by Lyla Payne
Sleep is now the last thing on my mind. Even though it’s creeping up on midnight, I pick up my phone and dial my half-brother, realizing for the very first time how grateful I am to have him.
I’m not alone in this. Travis will be as concerned as I am about our names showing up in Gillian Harvey’s fireplace. He’ll understand why this is a big deal. Sure, he hasn’t read the journals so he doesn’t know, not really, the threat that half of our family could represent, but he’ll still get it.
Someone tossed Gillian’s place, sure. But after what I’ve seen, I’m inclined to think that she may have come back and done it herself.
My half-brother answers on the third ring, sounding tired but not asleep. Without hesitation, he tells me to come over, and the fist around my heart unclenches. If only a tiny, little bit.
Chapter Sixteen
On my way over to Travis’s small, rented house on the other side of the train tracks, I promise myself that I’ll find a way to get in touch with the current Carlotta. It would feel wrong to leave her in the dark about the continued danger we’re in.
Then again, she’s probably already aware. She’s the one who wrote me with the warning, after all. The one who knew Frank.
I wish there was a way to talk to her in person. At least face-to-face. There probably isn’t. Given her chosen mode of communication, it’s unlikely she’d want to Skype or email, and I’m not technically allowed to leave the immediate area until my trial.
And I won’t be going anywhere afterward, if things keep going south.
The streets of Heron Creek are dark at this time of night. With a population that consists mostly of older people and young families, the town tends to bed down for the night by ten p.m. Of course, there are exceptions—the drunks and the few younger singles and teens who enjoy breaking out and raising hell on the weekends.
I used to be one of them. Carefree, wild, and without a single thought in my head about how my mother’s—and my father’s—genes might one day come back to haunt me.
In very literal ways, it turns out.
Gravel crunches under my tires, pinging off the undercarriage of my car in Travis’s driveway. He’s got the porch light on, plus a few lamps in the living room. The effect is eerie among the rest of the darkened houses…almost as if we’re the only two people awake and alive.
It would make it easy for anyone watching us.
Shaking off the feeling, I head up the path. Stars wink down, giving the illusion of being watchful, caring guardians from an impossible distance. I know better than to take comfort in them. It’s easier to believe that fingers are reaching out to grab me from the shadows of every path I walk. Life has proven it’s true. Travis pushes the door open wide, putting a temporary halt to my dark thoughts.
His house is warm, especially once he shuts the door behind me and shuffles toward the cramped, clean living room. Even if he is dressed in flannel pants and a threadbare T-shirt that reveals a strong set of shoulders, there’s nothing else to suggest my phone call woke him.
“Do you want something to drink? Tea?”
“I’ll take something herbal if you have it.” I sigh and sink down onto his ratty sofa, one that likely came with the rental based on the fact that it looks like a prop in a nineteen-sixties movie. “And I wouldn’t complain if you poured a little bourbon in it.”
“Sounds good. Let me put the kettle on while you take a couple of deep breaths.” He looks me over. “You look like hell.”
“Spoken like a true little brother,” I mutter as he trades the living room carpet for the linoleum in the kitchen.
His short chuckle says he hears me, even though I didn’t mean for him to, and I find myself relaxing enough to crack a smile. Miracles.
While Travis putters around the kitchen, I dig through my purse and pull out the couple of books I stuffed inside before running out of the house. I pressed the charred pages between some of the pages to keep them from falling apart before I could show Travis the proof that Gillian had, at least at some point, been looking for the two of us.
He returns five minutes later, two steaming mugs on mismatched saucers in his hands. He sets them both on the scratched coffee table, on either side of the items I placed there, and then sits on the other end of the couch. Just the smell of the tea relaxes me, mint and something else—lemon, maybe. The sweet, honeyed burn of bourbon tickles the back of my throat and I pick up the glass for a tiny sip, then another, even though it’s still too hot.
The combination of the drink, the quiet night, and the company of someone who is as involved in this as I am—besides the whole I’m being charged with my father’s murder thing—is a salve to my jittery nerves. Travis waits patiently, sipping his own tea.
“I went back to the farmhouse on Sunday, with Daria.” My brother’s only response is to raise his eyebrows. It’s not even a surprised reaction, really, more like a simple invitation to continue. So I do. “Someone was there after we left. The place was a mess—furniture overturned, cushions ripped up, even some of the drywall busted. They emptied her filing cabinets by the desk, but they didn’t think to check for an attic.”
“An attic?”
“Yeah. I figured…old farmhouses like that always have an attic. It wasn’t hard to find, but it was mostly full of junk.”
“Mostly?” He has a funny look on his face, as if he’s dreading what I’m about to say. Which makes sense, given that I called him freaking out in the middle of the night, I guess.
“I found some books.” I nod toward the volumes I brought, copies of Alice in Wonderland and Wuthering Heights—the two creepiest offenders as far as the deranged scribbles go.
He picks one up and thumbs through it, starting at the beginning and skimming a page at a time, in true Travis fashion. His expression darkens as he reads her crazed rantings. Wrinkles appear on his forehead, and then around his eyes.
Travis closes the first book, then picks up the second. I allow him to peruse it at his own speed, letting the warmth of the tea and bourbon loosen my knotted muscles.
When he gets to the three sheets of charred paper, he pauses. His gaze is guarded as he looks up at me, questions running through his stormy gray eyes. “What’s this?”
“Whoever trashed the place burned some papers in the fireplace—a lot of papers, it looked like—but there were a few around the edges that weren’t completely destroyed. Our names were on them, and it looks like our addresses were there too. Well, my old address.”
He blows out a long breath. Knowing Travis, he’s taking some time to process how exactly he wants to respond. Going over all of the angles.
“How do you know she didn’t burn them herself?”
“I don’t. I think someone was watching the farmhouse, either in person or maybe there are cameras that we missed. After they saw us going through the place, they decided to search it themselves. Maybe get rid of things that seemed, I don’t know…incriminating?”
He presses his lips together. “Which makes the case for her being the one who did it.”
I think about that for a moment, but then shake my head. “Not necessarily. We don’t know what was on all of the papers that burned clean away. The person who scared her off, or maybe did something to her, could have had a good reason for wanting them gone.”
“Fair enough.” He gives me a strange look, head cocked to the side. “You’ve become quite the sleuth over the past several months, haven’t you?”
I shrug, feeling self-conscious at the compliment. Maybe because it doesn’t quite sound like one. Almost as if Travis wants to be the only detective in the family, and until now, he’s felt comfortable in writing me off as an amateur who causes more problems than she solves. But if my ghosts have taught me anything, it’s that I can’t assume anything while there are still other options on the table. Only proof is solid.
Right now, we don’t know what happened to Gillian Harvey. All we know is that she was paranoid and scared, that she was at least aware o
f our existence, and that she’s gone.
Like nearly everyone else in our family we’ve tried to find.
“You think she’s the one who pushed you into the river?”
“How do you know about that?”
“Small town, Graciela. Even if it wasn’t, the Ryans aren’t exactly keen on quiet days at the office.” He peers at me. “With Leo Boone’s statement, you’re not still trying to convince yourself it was a ghost, right?”
Geez, the guy thinks he knows everything. Which means everyone else in town probably does, too. I frown harder. “No. I mean, I don’t know. The ghost I have right now is pretty much a freak, but…yeah. I don’t think it was her.”
“What sort of freak?”
I shrug, still not used to talking about ghosts with Travis. “The serial killer kind. The kind that makes me nervous because she doesn’t seem to really want anything—like Henry, when Frank was telling him what to do.”
He grimaces. “So it could have been this Gillian woman. At the river.”
I shrug. “Or anyone else. We don’t have any proof that she’s after us, or even that she’s still alive.”
“Even so, I don’t think you should go back to that house alone, or even with Daria.” He sits back, pinching the bridge of his nose. “You need to be more careful.”
“So do you,” I point out. “You’re just as much Frank’s kid as I am, and your name is on those papers, too.”
He nods, his expression shuttered. “I can take care of myself.”
“Well, so can I.”
We face off, neither of us willing to admit that we’re scared—or that we should be, in the face of the evidence that Gillian was, at the very least, looking for the two of us.
“What about our other relatives, the ones who don’t live around here? You know, the cousin in D.C. and the one in Prague. Shouldn’t we reach out to them? We need to try and figure out why some of us are alive and well and others are missing or dead.”
I’m not sure why I don’t mention Carlotta. Maybe it’s just that I’m so used to keeping the Carlottas’ secrets.
“Assuming it’s not just random luck, like regular families?” He looks as if he wants to believe that, not that he actually does.
“Yes. That.”
“Okay,” he says with a nod. “You’re right.”
“Do you have their contact information?” I ask, remembering that he’d implied as much.
“Just an email address for the one in D.C.,” he says. “It’s on her Facebook page.” He looks a little chagrined. “I haven’t had any luck tracking down a number for the guy in Prague.”
“I’ll do it,” I say. After all, if they don’t have criminal records, this kind of research is more my territory than his. “Why don’t you see if you can find out anything more about Gillian? You know, divide and conquer.”
Rather than remind me that he can’t use police resources to help our private investigation, he nods. I stand up and take my cup and saucer into the kitchen, then rinse it and set it in the sink even though Travis tells me I don’t have to. We might be getting closer, but we haven’t reached the point where I don’t feel like a guest in his house. This is only the second opportunity I’ve had to spend any real time inside, and I find myself anxious to get out.
Part of it is that I’m exhausted now that I’ve shifted some of the burden of knowledge onto Travis. The thought of getting up for work tomorrow makes me want to cry the slightest bit, and if I had felt comfortable doing so, I would have asked to crash on the couch.
But I don’t, so I drag myself to the door and give my brother a half-hearted smile. “Thanks for listening.”
“Like you said, this is my problem, too,” he says, walking up to the door to see me off. “If someone is after you, Graciela, there’s a good chance they’re after me. I’d like for both of us to make it out of this in better shape than Frank.”
A shiver zips down my spine. The image of my father’s body stuffed under my house is forever burned into my brain. “Agreed.”
“I’ll get in touch tomorrow.”
“Thanks. I’ll let you know what I find out about our cousins.”
Travis watches me walk out to the car. The wind whips past my cheeks, making them feel chapped after just a short couple of minutes of being exposed to the elements. I crank up the heater and flip on the lights, illuminating Travis on the front porch. He gives me a wave that I return before backing the old Honda out of the drive.
All the way home, I can’t shake the feeling that a million eyes are watching me from the darkness, keeping tabs for reasons known only to them. Or perhaps whoever sent them.
It’s an unsettling thought. One that sticks with me all the way into the house and up the stairs, but it dissolves once the familiar quilt, the silent night, and the comfort of home surrounds me.
I wake up to a paragraph-long text from Travis. It makes my blood run cold, all of the dread from the night before returning like a bucket of ice water to the face.
Heads-up. Ran some requests on Gillian through the system. She owns a gun. Assuming you didn’t find it when you went through the house, and we didn’t when we were there together. Have to assume that wherever she is, she took it with her.
The first thing that strikes me, of course, is the news that the missing woman who may or may not be stalking my family owns a gun. Second, the realization that Travis, who is usually so focused on following protocol, actually used police resources to run information on a woman unconnected to one of his cases. It tells me that, no matter how cool he played it last night, he’s worried, too. Honestly, it would be abnormal for him not to be. Those books and papers were creepy as hell. Seeing our names in someone else’s handwriting, on pieces of paper someone had attempted to destroy, had terrified me.
But the confirmation is nice. It means Travis isn’t crazy, and that’s a comfort.
I want to stay in bed, even though the thought that this house can somehow protect me is obviously nuts. If anything, I should stay away so that if Gillian or someone else is after me, Amelia and Jack don’t get caught in the crossfire.
With that horrible thought stuck firmly in my throat, I toss off the covers and go through the morning routine of showering, dressing, fixing my hair, and slapping on some makeup so that I don’t look like a dead person. It’s not always pretty, as I’ve learned firsthand.
Amelia’s not in the kitchen, but the plate and glass in the sink, plus the crumbs beside the toaster, suggest she has been in here since I cleaned it last night. Sometimes she eats after she breastfeeds Jack, and there have been plenty of mornings when they’ve both gone back to bed after his six-thirty feeding.
I make myself coffee and grab a banana, not feeling much like eating but knowing I’ll have to wait until at least eleven to get lunch. Before I leave, I tiptoe upstairs and find my cousin and her baby snuggled up in her bed, both of them fast asleep. They look so peaceful. Envy and happiness flood me in equal amounts.
How long has it been since my last night of untroubled sleep? Too long, and there’s no end in sight.
Travis and I need to find out what happened to Gillian—where she’s gone, whether she left voluntarily, and if she’s still alive. I have a feeling that, crazy or not, she could fill in a lot of blanks for us.
The library is empty when I arrive, and there’s no sign of Mr. Freedman’s car. It’s not weird, especially not for a Wednesday morning, and I spend an hour or so getting my regular duties out of the way—shelving, answering library emails, confirming a signing time and orders for Cade Walters’s event next week, since his publisher approved it. Between the popularity of his books and his aggressively handsome appearance, there’s no way the event isn’t going to be packed with ninety percent of the females in Heron Creek.
Good for the library, but annoying for me. I’ve decided recently that Cade sort of rubs me the wrong way, though other than his constant watching from his porch—honestly, not all that strange in the South—I can�
��t put my finger on why.
Once those trivial duties are out of the way, I wander back to the kitchenette and start a pot of coffee to get me through the day. I’ve been avoiding Westies for fear of a potential public run-in with Leo. The idea of everyone in town wondering what happened between the two of us kills a little piece of my soul.
If I’m being honest with myself, I haven’t been going to the coffee shop as much since my arrest. I’m afraid to see the looks on people’s faces. They have to be wondering whether I’m guilty. I can’t even really blame them. I would be wondering the same thing if it were anyone else in town.
I head back to my desk and pull up the Facebook page for the cousin who lives in D.C. Just like Travis said, her email address is listed. I send her a message. The truth would send anyone running, so I keep it simple, saying that I’d like to speak with her briefly because I’m compiling family research.
The man in Prague is harder to track down and I spend an hour or two trying to figure out where he works. The websites are in Czech and the English translations aren’t quite right, but after a while, I figure out that he’s living in a care facility of some kind. I assume for elderly people, though it’s not easy to tell from the website.
I send an email to the person in charge, asking if there’s a way to contact Mr. Ribald directly, and leave it at that.
There still hasn’t been a single patron in or out of the library. An impossibly slow Wednesday, and my insecurities about people avoiding me return with a vengeance. Even LeighAnn hasn’t been around nearly as much, though her kids are back in school—half of them, anyway—so she’s probably not in need of quite as many distractions.
The coffee finished brewing a while ago, and the smell entices me out of my chair and back into the kitchen. I stretch the kinks out of my back and neck along the way, wondering how I’m going to kill the rest of my day in this cavernous place alone. Hopefully one of the Fourniers will email me back so I can set up calls with them. I wish that I would have brought the bag from under my bed. Maybe a closer look would help me make sense of at least some of Gillian’s rantings. Doubtful, but it would be something to do.
