“Don’t say that. Maybe it’s not connected with the others. It’s possible Shauna just got upset about being fired and ran away. You know how she is.”
Was, Olivia thought, hating herself for thinking it. “And left her car in the middle of the road? With the door open? And her phone on the ground in the rain? It doesn’t make any sense.”
Emily stopped, planted her stick in the muddy ground, and spun toward them. “I can hear you, you know. You’re not helping.”
“I’m sorry,” Olivia said. “I just don’t know what to do.”
“I don’t either. But we have to keep looking. What if we find something out here? What if we find her?”
Olivia nodded. But she didn’t agree out loud. Em’s optimism—and once, her own—her fatal flaw. Olivia had spent her childhood hanging on their mother’s promises. This year Dad will come home. He’ll get a new lawyer, win his appeal. By the time she’d turned seventeen, her father had exhausted his appeals and her goodwill. Seven-year-old Emily had only begun to buy into their mother’s bill of goods. But now, looking back, Olivia understood her mother’s desperate clinging to hope, no matter how futile.
They trudged on, occasionally calling out for Shauna, until they reached the swollen riverbank.
Emily pointed to a sandy spot past where the other volunteers had stopped. The rain had washed it out, leaving the refuse of the forest behind. Limbs and leaves and pebbles worn smooth as glass.
“I’m going to look out there. Near the water.” Her voice, hollow, easily lost on the wind. Dead as the trunk of the redwood that had toppled nearby in the storm. Her eyes, vacant. Exhausted.
“Go talk to her.” Leah gave Olivia a nudge. “She needs her big sister right now.”
Emily knelt in the sand, picked up a small gray rock, and hurled it into the churning river. “You think she’s dead, don’t you?”
“I don’t know, Em. I don’t know.”
Another rock, this one white as bone, went flying. “Do you think it’s true the Oaktown Boys had something to do with her going missing?”
Olivia glanced back to Leah, resting against the trunk of the overturned redwood, well out of earshot. “Where did you hear that?”
“Around.”
“Around? What does that mean?”
Emily tossed another rock into the waiting mouth of the river. The water moved so fast, it didn’t even make a ripple. “Do you think we should ask Dad about it?”
“No.”
“I know he’s done with all that, but he might have heard something.”
“I said no.”
Emily stood and brushed the sand from her jeans. In the palm of her hand, she held a red stone. “You don’t get to decide for me, Liv. Not about this.”
Olivia waited for her sister to throw it to the river, another sacrifice swallowed whole. Instead, she tucked it into her pocket and walked away.
Olivia sat in silence and faked a smile as she waved at Leah. But as soon as they’d turned onto Pine Grove Road in opposite directions, she slammed the brakes, jolting her sister, and piloted the car to the shoulder.
“Alright, spill it.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“Whatever it is you’re hiding about Shauna.”
“I’m not hiding anything.” Emily’s hands twisted in her lap. She’d bitten her polished thumbnail down to the nub, an old habit she’d picked up from their mother. A classic tell.
“You look white as a sheet, and you’re biting your nails again.”
“Just the one. I can’t help it. I’m freaking out.”
“I know this last week has been overwhelming. For both of us. But we’ll get through it. Just like we did all those years with Dad in prison. And then with Mom. Together.”
Olivia recognized her own lies. That she’d run away from it all when she’d married Erik. That she’d left Emily to fend for herself. That in the years she’d been gone to San Francisco, their mother had sunk her own hopes to the bottom of a bottle of cheap wine. That her sister had every right not to trust her.
Emily stared ahead at the darkening road, the looming horizon, and past it. Somewhere Olivia couldn’t go. But she knew how lonely it felt to have a secret. “Just tell me, Em. Whatever it is, we’ll deal with it.”
“I’m scared,” she whispered.
“Me too.”
“Shauna told me something last night right before she left for the Pit. She made me swear not to tell you. Especially after what happened to Bonnie.”
Olivia summoned her inner therapist, the face of practiced neutrality. Inside, she felt like an eight-year-old girl standing in front of a door. A door she should never have opened.
“After June fired her, Shauna got really upset, and she started crying. She wanted to be alone for a minute, to get herself together, before she had to go through the control booth and the gate officers and… well, you know. So, she ran into the chapel.”
Olivia wondered if Em could see her heart, her pulse quivering in her neck like a small animal.
“The confessional was open. The chaplain had the afternoon off, I guess. Anyway, she sat in there for a while, just crying. Then, someone came in.”
“Who?”
“James.”
Olivia had heard the whispers up and down the runway. Can you believe he’s back here already? Cold-hearted, huh? He must be guilty of something. “Bonnie’s James? I’d heard he was back at work, but…”
Emily nodded. “And that creep, Tommy Rigsby. Riggs. They were arguing about money James owed. Something about cell phones he was supposed to smuggle into Crescent Bay. James told Riggs he was done with that, and he threatened to go to the cops. Riggs got right up in James’ face and said, ‘If you do that, I’ll tell the General, and then you’re dead.’”
“The General?”
Em nodded again.
“Did she tell anyone else?”
“I doubt it. She was pretty terrified. Who knows what happened at the Pit, though? She can be a real motormouth when she starts drinking. But—”
“We have to tell Detective Decker right away.”
Olivia’s hand on the shifter, her brain already racing ahead at breakneck speed, Emily stopped her. “There’s one more thing.”
Another door she wished she could simply walk away from.
“She told me Riggs saw her.”
Olivia knocked again on the front door of Deck’s cabin. Louder, this time. More desperate.
“I don’t think he’s in there,” Emily said. “But look, he’s got a cat.”
An orange tabby sidled up to the garage door, flicked its tail at them, and slipped through a small hole in the siding.
“Lieutenant Wheeler said he left the station thirty minutes ago. He must be here.”
Olivia headed straight for the garage. She squatted down and peered inside the opening, wondering when she’d lost her damn mind. Somewhere between Deck’s derisive grunting at the back of Grateful Heart and his showing up dripping wet on her porch steps.
Inside, she spotted Deck’s truck, the cat perched atop the open tailgate. A well-worn heavy bag, anchored to the ceiling, swung slightly in the dim light. As if it had been punched. Hard. Then left to suffer. The bruise on Deck’s knuckle and the curve of his biceps made complete sense now.
“Maybe we should just wait in the car.” But Olivia ignored her sister and dropped to her stomach, certain she’d find him if she could just see a little farther. She realized then, pressed against the cold, damp ground, that the thing she most needed to tell him didn’t have to do with Shauna at all.
When she turned her head away from the light, the inky sky surprised her. Nights came on fast in the winter, the darkness sudden and complete. From around the corner of the house, the wind played tricks on her, whistling and moaning until her heart began to race again.
“Em?” She planted her palms in the dirt and pushed herself up, crouching.
“Yeah?”
“Do you hear that?”
The soft, measured padding of boots on grass.
Olivia swallowed, then cursed herself. Certain the lump in her throat, the effort it required, had given them away. She picked up the heaviest rock within her reach and took a few quick steps toward the car, pulling Emily along with her, before a voice stopped them both.
“Don’t move.”
She didn’t know whether to laugh, or cry, or spew a string of expletives. So she simply turned around, hands raised, a stupid grin on her face.
“What are you doing out here?” Deck asked, lowering his Glock. “You scared the hell out of me, creeping around. I thought you two were Oaktown Boys.”
Next to her, Emily sucked in a ragged breath. Olivia heard herself gasp too. Like he already knew why they’d come. She stared at Deck, at his wrapped hands, his sweaty T-shirt. She felt caught, the words she’d planned to say disappearing the moment she opened her mouth.
“Who are you supposed to be? Rocky Marciano?”
He laughed. A real laugh, his eyes crinkling at the corners. She supposed, under the circumstances, it was the best she could hope for.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Will laid his gun on the tailgate while he made quick work of his hand wraps, discarding them in a pile in the corner. He took a cursory look in the side mirror, his face still flushed from his impromptu match with the heavy bag temporarily known as Graham Bauer. Ran his fingers through his hair. Took a sniff beneath his armpits. Good enough.
Cy blinked his one eye and offered a demure meow. “Hey, don’t judge me.” Though he felt confident Dr. Smarty Pants was inside his house doing just that. Examining the cabin with a shrink’s eye. The boxes tucked into the spare bedroom. The sparse, mismatched furniture he’d picked up at a secondhand store in Healdsburg. It probably said something about his inner workings that he’d left it all behind when he’d sold the condo. Every one of his things contaminated by his old life.
“Can I get you two anything?” he called out as he walked back inside. Not that he had much to offer—tap water, instant coffee, peanut butter, sarcasm. The granola bars JB detested. But judging by the worry he’d caught in Olivia’s eyes, even as she’d joked with him, this was no social call.
Emily sat at his kitchen table, biting her thumb. She shook her head and tried to smile, her eyes even more uneasy than her sister’s. A bit less practiced in the art of concealment.
“Where’s Olivia?” he asked.
“Snooping.”
“Em.” Olivia appeared in the hallway, looking guilty. And tired. And incredibly beautiful. That too. “I wasn’t—”
“Oh, I’m supposed to say she’s ‘using your bathroom.’”
Will took the seat across from Emily, taking mental inventory of what Olivia might’ve seen. His unmade bed seemed the worst of it. “The bathroom’s the other way.”
“I wouldn’t snoop. I respect your privacy, Detective.” Ouch. So, she knew then, and she wanted him to know she knew. “But have you heard what they say about folks who don’t make their beds?”
“They’re more efficient?”
“That’s what I keep telling her,” Emily said. “Only Navy Seals, accountants, and librarians make their beds every day. And Type A psychologists, of course.”
Olivia jabbed Emily’s shoulder, and she finally laughed. Will realized that had been the whole point the moment Olivia met his gaze over her sister’s head.
“I guess there’s no news about Shauna.” Emily’s words, like hands grasping for a lifeline. Her laughter, gone.
“Nothing. JB and I stopped by her grandmother’s house this afternoon. Her parents are driving up from San Francisco. We’re meeting them in a couple of hours.” The worry returned to Emily’s face, casting a shadow. “Your text messages were very helpful. We’ve been able to reconstruct Shauna’s movements up until the time she left the bar.”
Drunk as a skunk and running from Hank. That’s the part Will didn’t say. But the Hickory Pit’s bartender, Jane Seely, had been clear on that. She’d served Shauna four vodka cranberries and a Blue Moon, thinking Hank would drive her home. After all, they’d been flirting all night. Until Shauna had ghosted him, shooting off in her yellow Mini like a deranged canary. Jane had called 911 to report her DUI at 12:33 a.m.
“That’s why we’re here.” Olivia nodded at Emily. “To help.”
Emily opened her mouth, closed it again. Will recognized the reluctance, the fear. He’d worn the same face the night Ben had pulled the trigger. The night he’d decided to talk, thinking he’d had a clue what it would mean.
“Alright. I take it there’s something you want to tell me then.”
Olivia grabbed the chair nearest her sister and dropped into it with purpose, leaning forward. Her hands wrapped around the red vinyl cushion, holding on for dear life. Those chairs were the best thing he owned. Truth be told, the only reason he’d stopped at that secondhand store in the first place. Four red vintage chairs in the window display—from Ginny’s All-Nite Diner circa 1963—and an unshakable feeling his mother would’ve loved them.
“We both have something to tell you. I’ll go first.”
Will couldn’t take his eyes off Olivia. Though he already guessed at what she might say, the simple, brave act of her sitting there, preparing to say it shocked him. He didn’t feel worthy. But he wanted to be.
“Our father is Martin Reilly, a shot caller for the Oaktown Boys. He’s been in prison for the last twenty-seven years for murder.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Olivia sized up her opponent, dropped her chin and landed a punishing right cross. She felt feather-light now that the lid had been lifted. Her secret, let out. In twenty-seven years, she’d never breathed those words aloud in one sentence. Father, prison, murder. Her friends at school had figured it out, despite her mother’s best efforts. Erik too. Word got around. She became one of the Crescent Bay kids. But she’d never told them herself. She’d put it in a box, labeled it unspeakable, and left it there. Until tonight. A random Thursday and a veritable stranger who already knew more about her than most of Fog Harbor.
She threw a jab, and then another, appreciating the satisfying thwack of her fist on the canvas.
“You’re a natural.” Deck peeked out from behind the heavy bag braced against his shoulder.
“I may have gone a few rounds before.” Though the foam bags at Palo Alto’s Juice and Jab, the frou-frou gym near the Stanford campus, probably didn’t count.
“I don’t doubt it.”
“I can see why you like it. I always tell my patients to talk out their anger. But there’s something to be said for punching the hell out of an inanimate object.”
“It works better when you picture a face.” He kept smiling, even after she surprised him with one last punch.
“You’re right.”
She stepped back, dropped her guard. “Do you think Emily will be okay? I don’t know how she’ll handle it if Shauna—”
“She’ll get through it. She’s got you, right?”
Olivia shrugged. Uncertain how much that meant these days. She wondered if all of this could be traced back to her, to her indecision. To the chapel, two weeks ago. If she’d said something then, maybe Bonnie and Laura would still be alive. Shauna would be drunk and laughing with Emily at the Hickory Pit. Not deciding had been the worst decision of all.
“Look, we only just met a week ago. But I can tell you’re a helluva shrink. And an even better sister. Emily will be fine. Should we check on her?”
“Nah. Let her rest for a little while.” After she’d told Deck what Shauna had witnessed, Emily had nodded off on Deck’s sofa. Which Olivia had to admit was deceptively comfortable despite its hideous green upholstery. “I don’t think she slept much last night.”
“That makes two of us.”
“Three,” Olivia admitted, hopping up on Deck’s tailgate. The cat eyed her from the truck bed, unsure, watching and waiting. Deck joined her there. She liked him close to her—his right hand inch
es from her left, warmth radiating from his shoulder to hers, the smell of soap and sweat and the coffee he’d brewed for them—but she also wanted him farther, afraid of what it all meant.
“Thanks for telling me about your dad. That can’t have been easy.”
“Which part, the telling it or the living it?”
“Both. But I meant the telling. I get it, though. Why you keep it a secret. Sometimes, the past is so big and so complicated, it’s easier not to explain. It changes how people see you.”
“Especially when you work in a prison. With murderers.”
The cat made a move, slowly advancing toward Deck and purposefully skirting the perimeter, out of Olivia’s reach. Ears pricked, tail low. “I assume your prime suspect, Warden Blevins, knows?”
She rolled her eyes, meaning yes. Guilt, her old friend, gnawed at her still. She’d forced Em to fess up, but she’d kept quiet about what she’d seen with her own eyes. What Drake had seen too, apparently. Accusing the warden felt too risky, and she didn’t need a target on her back.
“You never did say why you wrote his name on your profile.” Deck spoke casually, not even looking at her but rather at the cat who’d made its way onto his thigh. Two paws on, two off. But Olivia could spot an interrogation a mile away, albeit a friendly one. Her job was part interrogation, after all.
“Did you know Blevins grew up in Oakland? He worked at San Quentin as a CO on death row for ten years before he got this job. He’s old school. Not as progressive as some of the younger wardens. But his reputation is impeccable.”
“I’m guessing he didn’t tell you all that.”
“He didn’t have to. Look him up online. He’s got a lot to lose. Anybody who threatens that, well… I treated a guy who shot a man over fifty cents, so…”
“Are you saying Devere is a threat to the warden?”
She reached over, ignored the little spark that ignited when her arm brushed Deck’s, and let the cat sniff her hand.
“C’mon, Detective. I can’t do all the work for you.”
Watch Her Vanish: An absolutely gripping mystery thriller (Rockwell and Decker Book 1) Page 22
