Stillhouse Lake

by Rachel Caine

  How long we sit there, I don't know. Long enough that the handful of paper towels is soaked with tears, and when I drop it to the wood it makes a soft, wet plop. I murmur a shaky apology and clean up after myself, carry everything away to the trash, and when I get back, Sam says, "I was stuck in country during your husband's trial, but I followed it every day. I thought it was your fault. And then when you were acquitted . . . I thought--I thought you'd gotten away with it. I thought you helped."

  He doesn't believe that now; I hear it in the pain in his voice. I don't say anything. I know why he thought it; I know why everyone did. What kind of idiot did you have to be to have that going on in your house, your bed, your marriage, and not be part of it? I'm still dimly surprised anyone ever acquitted me at all. I haven't begun to forgive Gina Royal.

  So I say, "I should have known it. If I'd stopped him--"

  "You'd have been dead. Your kids, too, maybe," he says, without any sign of doubt. "I went to see him, you know. Melvin. I had to look him in the eyes. I had to know--"

  That takes my breath away, the idea that he sat in that same prison chair, looking into Melvin's face. I think about the corrosive horror Mel wakes in me. I can't imagine how it felt for Sam.

  So I reach impulsively for his hand, and he lets me take it. Our fingers lie loose together, not demanding anything except the lightest possible contact. Either his or mine are trembling slightly, but I can't tell which. I only feel the motion.

  I see something in the window behind him. It's just a shape, a shadow, and when my brain finally identifies it as human, that no longer matters, because human isn't as important as the thing the shape is carrying, raising, aiming.

  It's a shotgun, and it's aimed at the back of Sam's head.

  I don't think. I grab Sam's hand hard and haul sideways, knocking him off-balance and down, and at the same time I throw myself down out of my own chair. I keep pulling. Sam is yanked out of his chair and sprawls halfway across the table, and then the chair spins out from under him and he falls heavily sideways on the floor just as I hear an incredibly loud boom. I dimly register the feeling of the coffee cup falling from the table and striking my thigh. It spills heat and liquid over me, warm as blood, and then a shower of glass shards hits me, and I shield my face against the cuts.

  If I hadn't seen, if I hadn't reacted, the back of Sam's head would have been jam. He'd have been dead in a second.

  Sam's on the ground next to me, and he lets go and rolls across the glass to crab-crawl with shocking speed to a corner, where a shotgun of his own leans, half-concealed by shadows. He grabs it on the roll, comes to a stop with his elbows braced on the floor, shotgun raised, and sights the window before he pistons his knees forward and levers up to a crouch. I don't move. He comes slowly up, ready to dodge or drop, but he clearly sees nothing, and he quickly swivels to the front door. He's right; that could be the next threat to appear.

  I take the opportunity to crawl over to my backpack, unzip, unlock the box. I assemble my weapon with fast, practiced motions, rack one into the chamber, and roll on my elbows on the floor. We have an unspoken agreement: he shoots high, I shoot low.

  But there's nothing. Someone's shouting out on the lake, a distant smear of sound, and I think, It came from the side of the house by the trees, the one hardest to see from the road or the lake. All anyone will know is that someone shot a gun. They'll know it came from this direction. And I'm covered with gunpowder residue, I think, and wonder if that, too, was part of a plan. Wouldn't be surprised. Not at all. Still, the forensics are blindingly obvious: we were in here, at the table. Someone shot in at us.

  I hear more shouts from around the lake area, the dimly heard cry of "police," as in call the, and Sam rises from his crouch. He doesn't lower the shotgun; he advances toward the door with military caution, checks the window, throws open the door, and waits. I can see the view of the lake beyond, the boats hastily making for docks. Peaceful. Distant. Utterly out of sync with the adrenaline racing through my body, sending hot and cold flashes through me that mask any actual injuries I might have.

  Nothing happens. Nobody fires. Sam flashes me a wordless look, and I scramble up and hug the wall beside him, and as he eases out, I go behind him, watching the other angles as he focuses forward.

  We circle the entire house.

  There's nobody there. Sam points out some scuffed footprints--waffle-soled boots, but the prints are indistinct and incomplete. But it's clear that someone stood here, took aim, and fired right at the back of his head--and I saved his life.

  The shakes set in. I make damn sure I'm careful as I clear the round from the chamber, then snug the gun back into the shoulder holster. The familiar weight feels good, even as it digs into the curve of my breast. I crouch to take a closer look at the footprints. I'm no expert. There isn't anything obvious to learn.

  "You'd better put that Sig back in the case," Sam tells me, as he rests his shotgun against his shoulder. "Come on. Cops will be on the way, again."

  Sam's right. I haven't fired my gun, and I damn sure don't want to be shot accidentally-on-purpose for carrying a legal gun, either.

  Inside the cabin, I break the weapon down and lock it up; just as I put the box back in my backpack, Sam leans his own shotgun in the corner and opens the door to afford me a fine view of a car burning rubber up the road toward us.

  It isn't Officer Graham. It's Kezia Claremont, who steps out of the car with her weapon drawn and at her side. "Mr. Cade. Got a report of shots fired here."

  I look down the road at my house, which sits quietly down the slope. She just left them. It'll be okay. The only thing even slightly different is what looks like an SUV disappearing over the hill on the other side. The Johansens, maybe.

  "Yep," he says, as calmly as if the whole thing is just a hunter's poor aim. "Take a look. It took out the window. There's buckshot inside, too."

  "Lucky as hell," Kezia says, looking at Sam. "Guess you saw it coming?"

  "No. My back was to it." He jerks his chin at me. "She saw it coming."

  I'm staring at my house. Willing for no one to approach it while I'm gone. Nobody's in sight. They're okay. It'll be okay. "I didn't see enough," I say. "Just a blur. He--I think it was a white guy, but I can't swear to it--popped up from under the window. I'll be honest, mostly I just paid attention to the muzzle sighting in and to getting us out of the way."

  Kezia nods. "All right. You two, sit down where you were."

  "I need to go home," I say.

  "In a sec. Just sit down. I need to see this." There's a ring of command in her voice. I back up, never looking away from the house, and slip into my seat at the table.

  After a beat, Sam turns his chair back upright and sits. I can tell, from the way his fists are clenched on the table, that sitting with his back to the window is not comfortable for him right now. Coffee drips from the table's edge and soaks into the fabric of my running pants.

  I hate this. I can see the road from here. I can't see the house. "Make it fast!" I tell Kezia, but she's already outside, going around to the window.

  Sam and I stare at each other in silence. He's pale, and beads of sweat have started on his forehead.

  "You're keeping an eye on my back, right?" he says. I nod. He shifts a little, and I wonder what kind of discipline it takes to stay where he is, with a virtual target on his head. What kind of trauma it might bring back up inside. "Thanks, Gwen. I mean it. I'd have never seen that coming."

  "He's gone," I tell Sam. "We're okay now." I'm sore, scratched in bleeding red ribbons from shattered window glass, and I think I've torn something in my left shoulder. And I need to go. Now.

  Kezia appears in the shattered window behind him, and Sam's sixth sense kicks in; I can see the shudder that goes through him. Effort holds him in place. "It's okay," I tell him. "It's Officer Claremont. You're all right." He's gone very pale now. A bead of sweat runs down the side of his face, but he doesn't move.

  Behind him, Kezia extends her arms
, miming a shotgun. "Had to be my height or taller," she says. "He got up close and personal about it. I'm standing where I'd pick, but his footprints are maybe another foot closer up. Gun had to be damn near against the window glass." She lowers her imaginary gun. "Bold son of a bitch. You're lucky either one of you is alive."

  She's right. I'd seen the embedded buckshot in the wall across the way, behind where I'm currently sitting. Sam's brains would have ended up there, and for a second I can see the wall painted red, pale pink, sharp shards of bone. I'd have been drenched in his blood. His skull would have been shrapnel.

  "Coming in," Kezia says as she disappears from view. I see Sam relax a little, and he gets up and moves his chair around to the side of the table, out of line from the window. I don't move. I figure it's best I keep my eyes on it where I am, because some of Sam's paranoia has replaced some of mine, momentarily.

  "Christ," Sam says, reaching for the roll of paper towels that is still, miraculously, on the table. It has a few holes punched through it. He unrolls some sheets and mops up the spilled coffee. "Bastard killed my favorite cup."

  It's so random that I almost laugh, but I know if I start, it'll spiral out of control, so I don't. I start cleaning up the fragments of coffee cup near me, but then I realize what I'm doing. What he's doing. "Sam." I put a hand on his arm, and he flinches a little. "Stop. It's a crime scene."

  "Shit." He leaves the paper towel, soaked now with brown liquid, limp in the middle of the table. "Right."

  Kezia comes back inside. She's making notes in a Moleskine notebook, and as she does, she says, "Okay, I'm going to ask the two of you to please move outside now. As soon as another unit arrives, I'll get the crime scene secured. Detectives are on the way."

  I stand up and move to the door, where I have a sight line of the house again. Nothing's changed. I pull the phone from my pocket. "You just left the house to come here, right?"

  "No," Kez says. "I had to respond to an officer down, up on the main road. All hands. I was just coming back when I got this call. Sorry. But I knocked and told them I was going before I left. Your daughter said they'd be fine."

  It hits me in a rush, and I see Sam's eyes widen, too. He says, "Was there an officer down?" He beats me to it by just a breath.

  Kez's face goes blank, then hard. "No. Couldn't find anything."

  It strikes all of us that the report and even the shooting here . . . those were diversions.

  Sam is on his feet in the next second and grabs his shotgun and my backpack. He tosses the backpack to me, still on the move, and I am already running, running as if the monster is chasing me.

  "Wait!" Kezia yells after me. I don't. I run faster, faster, I can't stop. I hear the roar of engine behind me and swerve to the side, and Kezia slows while Sam throws the door open and beckons. I dive in and narrowly miss slamming the door on my legs. She's right. This is faster.

  I watch the road slide under us. Kezia Claremont drives like a fucking lunatic, but there's no one blocking the road, and it's a short haul; she takes the turn onto my drive and fishtails on the gravel, then hits the gas to drive us up with a lurch toward the house. The red paint glares from the garage, growing larger like a fresh wound, still bleeding.

  And then I'm out. I'm running for the front door. It's locked, and as I unlock it and open it, the alarm starts its frantic, warning beeps. I punch in the code and pull in a deep breath. Thank God. The alarm's still on. The kids haven't gone anywhere. It's okay, they're safe.

  I drop the backpack on the couch and head down the hall. "Lanny! Connor! Where are you?"

  No answer. No sound at all. I'm still moving at the same pace, but time seems to slow down. The hallway grows darker. The closed doors on either side loom larger. I want to turn back, to wait for the others, but I don't. I can't.

  I throw open Lanny's door and see that the covers are in a tangle on the floor, pulled off; one side of the fitted sheet has slipped free, and the other dangles loosely. Her laptop is on the floor, open and upside-down at an acute angle. I grab it and look. A screensaver of a colorful Day of the Dead skull bounces gleefully from corner to corner. Her screensaver only lasts a short while before the computer sleeps. More than five minutes, less than fifteen. This isn't her. She'd never treat her laptop like this.

  I put the computer on the mattress and look around, open the closet though I'm dreading what I might find. I check under the bed.

  "Gwen--" That's Sam's voice from behind me. I look over my shoulder. He's facing into my son's room. There's something still and quiet about his voice, and when he glances at me, the pupils of his eyes are pinpoints, as if he's staring into a bright, white light. I move toward him, and he stops me with his free hand outstretched, a guardian trying to keep me from a fatal drop, but he can't really stop me without using that shotgun in his other hand.

  I slip past him and grab the door frame to keep him from pulling me physically back.

  I see the blood.

  It's straight out of my nightmare. There's blood smeared on the twisted fabric of Connor's light-blue sheets. There's blood on the floor, in dark strings. There's a long, clean tear in a pillow leaking puffs of blood-flecked feathers.

  My son is not there.

  My children are gone.

  I feel my knees start to buckle, and I hold myself up with a grip on both sides of the door frame. Sam's talking to me, touching my shoulder, but I can't hear him; as I get my legs under me again and start to lunge forward, though, it's Kezia Claremont who wraps one strong arm around my waist and spins me away, where she holds me with my back to the wall. Her gun's back in her holster, and her brown eyes study me with commanding intensity.

  "You need to think, Gwen," she says to me. "You cannot go in there." She takes her phone from her pocket and speed-dials, gets an almost immediate answer. "Detective? Gonna need you here fast at Gwen Proctor's place. We have a possible child abduction. Multiple victims. All hands." She hangs up, still holding me in place. "We good? Gwen? Gwen!"

  I manage to nod. I'm not good, I can't be, but there's no point in arguing, and besides, that isn't what she's asking. She's asking if I can control myself, and I can. At least, I can try.

  Sam's looming there, too, and it isn't until I look at his face, at the sick focus there, the doubt, that I realize this scene could mean two different things.

  One, the truth: my children have been abducted.

  Two, the very plausible lie: I did something to my own kids before I left this house. Someone's going to think that. Kezia can't; she was out there, watching, and she talked to Lanny through the door. But I'll be their first suspect. Maybe their only one, despite what she says.

  "No," I say. "Kezia, you know I didn't do this!"

  "I know. But let's not get any evidence in there that confuses the issue," she tells me, and moves me with professional ease toward the living room, the couch. Game controllers are in the way, and I pick them up and move them with numb care. Bad habit that Connor has, leaving those where he drops them. It occurs to me then that his hands were last on these controls, and I hold on to one gently, as if it might break, might vanish, as if my son might never have even existed except in my imagination.

  "Gwen." Sam's crouching next to me, staring into my face. "If what you're saying is right, then someone knew you'd be gone from this house. Who did you tell?"

  "Nobody," I say numbly. "You. And the kids. I told the kids I'd be back. They were fine." This is my fault. I never should have left. Never. "You were supposed to be watching!" I throw that last at Kezia.

  She doesn't react to that, though she braces, and I have the sense that it hurts. That she knows she's failed, and the price . . . the price may be higher than either of us wants to face.

  "Who would they let in?"

  "Nobody!" I half cry that, but I realize it isn't true almost instantly. They'd probably let Sam Cade in, but Sam . . . would Sam have had time to do this? Yes. He'd have seen me heading up the hill. That would have given him at least an hour to
come here and . . . do what? Talk his way in, somehow abduct my kids without getting a mark on him? And take them where? No. No, I can't believe it was Sam. It didn't make sense, not emotionally. Not even logistically. My kids would have fought like hell. He hadn't had a drop of blood on him when I stopped at his house. And Kezia would have seen him.

  Unless they're in it together?

  Meanwhile, I can sense he was thinking the same thing about me. Trying to work out how I could have done it to my own kids. Each of us mistrusting the other again, which might have been exactly the point.

  Who else? Who else besides Sam? I don't think my kids would have let Kezia Claremont in, despite the fact they'd liked her and she had a badge. Detective Prester? Maybe.

  And then it comes to me in a cold, horrible, skin-tightening rush. I've forgotten someone. Someone they trusted. Someone they would let in without a second thought because he'd been trusted by me to stay with them before. Javier Esparza. Javier, who'd disappeared after delivering my ammo.

  His truck had been gone from the range's parking lot when I'd left.

  He might know the code to the alarm system. He would have seen me arm and disarm, and seen the kids do it, too. Javier Esparza was a trained soldier. He'd know how to abduct people, and do it quietly.

  I try to say that, and I can't. I can't get sound to my mouth. My lungs hurt, and I pull in air in a rush to soothe them, and the plastic of Connor's game controller feels warm in my hands, like skin, and I think, Connor's skin might be cold now, he might be . . . but my brain protects itself, it won't tell me the rest of it. Javier, who would have had easy access to a shotgun from the range, or from the back window of his truck. Javier, whom I trusted enough to watch my kids. Who was trusted enough by them to be allowed inside, have the alarm turned off for him. Who could have easily gotten the code from the kids and reset it on the way out.

  You're forgetting something, Mel's voice whispers to me. I flinch, because I don't want it, don't want his voice in my head, I don't, but he's right, too. I am forgetting something . . .

  "I'm going to call the security company," Kez says. "Going to need you to give them clearance to talk to me, okay? They should have records of when the alarm went off and came on--"