by Rachel Caine
“Guess I won’t get more lessons,” she observes. “Seeing as you’re famous again.” She reaches in her pocket and pulls out a folded piece of paper. “I took it off one of them other cars.”
I know what it is before I unfold it. The flyer. The same one that I got from the range master.
When I look up, I see pieces of paper fluttering under windshield wipers all around the lot.
I want to howl. I don’t. I just say, “Let’s put it on hold until I find another shooting range. It’s Knoxville. There are plenty.” About a dozen, in fact. But I know that if my stalker continues to come after me, it’ll be easy to find me no matter where I go. He could cover a dozen places in a couple of days. I need to stop him. Now.
Sam glances over and sees the flyer that Vee’s handed me. I hear his intake of breath, but he doesn’t say anything. I see the blood draining from his face. This hurts him, too, in ways that I can’t truly appreciate.
“You want to talk about that?” he asks. I shake my head. I don’t want to talk to him, and I know that’s irrational and cruel; it isn’t his fault someone resurrected his favorite form of punishment and used it against me. It isn’t his fault, but it feels like it is. And I need to settle that in my head.
But I don’t get that chance because from the back seat, Lanny leans forward and grabs the paper. “Oh my God.”
“Give it back,” I tell her, and my voice is too loud, too tight.
She doesn’t surrender it. She knows what she’s looking at—she remembers it very well. She says, “They’re doing it again.” Her voice sounds like a little girl’s again, shocked and traumatized. I feel my breath catch hard in my throat, and my eyes burn with tears. I see Connor take the flyer and examine it, then carefully fold it up and give it back to Vee. For once, Vee sensibly keeps her mouth shut.
There’s not a sound in the car but road noise. If I can’t help blaming Sam, he also can’t help blaming himself. And this time, he’s going to see the toll this takes directly on my—our—children. I have to suppress the vile impulse to think he deserves that for his past actions.
“Wait, y’all have seen these before?” Vee finally asks.
“People put them up other places we lived,” Connor says, and his tone is calm and uninflected. “They wanted us to leave, and we did.”
It’s the calmness, and the inevitability behind it, that makes my heart ache. I did let the Lost Angels . . . Sam . . . hound us from place to place, for years. I did that for my kids. But I also did it to my kids.
“We’re not leaving,” I tell Connor, and hold his stare in the rearview mirror for a second.
“We just started getting normal,” Lanny says. “I just found friends.” She sounds too shattered to be angry. The rage that sweeps over me is breathtaking and weirdly freeing. It steals my breath and clenches my hands, and I think, Fine. Come at us, you assholes.
Even Vee is quiet now, realizing this is way deeper than she can swim, with currents fast enough to drown the unwary.
That river of silence, fraught with rage and pain and fear, flows continuously, unbroken, until we arrive at Vee’s apartment and let her out. I watch her walk to her door with her absurdly bright gun case and safe and let herself in before Sam puts the SUV back into gear and heads us home. Home. It feels less like that now, more like a fortress bracing for an attack.
I never should have let my guard down.
Sam pulls the SUV into the garage, and we all stay in the vehicle until the door rolls closed. Usually Lanny or Connor is the first to bail, but my kids are quiet and still.
Finally Connor says, “Are we going to talk about it? You knew about the flyers, didn’t you? That’s why you had the panic attack.”
“Not here,” I say. “Inside.”
Sam nods and gets out first. The rest of us follow him, and I see the too-rigid set of his spine, the linebacker angle of his shoulders. Sam’s got a great poker face, but his body language gives him away if you know how to look. I’ve retrieved our guns, and I carry them into the bedroom with the main gun safe to store them away. I put his favorite sidearm in the fingerprint-locked safe on his side, and then mine in its mate on the other. The larger gun safe holds other things as well: a hunting rifle, a shotgun, and two more smaller pistols. Ammunition and cleaning equipment. I seal everything up and go into the kitchen, where Sam is pouring two generously sized glasses of red wine. He slides one over to me, but doesn’t meet my eyes.
“We’re not okay, are we?” He asks it quietly, but I hear the heartbreak in his voice.
I take the glass and turn toward him. The kids are in their rooms, and I keep my volume low as well. “Sam, did you know the Lost Angels were ramping this up again?”
“No.” He says it definitively, and I believe him. “I thought they were letting it go. Last time I checked, we weren’t high on their list of monsters anymore.”
“But not off it.”
“I don’t think we’ll ever be off it.”
“Sam,” I say gently, but with purpose. “It isn’t we. Me and the kids are the ones on the posters.”
That silences him. He squeezes his eyes closed, then says, “I know. I’m sorry.” I hear the guilt. He started this. He knows how much damage it’s already done, and will continue to wreak. But there’s also little he can do about that, and I take a breath to acknowledge it.
He opens his eyes, and we hold that gaze for a long moment before he says, “Gwen, what are you going to do?” I can feel the solid ground between us trembling and eroding, and I hate it with every muscle fiber. Someone did this to us. But not Sam. I know that. I wish I could feel that, but I know it takes time.
So for now, I reach across that uncertain ground and take his hand, step close, whisper, “Stay.” It’s a promise from me, and a question for him.
I feel the relief that floods his body as he hugs me, a long and warm embrace that soothes the screaming parts of me. I hope it does the same for him, but that’s the hell of being human: you never really know. Never.
You never know what the person you love might do. Or could be capable of doing.
Sometimes you don’t even know that about yourself.
We seem better as we get the kids settled for the night; we take our wineglasses out to the porch. It’s not the same as it was back on Stillhouse Lake; the view’s of a cul-de-sac and a neighbor’s front window, not the soothing, cool ripple of the water. But we still have a covered porch, and our two rocking chairs, and we sit together and sip in silence.
I ruin the mood by telling him about my new, worrying stalker. After a fairly significant pause, he tells me about the call from the newspaper.
I nearly spill my wine. “Someone called in my obituary?”
“Probably the same guy, don’t you think? Hell, he might have gotten busy with the flyers too.”
I take in a deep breath. “You took care of that obituary, though. It won’t—”
“Show up online, or in the papers? No. But we should be aware that’s a tactic that’s out there. Stay alert.”
I feel sick at the thought. There’s so much viciousness to all this. And I understand the impulses behind it. It’s so easy at a distance to pass judgment, to feel satisfaction when someone else receives pain you think they deserve.
What this man—if it is just the one man—is doing is the bigger, more toxic version of that common, petty feeling.
“Anything else?” I ask him with a sigh. It’s been a hell of a day. I take a big gulp of wine.
“Thank God, no. That’s all I’ve got. We’re going to get through this, you know.” He takes my hand, and we sit quietly, connected. “You trust me, right?”
“I love you, Sam.”
“But do you trust me?”
I turn to look at him, and find him staring straight at me. I feel the impulse to lie to him. To protect myself. And I fight that with all my heart. “Honestly? I’m trying as hard as I know how. Sam . . . I hate this. I hate that all my instincts tell me to grab my k
ids and protect them from everything, everyone, even you. I know it isn’t right. I know that you’re the love of my life, the man I ought to trust above anyone else. But I have to learn that. It doesn’t come naturally.”
I’m afraid, when I say it, that he’s going to take offense . . . and I realize that fear, too, is part of what I have to unlearn. Melvin got in me as deep as cancer, but if I have to claw him out by the bloody handfuls, I will.
It feels like a piece of that rot falls away when Sam says, steady as always, “It didn’t come naturally for me either. You’ll get there, Gwen. I trust you to find the way. And I’m not going anywhere.”
The gift of that makes tears burn in my eyes. I lift his hand and press my lips to it in silent gratitude.
“Now,” Sam says. “Somebody’s fucking with our lives. What are we going to do about that?”
I take a deep breath. “Go get him,” I say.
“Damn right.”
We clink glasses and drain the last of our wine.
10
KEZIA
I’m so damn tired that night when I get home, I fall asleep on the couch without doing any of the normal things I’d take care of before bed.
Like putting my phone on the charger.
I wake up at 5:00 a.m. and instinctively reach to check messages only to find the damn thing’s dead. Shit. I plug it in and go off to shower and make coffee; when I come back it’s got enough power for me to see that I had just one missed call.
Gwen. I call back while I take my first, life-saving sip of coffee, and I forget about the cup altogether as she tells me about her night. About the damn wanted posters, the gun range expulsion. That has to hurt, and it’s worrying. My coffee gets significantly cooler while she tells me about the new internet stalker she’s acquired, but I take a big gulp anyway before I say, “You think it’s the same guy?”
“Seems pretty likely,” she says. “Sam’s going to check on the Lost Angels site and find out who’s agitating against us right now. This guy . . . seems pretty devoted, and pretty capable. I’m worried, to be honest.”
“About how the kids will handle it? Or about how you will?”
“Shit, Kez. You get right to the heart of things, don’t you?” She lets out a breath. “Both, I guess. You know what my impulse is, don’t you?”
“Grab what you love and run?”
“I can’t do that anymore. I can’t do it to them anymore.”
“‘Stand your ground’ didn’t work so well out at Stillhouse Lake.”
“That was special circumstances,” she counters. “Unless the NPD finally decided to get serious about the Belldenes, it was the right decision to go.”
“We haven’t, and we probably won’t unless they do something real stupid,” I say. “So you’re likely right. You think the kids can handle that pressure?”
“I think we all have to learn to live with it. Somehow. Sorry to add to your burdens, Kez, I didn’t mean to do that.”
“Look, I called you out to a crime scene at God Knows O’clock, so you get to drop whatever you need on me. I’m so sorry. You don’t need this shit.”
“I really don’t,” she says. “But I’m shoveling. Listen . . . I should have said before, but I turned up something you need to know about Sheryl Lansdowne.” Then she launches into the story, and I grab pen and notebook and find myself taking quick, furious notes, writing down names in sharply slanted handwriting that tells me my hunter’s blood is up. I’m completely focused on what she’s saying, and deep down I’m not even that surprised. I believed Tommy’s father last night when he told me his son didn’t just run for the hills. There’s something here. Something dark and twisted and very, very dangerous.
“Thanks, Gwen,” I tell her at the end. “Take time, okay? Take care of your fam. I got this.”
“I’ll keep digging when I can.” She seems calm and practical. I don’t know if I would be. “It’s good to have something else to think about.”
“Gwen. You got through it before. Stay strong.”
“Just once, I’d like to not have to,” she says, and I’m a little surprised at how vulnerable she sounds. “I still plan to head to Valerie once the kids are in school today and find out more about Sheryl Lansdowne. I’ll get back to you tonight, most likely.”
“You just watch your back.” I mean that on every level, from the regular worries about poking around in things that aren’t her business to the threats hanging over her.
When we end the call, I stand there staring at the coffeepot for a long few minutes before I dump what I’ve made in a travel cup.
I need to get to work.
Detective Prester is there ahead of me. He looks tired, and he looks worse than yesterday. I worry for him. “Hey,” I say, and put my bag and travel mug down on my desk. “Coffee?”
He nods without speaking, and I go fetch it. I know how he takes his; I made it a point to find out the first day on the job. He sips and turns another page. Still doesn’t speak until he finishes reading, and then looks over at me. “Sorry I dumped this on you,” he says. His voice sounds rougher than usual. “Getting old is no picnic.”
“You been to the doctor like I asked you?”
“No, and I’m not going, so you can just drop that right now. I just got tired. I need some damn vacation. I heard you found another body to add to the tally. Anything come back on that yet?”
“Nothing from TBI. They took the skeleton in for dental forensics and such. DNA if they can get it. My guess is it’ll turn out to be Sheryl Lansdowne’s ex, Tommy. His disappearance sure doesn’t smell right.”
“Neither does hers.” He shakes his head. “Those two little girls. My God. So what you thinking?”
“You saw the file.”
“You don’t put it in the file. I know you, Kezia.”
We spend half an hour talking through it—nothing either one of us wants to put on paper. Gwen’s call this morning has definitely put Sheryl in a new light, and not a good one; Prester had already been leaning toward Sheryl as a perpetrator, not a victim, and now—though I hate it with a real viciousness—I think he’s probably right. But we have no actual facts just yet.
He finally sighs and closes his eyes for a few seconds. “So what do you make of the dead husband, if those bones turn out to be his?”
“If Sheryl’s a killer, maybe she did for him, too; she did end up with a house, bank account, and car free and clear.”
“Next steps?”
“I’m going to follow up on Gwen’s leads, see what I can turn up. If the TBI comes back with a positive on Tommy Jarrett, we may have something to really sink our teeth into on this.”
He nods in agreement. “I’ll finish up reports on that domestic abuse case and the car theft at the bakery, then I’m going to take your advice and go home to rest. Kezia. You watch your ass on this one. Like you always say, there are bears in these woods.”
What he means is that there’s no clear direction, and when that happens, attacks can come from anywhere. Killers want to stay hidden. Dragging them into the light is a dangerous business sometimes.
“Bears better watch their furry behinds,” I tell him, and he laughs. “I got this.”
“I know you do.” Prester hands the file back and says, “Send me a copy?”
“I’ll put it in email.”
I get to work as Prester does his two-finger typing on his reports. I consider going back to the morgue, but I know I shouldn’t do that. It’s agonizing, and it won’t be productive in any way. But the thought of those two little girls all alone in the dark . . . it still haunts me. I feel chilled to the bone from it. Maybe I’m still coming to terms with having a small, fragile, helpless life depending completely on me, but I want those girls to know somebody loved them. Cared about them.
I guess right now it will fall to Abraham Jarrett to see to their burial when they’re released, if their mother’s still gone—or worse, if she’s the one who caused their deaths.
The
second I focus back on the piece of paper where I’ve taken down the notes from Gwen’s info, I feel everything else fade away. The chase pulls me in like nothing else ever has done; it’s a little unsettling how right this feels to me. You’re not a damn superhero, I tell myself. You’re just a cop doing a job. Which is true, but not completely. Something happened to me back at that lonely, misty pond. Something important. It put motherhood—something that until that moment had been distant, misty, and unformed—into a very real, very emotional shape.
It’s not just a job. Not this time.
I start diving in, tracking down the information that Gwen’s found about Penny Carlson. Her work’s solid, but it’s still a clue, not a conclusion. I’ve got access she doesn’t, and I find two more aliases besides her Maguire discovery that match Sheryl’s general profile. It fills in some of the time gaps. If all this holds up, our girl’s been busy. She’s got only two arrests in the past ten years, each under a different name and in a different state. Both were for small offenses, and in both cases, she paid the fines and left town not long after.
The record looks minor, but it’s wrong. My instincts tell me that Penny Carlson’s been on the wrong track for a long, long time. Her juvenile records are sealed; it’ll take a court order for me to gain access, and I doubt I’ll get anybody to sign off on that yet. I’ve got plenty of other things to run down in the meantime. Gwen’s set one hell of a table, and I’m about to eat some lunch.
I start from the beginning. With Penny Carlson of Rockwell City, Iowa. It’s a dot of a town, isolated by lush fields of corn and soybeans. The kind of place where everybody knows everything, but as a stranger I’m not set to learn much. Still, I give it a try with a call to the local police department.
The chief of police answers after just a short delay, which tells me how busy a town it is; he’s pretty cordial when I explain things, but when I mention Penny Carlson, there’s a long, fraught silence. Then he says, “Ma’am, do you think you know where Penny is? Is that what you’re telling me?”
