fuck it, he’d been somebody, he’d been strong and sure and unafraid once, hadn’t he?

  He didn’t run.

  Better to go quietly.

  The sharp chill bit like icy teeth. He just had on the thin smock, and his hands and feet were mostly numb again with the cold. The menthol scent of the trees should have been as comforting as Christmas, but all he could really smell was his own sweat and rank fear. His dry mouth felt like cotton padding. Maybe I’m dreaming, he thought. Maybe it’s all been a dream, maybe I got drunk at Charlie’s Tavern and I’m going to wake up in the dorm next to Brie and all this will be just some stupid nightmare.

  Brie. His girlfriend. He wondered what she was doing right now. If she ever missed him at all. He thought about his parents, and the way they must be looking for him, still looking.

  That hurt.

  They emerged from the shadows of the trees, and he had to stop and stare. A small lake stretched out in cool ripples, painted pink with morning. And there was a waterfall . . . a waterfall that rumbled and roared over the rocks above and broke i
nto white spray that floated weightless in the air. A faint rainbow danced on the mist.

  It felt warmer here. Peaceful.

  Father Tom waited at the edge of the lake. He wore a white shirt and white trousers, and his pale hair glowed the same shade. Old hair, old face, young dark eyes that seemed to know all the secrets of the universe. The eyes of a saint, the Assembly liked to say.

  Father Tom was fucking batshit crazy.

  “Brother,” Father Tom said. “Welcome. You’ve labored long and fruitfully, and though you came to us a stranger, you will leave us forever part of our family. Today you’ll be baptized into the Assembly, and wherever you may go, you’ll always be one of us. Your old life is gone. Let your new life begin.”

  “New life,” somebody near him said, and the others mumbled it too. He was too numb. Did this mean they were just letting him go? Could that happen?

  Yeah, let me go, you crazy fucks. Let me go and I run straight to the cops and I put your busted asses in jail so fast even God won’t know where to find you.

  That was the person he used to be talking, the strong young man who’d fought and yelled and believed he could do anything. Survive anything.

  But the person he was now just shivered like a lamb in the slaughterhouse. He couldn’t make himself be that man again.

  Maybe they’d just let him go after all if he complied. And maybe he’d never say a word about what happened here either if he got to walk away.

  He walked into the water with Father Tom until it was waist deep. He could see there was a drop-off not far away, a navy-blue hole drilled down by thousands of years of relentlessly falling water. Who knew how deep it went? He was right on the edge of the abyss. God, it was cold enough to numb even the shakes out of his body. Cold enough that the water started to feel warm.

  Father Tom smiled at him like he couldn’t feel the chill at all, and said, “Do you believe in the power of our lord Jesus Christ, and his heavenly father?”

  He just nodded. It felt like a convulsion. It hurt. He just wanted to sleep.

  “Then be washed in the blood of the lamb, and begin anew. You have struggled in your faith, but no more. You are a saint of the Assembly.”

  He wasn’t prepared for Father Tom to dunk him under the water; it was done fast, expertly, as if he’d done it a thousand times. He struggled, but Tom held him pinned for a few long seconds before he was allowed to pop up into the steaming morning air again.

  He wanted to scream from the shock and the cold, but relief set in. He’d done it. He’d survived. He turned his face up to the rising sun and took in a deep, whooping breath. I’m alive. I’m alive! I’m going to get out of this.

  “God is with you, Brother,” Father Tom said. “Your service ensures our salvation.”

  He hadn’t seen them coming, but there were two more men in the water around him now, and he realized something wasn’t right. He tried to head to shore.

  But one of them grabbed his shoulders, and the other ducked under the water.

  He felt something tugging at him. He didn’t know what it was until he put his hands into the water.

  It was a big, thick chain drawn tight around his waist, and Father Tom clicked a padlock closed to secure it.

  The men let go of him and stepped back.

  You said you’d let me go. Begin anew, you said. That was a wail in the back of his mind, as his teeth clenched together and he felt the black, despairing rush of what was coming.

  “God bless you, Saint,” Father Tom said, and pushed him over the edge into the abyss.

  The last thing he saw was the heavy iron weight at the end of the chain dragging him down into the dark, and the last glitters of dawn on the water above him.

  So cold.

  He felt himself settle on the bottom among the white bones. As his lungs ached and pulsed, he suddenly remembered being a child. Waking from a nightmare. The last thing in his mind, the very last, was his mother whispering, Hush, baby. You’re safe now.

  1

  GWEN

  When my personal phone rings, I check the caller ID. Force of habit. There are only six people in the world I take calls from on this number. Sure enough, it’s Sam Cade. A little bubble of warmth explodes inside me as I hit the button and lift the phone to my ear.

  “Hey, stranger,” I say. I hear the purr in the back of my throat.

  “Hey yourself,” he replies. I hear the husky tone in his voice too. Oh, subtext. So sexy. “What’s going on?”

  “Right now? Exactly nothing,” I say, and yawn. It’s three thirty in the morning, and I’ve been sitting in this chilly rental car for three hours, not counting a quick dash into the convenience store down the road for a pee and a giant coffee I’m going to regret. “I’m waiting for my guy to make a move.”

  “A move to do what?”

  “Good question.”

  “You’re not going to tell me?” He sounds amused.

  “Well, you know. Not until I’m sure. Anyway, you’re up late. Or early. Which is it?”

  “Early. Just getting some paperwork ready for the day,” he says. “Kids are still fast asleep, by the way. I checked.” My kids are my life, and he knows that. Sam’s also well aware that he’s one of a very select group of people I trust with my children. My daughter, Lanny, is at a difficult sixteen-feels-like-twenty. My son, Connor, is too adult for his age at thirteen and too young for it at the same time. Not easy people to handle, my kids.

  There’s no reason they should be. They’ve spent half their lives now with the horrifying knowledge that their father was a serial killer, and with the equally heavy burden of having people unfairly hate them by association. I want to protect them from the world. I can’t, of course. But I still want to try.

  “You going to be home before six?” he asks me, and I sigh. “Okay, fair enough. You want me to wake up Lanny when I leave?”

  “Yeah, better plan on that. I can’t trust her to hear the alarm and get Connor up too. I’ll text and let you know when I’m on my way.” I want to let my kids sleep. They have to be up at seven, but an extra hour of sleep to a teenager is like ten to me.

  Neither of them will want to get up, and still less head to school, but they’re used to facing unpleasant situations. I flatly refuse to homeschool them. Their lives are going to be incredibly difficult given our family history. I want them to learn how to handle it now, not hit eighteen as protected little china dolls.

  There lie monsters.

  Counseling has done all of us some good. I started the kids in individual therapy for a few months, then together, while Sam and I met with another counselor as a couple. Now we do it as a family once every other week, and I dare to think things are . . . better.

  If not for the fact that town itself has closed ranks against us.

  I’m not really sure what tipped Norton residents over to utter dislike; maybe it was Sam’s unintentional but ongoing feud with a bunch of drug-dealing but influential hill folk. And some of it I brought on myself by agreeing to do a TV interview. The situation had turned utterly toxic. That had triggered even more media attention to rush into the calm backwaters of Stillhouse Lake. I’d thought I was doing a good thing, but it had been like unloading a dump truck of ten-day-old garbage on my head.

  The internet trolls are back, relentless and ghoulishly gleeful as ever. I’m never sure what they get out of trying to destroy my life, but I’ll give them this much: they’re dedicated. I recently found a post on a message board that said their goal was to drive my kids to commit suicide live on camera. The level of sociopathy that takes goes to eleven, but no mistake, it’s out there. And, disturbingly, it’s not that rare.

  That’s who we deal with on a daily basis. I don’t like to call them monsters; they’re just bored, angry, empathy-free humans without a cause who see me as a target for their rage. After all, I was married to Melvin Royal, the infamous serial killer. He slaughtered women for fun, so I must have been somehow responsible for that too. No, the swarm of e
ver-present trolls are not the monsters. I’ve known monsters. I’ve faced them down, including Melvin.

  I kill monsters. You’d think they’d keep that in mind.

  I talk to Sam for about half an hour, lulled into comfort and warmth and a deeply coiled need to feel him with me, but we both know that’s not going to happen right now. Thanks to the closed-minded town of Norton mostly shunning us, his construction work has dried up, and he has to go farther out to find jobs. That means longer drives, shorter times at home.

  I’m working for an out-of-town detective agency that tosses me a wide variety of cases within my specified driving distance; I can turn down what I can’t handle or what I just don’t feel like doing. But the pay’s good, and I’m decent at this kind of job.

  A very wealthy CEO named Greg Kingston is getting my full attention right now. The assignment came to us from his company’s board of directors, who were concerned by what they considered strange behavior and some worrying financial results. I’ve already uncovered embezzlement out of his Florida PR firm, and his digital fingerprints are all over that. Easy enough—that goes back to his board to decide what to do about it. Kingston’s days are probably numbered.

  But in the process of following Mr. Kingston, I’ve found something that disturbs me a whole lot more. I’m not sure what it is yet, which is why I didn’t say anything to Sam. Right now it’s just clues, instinct, and one important question.

  Why in the world would a man with Greg Kingston’s hefty bank balance and social standing be staying in a no-stars motel in a shady part of Knoxville when he also has a room booked in the very upscale Tennessean Hotel?

  There are a few reasons a man like Kingston stays in a place like this: hiring prostitutes, buying drugs, or something darker than either of those. I’m actually hoping he just has a taste for sex workers on the rougher side of town. That would be the best possible outcome here.

  But it isn’t what I get.

  I watch as an anonymous dark car pulls up. A dumpy-looking white man gets out. He’s wearing jeans and a plain jacket, and he has a ball cap pulled low over his face. No bag, so if he’s a drug dealer, he’s not bringing more than what’s in his pockets. I don’t think someone of Kingston’s monstrous ego would be just in for a dime bag.

  As the man opens the back door of the car, I realize that is not what he’s bringing.