Beneath Bone Lake

by Colleen Thompson

  Struggling not to choke up at the memory, she reached the door and tried it. Though the knob turned, something blocked the door itself, as if something heavy, like his dresser, had been shoved against it.

  Justine couldn’t imagine that Noah, always small for his age, had found the strength to move a heavy piece of furniture, and the smaller items had been bolted to the floor. Which meant that instead of using weight, he had made a wedge. No matter how delayed he was in other areas, her son could be very clever about such things.

  She pounded on the door and shouted, “Noah, open up for Mama. It’s time for your favorite grilled cheese.”

  Of course, that wouldn’t work, she realized. Noah—who timed his schedule to the nanosecond—would know it wasn’t grilled cheese night, would figure out she hoped to trick him. Which meant he’d never open the door, even supposing that he noticed all the shouting and the banging.

  She shouted downstairs for Mrs. Wickenfield to bring a screwdriver from the kitchen junk drawer, but in her panic, the woman couldn’t find one—or do anything but burst into useless sobs and wail that this job was too much for her nerves.

  Justine found a pair of scissors in her child-proofed bathroom cabinet. Sliding the blade beneath the door, she eventually managed to poke loose the toy that had been jammed there. Flinging open Noah’s door, she took one look inside and cried out at the sight of all the blood.

  C HAPTER T WENTY-SIX

  How does one kill fear, I wonder? How do you shoot a spectre through the heart, slash off its spectral head, take it by its spectral throat?

  —Joseph Conrad,

  From Lord Jim

  Ruby sat up in bed as her phone began ringing, her chest constricting with dread that it would be someone from the sheriff’s office with even worse news.

  After a reflexive glance toward Sam, she hit the speaker button so he could hear as well. “Hello?”

  “Mama, come and get me. I’m scared. I want to go home—”

  “Zoe? Zoe, baby…” Ruby choked out on a sob.

  Beside her, Sam clicked on the light and leaned close to the phone, but Ruby scarcely noticed as she asked, “Where are you, honey? Tell me and I’ll—”

  “Mama, don’t let—”

  “I’ve been concerned about you, Ruby Monroe,” the glacial voice of the kidnapper interrupted. “Concerned your daughter wouldn’t have a mother to come home to.”

  “Wait! Give her back the phone, please,” cried Ruby. “I have to talk to Zoe. I have to—”

  “You’ll talk to her tomorrow if you do as I tell you. First of all, I want you keeping out of sight and out of volatile situations. Because the next time, I assure you, there’ll be no last-second miracle to save you.”

  “You were there. At Dylan Hammett’s, weren’t you?” In her mind’s eye, Ruby saw the tattooed man rushing at her, felt Coffin’s rough hands tearing at her clothing. Not to rape her, as she had feared, but searching her clothes and pockets for an item he had not found in her luggage.

  “You meant to steal the flash drive,” she accused, though she couldn’t make herself believe she was speaking to the same man who’d attacked her. More likely, she was speaking to the shooter.

  Clearly, he had no clue that his employer already had the files. If she told him, would he simply kill Zoe, as he had probably already murdered Misty? Ruby’s instincts, and the cruelty in his voice, warned her that volunteering information could prove deadly.

  “It’s true you wouldn’t be alive to carry on this conversation if you’d been foolish enough to have the item on you,” he said, “but that’s not important now, since you will bring it to me. Tomorrow afternoon, at precisely twelve thirty-five p.m. You will come alone and place the item in a bright orange duffel bag I’ve left at these coordinates.”

  “Why tomorrow? Why not now?” She flashed on a vision of herself retrieving the gun from Paulie’s and putting Best down the way she had the charging mastiff. Long shot or not, she saw nothing to be gained by delaying. “I have the drive. I need my daughter.”

  “I suggest you write down these coordinates,” he said, ignoring her suggestion. “I will not repeat myself.”

  Sam whipped open the nightstand drawer and pulled out a pen and a yellowing motel postcard. Ruby snatched them from his hands as Best slowly, clearly read off the long string of digits composing both latitude and longitude.

  Despite her shaking hands, Ruby managed to record them, even had the presence of mind to read them back to the kidnapper as if she were confirming something as mundane as a credit card number for a catalog order.

  “You listen beautifully.” Best’s praise flicked like a serpent’s tongue in her ear. “Keep listening, and your family will survive this.”

  Shivering, Ruby asked, “You’ll be waiting there with Zoe? You’ll let me take her home, right? And my sister—will my sister be—”

  “Follow my instructions, and you will all be reunited.”

  Ruby recalled the vivid images she’d dreamed of the lake’s depths. But Zoe’s voice had been real; Ruby had no doubt.

  Sam laid a hand on her knee, gave her a look that helped to ground her.

  “When?” she pressed Best. “I have to know when I’ll have them back.”

  “When I’ve assured myself you haven’t tampered with or duplicated the material. When I’ve assured myself you’ve spoken to no one.”

  “Of course I didn’t talk to anybody,” she exploded. “I never even wanted that flash drive in the first place. Never bothered looking at the thing,” she claimed, “and I still have no idea what’s on it.”

  “Don’t play stupid, Ruby Monroe. Don’t pretend that anything’s so simple.”

  Taken aback, Ruby tried to fathom what he knew and how he knew it. Sam’s hands made a rolling motion, urging her to keep the killer talking.

  “It is simple,” she insisted. “You come meet me tonight, right now. Have my family with you. I’ll give you the flash drive; you let them walk away.” She pictured a new scenario: Sam hiding near the exchange site, armed and ready—shooting the kidnapper as soon as he assured himself her family was safe. If Sam could be persuaded to take yet another risk. Hadn’t he told her—quite emphatically—that he didn’t do guns?

  “Tomorrow afternoon,” Best told her, “twelve thirty-five, exactly as I’ve instructed.”

  “How do I know you won’t ambush me? How do I know you won’t kill them?”

  “You want assurances?” The flat menace of his words electrified the band of nerves around her stomach. “How about an assurance of how you’ll find your family if you deviate in the least from my instructions?”

  “No, I—” Ruby couldn’t breathe, remembering how he’d used her friend to prove a point the last time. Seeing the shining pool of blood and Elysse’s neck sliced in a grisly smile. What if he carved up Misty—if she weren’t dead already? Or would Ruby find pieces of her only child? “I didn’t mean it. Please, please don’t tell me—”

  “You might check the trunk of your car,” he said, just before the line—and all the fight in her—went dead.

  “Ruby? Ruby, are you with me?” Sam took her hand and squeezed it, then pulled the blanket to her shoulders to warm her. But it was her face that worried him most, from its pallor to its slack look of defeat.

  “I don’t want to see it.” She shook her head emphatically, looking more like a lost child than the sensual woman he’d made love to, the strong woman who’d stood up to terror with such courage. “I—I can’t look this time.”

  Sam pulled on his wet pants, then checked outside their room’s door, where, as good as her word, Opal had left the bag of clothing she had promised. Bringing it inside, he picked through the assortment until he came across a faded, navy T-shirt that would fit him. Most of the items were too large for Ruby, but he found one pair of cropped jeans and a striped top that looked as if they could have belonged to that rarest of Hook-It patrons, a fashion-conscious twenty-something. No undergarments, but Ruby
didn’t protest as he helped her to dress.

  “You don’t have to come out,” he said. “Let me take the keys and check the trunk.”

  “If—if it’s my sister this time…If it’s anyone I know…”

  Sam touched her cheek and softly kissed her temple. “I’ll be right back.”

  Ruby hugged herself and rolled away to face the wall as he slipped out into the night.

  Except for the filmy veil of starlight, the darkness was complete now, particularly in the spot where the small sedan crouched beneath low pine limbs like an animal in hiding. Seeing no one else, Sam approached, dread burning through his veins like acid, drying the moisture from his mouth.

  His flashlight’s beam landed on a slow drip coming from beneath the rear bumper. A drip that splashed down into a dark spot on the gravel.

  Sam understood the damage to his truck now. The reason that the kidnapper had wanted to be certain they drove away in Elysse’s car. Squatting down behind it, he used the light to confirm what he knew already. The streaks showed up brilliant red against the white.

  Call 9-1-1, estúpido, Pacheco’s voice screamed at him. Don’t touch that trunk lock. Don’t touch anything. Just make an anonymous phone call and vamoose.

  “Too damned late,” Sam growled, thinking of his prints all over the car and his vehicle’s presence at the home of Dylan Hammett, a house where any idiot could tell someone had met with violent death. If Wofford had reason to deflect the blame onto him—or even if she merely connected dots and looked no further—he was likely to need a whole different brand of lawyer. One who specialized in defending clients charged with murder.

  With little to lose, he decided to learn the identity of the victim of his alleged crime.

  “Don’t let it be Misty. For Ruby’s sake, please don’t,” Sam prayed as he popped the trunk and looked inside.

  C HAPTER T WENTY-SEVEN

  This is the Hour of Lead—

  Remembered, if outlived,

  As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow—

  First—Chill—then Stupor—then the letting go—

  —Emily Dickinson,

  from “After Great Pain”

  The body was in bad shape, the fatal wounds horrific. But it was the injuries inflicted after death—or at least Sam hoped it had been after—that had him turning aside and retching violently.

  With its throat slashed and its tongue gouged from its bloody maw, this corpse—its chest blown open by a bullet—had been left as a message, a message no less clear than the one embodied by Elysse Steele.

  But as terrible as the sight was, neither he nor Ruby need mourn this victim, the tattooed man who had taken over Ruby’s home and assaulted her just prior to his death. Spitting to clear his mouth of the foul taste, Sam wondered that Ruby’s tormentor had chosen to save her life.

  At least until he got the flash drive from her—or found out she didn’t have the right one.

  The sound of fast-approaching footsteps attracted his attention, prompting Sam to slam the trunk reflexively, his runaway heartbeat drumming in his ears. His next move was to kill the flashlight, but apparently he didn’t get it switched off fast enough.

  “Sam McCoy?” The voice was young and female, the speaker’s breathing ragged. “Sam, it’s Trisha. My gramma asked—asked me to come tell y’all—”

  She had to stop and catch her breath.

  “Easy,” he coaxed, wanting to calm her quickly and get her out of here before she caught a whiff of blood and vomit, before she realized she was within a few yards of a corpse.

  “I freaking knew you would be trouble. But Gramma wants me to let you know there’s some kind of cops asking about you—DEA guys, I think. She’s talking to them up front, putting on her senile act, but…”

  From around the corner, Sam made out the approaching glow of headlights. In a split second he reacted, bolting not toward the room, which would have forced him into the agents’ path and led them straight to Ruby, but for the shelter of the trees behind the motor court.

  Within seconds, his own shadow stretched and swung before him as what must be the agents’ vehicle came around back. He imagined himself running, silhouetted, pictured an SUV’s window rolling downward and a marksman taking aim. So clear was the premonition that Sam zigzagged in what he prayed would be the right direction, his instincts throbbing out a warning that a bullet was ripping its way toward him, about to leave him every bit as dead as the tattooed corpse in the trunk.

  Dread pounded at his temples, hammered at his chest. Panic sharpened by regret that he had no time to warn Ruby, no time to help prepare her for the—

  When it came, the crack was sharp and sudden, a crack that sent him pitching forward, hurtling toward a darkness slick and glassy as his recent downhill slide.

  Ruby waited, with every passing moment tightening fear’s grip. Frozen with anxiety, she couldn’t move a muscle, couldn’t even glance at the clock to note how long it had been since Sam had left her.

  What if he’d found Misty? What if Best had done to her what he had done to Elysse? Had Zoe watched her aunt’s murder? And what about the body parts recovered along with Misty’s Honda? Horror bubbled up inside Ruby, her mind fixated on an image of a body breaking loose and floating up to Bone Lake’s surface, of reptilian eyes watching from a distance. Eyes gleaming coldly in the twilight as they glided ever closer.

  Ruby gasped, sucking in a breath that exploded the vision and finally shattered her inertia. Rising, she shoved her feet into her untied shoes and hurried toward the door, unable to wait another second to learn what Sam had found inside the car’s trunk.

  But with her sudden change in elevation, her sight dimmed and the muted notes of pain inside her skull roared to a crescendo. Gritting her teeth, she reached for the wall and braced herself as waves of dizziness broke over her.

  She waited for the room to right itself, for the crashing surf in her head to subside. Waited and wondered if Sam had decided to cut his losses, to use her keys to get as far from this mess as he could. Wickedly sharp, the suspicion sliced through her, but she told herself that despite the brief respite she had found in his arms, she had no right to expect more from him, no right to begrudge him his own survival.

  She told herself all this but still could not accept it, could not begin to fathom that he might be as lost to her as Elysse.

  Ruby’s eyes widened as she imagined something altogether different from abandonment. An idea far more horrifying. What if Sam himself had been attacked, if the killer had been lying in wait as he made the phone call?

  As she looked around the room for anything she might use as a weapon, Ruby’s gaze struck on the nearer of two tired-looking, wooden chairs beside the coffee-ring-stained table. Lurching toward it, she picked it up and, with a surge of pure adrenaline, smashed it down as hard as she could against the floor. A leg cracked and she struck again, then twisted the wood until a sharp-ended length snapped off in her hand. Not much against a gun, a knife, or a madman, but she had to find out what had happened to Sam. What chance did she have of saving her family without his help?

  Unwilling to leave the flash drive behind, she plucked it from the laptop’s USB port, then tucked it into her pocket as she hurried for the door. As she left the room with Java close on her heels, she tried to tell herself that her family was the only reason she was going out there, that her heart wasn’t pushing her to risk getting herself killed—and dooming Zoe—for a far more foolish reason…

  An attachment she had no damned business forming to a man who’d already warned her he was skipping town the moment he could.

  Exhausted from his tantrum—and probably to some extent from blood loss, Noah slept where he lay on the ER waiting room’s floor. Sitting cross-legged beside him, Justine ignored the black looks of those waiting, though she felt like flipping every one of them the bird.

  Intellectually, she got it, knew they were all wondering what sort of mother allowed her child—who was so perfectly,
heartbreakingly normal in appearance—to carve designs on his own forearms, then couldn’t even blot the crusting blood without inciting a near riot. They had no way of understanding that the same boy who apparently hadn’t felt pain as he’d scored his own flesh with a shard of glass screamed in agony at the pressure of a warm, damp washcloth or—God forbid—a hug.

  Besides, if it got around that Justine Wofford, Preston County sheriff, had been tossing off obscene gestures in the ER, she could kiss her chance for reelection good-bye. And after what she’d done to win even the brief privilege of filling the remainder of Lou’s term…Justine swallowed to clear the taste of bile at the thought of the shortcuts she had taken, the innocence she’d sold along the way.

  She had no choice except to call her father, despite the understanding that he would pelt her with I-told-you-so’s. If he figured out what she’d done, the retired Morton County sheriff would be the first to report her actions, or maybe even lock her up. She still cringed at the memory of his idea of support when she’d told him of her plans to claim Lou’s office.

  “Even if you have the stomach, even if you win it, those deputies’ll never accept a woman as their sheriff, especially one who didn’t pay her dues by comin’ up through their ranks. And if you ask me,” he’d warned, not caring for a minute that she hadn’t, “you’d be better off movin’ back home and findin’ yourself something more suitable. I’ve still got plenty of pull back in Morton County. You want, I’ll see about getting you something more fit for a single mother. I hear the evidence tech’s retirin’. That’s indoors, safe…”

  And boring as hell, Justine thought as she stroked Noah’s soft brown hair, on the long side because cutting it was such an ordeal. Asleep as he was, she could touch him, as long as she was careful. Her heart ached with the need to pull him into her arms, to ask her son whether she’d been right to want more than her father offered: the challenge of the career she’d watched her husband handle so well; the fulfillment she had left behind when leaving her position as a Morton County deputy to take a second chance on marriage. And the money, too, for a sheriff’s salary would allow her to keep her independence.