Truth is in the Darkness (Paynes Creek Thriller Book 2)

by Heather Sunseri

  “Do that.”

  Judy grabbed the office phone and dialed. After about fifteen seconds, she looked at me and shook her head. “He’s not answering.”

  I gave Judy my card. “If you hear from him, tell him to call me. And then you call me too.”

  “Of course. Coop, what is this all about?”

  I didn’t answer. I was already out the door.

  Luke hurried to catch up. “Coop… let’s not blow this out of proportion. You don’t know that your friend is guilty of anything other than snorting cocaine. And he sure wouldn’t be the first lawyer to get caught with hookers and blow.”

  “The illegal drugs aren’t even the main thing I’m pissed about. Though to be clear, I am pissed about that. He could lose his license. No, what pisses me off is that he never even mentioned any of this to us after Tricia turned up dead. He knew that Linda and Tricia knew each other, and that they both did drugs. You’d think he’d have said something, don’t you?”

  “Maybe, maybe not. I expect he was a little freaked out at the idea of inserting himself into a murder case, when all he was guilty of was hanging out in a strip joint and doing recreational drugs.”

  I glared at Luke. “Don’t try to defend him. Cocaine was found in Tricia’s system. She had sex with someone the night she was killed. And she didn’t have time to go to Lexington and back.”

  “So she snorted cocaine and had sex in Paynes Creek. You’re thinking she did all that with Jake.”

  “I’m thinking he has a lot of questions to answer.”

  “Then let’s go find him.”

  “No. First I’ve got an overdue appointment at an antique store.”

  A little bell rang above the door as we entered.

  “Helllloooo!” a woman sang from the back. Sharon, the store’s owner, came out and greeted us. “Officer Adams! I’m so sorry we’ve been missing each other all week.”

  “Oh, it’s fine.” Sarcasm coated my words. “We’re only trying our best to catch a murderer.”

  Sharon straightened and pursed her lips. “Well, then let’s get that information I promised.” She walked over to a mahogany secretarial desk and lifted a piece of paper. “I told you someone came in with a set of knives similar to the ones you showed me. It was years ago, but I remembered. And sure enough, I kept a record. The woman’s name was Sophia Harris. You remember her? She certainly had a love for antiques. She came across these knives at an auction and was going to give them to her fiancé as an engagement or wedding gift, I can’t remember which. She wanted an appraisal to make sure they had the value she thought they did. I sent her on to an appraiser in Lexington, but I could tell right away they were rare.”

  “Do you have a date on that visit?”

  “Of course. I wrote everything down for you.” She handed me a lavender Post-It note with the information.

  “Thank you.”

  I walked out of the store with Luke on my heel.

  “I couldn’t help but notice you didn’t even ask what Sophia Harris looks like,” he said. “Do you know her?”

  “Not exactly. In fact, I’ve only met Sophia Harris once. She’s Jake’s mother. She hasn’t lived in Paynes Creek since we graduated from high school.”

  Thirty-Eight

  Lil

  I considered getting back in the truck, driving straight up to the farmhouse, and confronting both Jake and Bryn. Jake for lying and Bryn for not answering her phone.

  But what exactly was going on here? Could it be that Jake had reacquired his childhood home and was planning to surprise Bryn with it? That would be… a nice surprise, I guess. Though Bryn would sure feel a fool for thinking Jake was cheating on her. Either way, I needed to check on Bryn. Not to confront her, just to make sure she was okay.

  I called Coop first to let him know where I was. But when the call connected, I could barely hear his garbled voice. “Coop,” I said. “Can you hear me?”

  I looked down at my phone and realized I only had one bar. Then right before my eyes, I lost all signal. “Shit!” I held my phone up in the air like an idiot, as if that would make more bars magically appear. Of course it didn’t.

  I decided to send a text instead. Maybe that one bar would reappear at some point and the text could get through.

  Hey! Bryn thought Jake was cheating on her and followed him out to his mom’s old house. I’m out here now. I’m just gonna make sure she’s all right and then head back to your place.

  After I sent the text, I sent one more: With steaks! I included a gif of a dancing steak.

  I turned Coop’s vehicle around, went back down the road, and drove up Jake’s old driveway. All was quiet when I opened the door with the exception of a clanking sound coming from one of the storage barns to my left.

  I got out of the truck and started toward the house. If Jake had purchased this property, it must have just happened, because it was clear nothing had been done to this house in years. It was in total disrepair.

  The clanging from the barn grew louder, and I decided to turn that way. Maybe Jake was showing Bryn around. I shoved the barn door open just enough to slip through.

  The interior was dark, and thick with a mixture of foul odors. There was a metallic scent, some kind of chemical smell, and… dead animals? I had to quickly bury my nose and mouth into the crook of my arm. I was tempted to step back out, but I decided to switch on my phone’s flashlight first.

  When I shined it in front of me, I nearly fell backwards.

  Jake was lying before me on the ground, unconscious.

  Thirty-Nine

  Coop

  “Lil!” I screamed. “Can you hear me?” I stared down at the phone, which had disconnected. “Dammit! We have to find her.”

  “Does your truck have a tracking device installed?” Luke asked.

  My phone buzzed. “Won’t need it. She’s sent me a text. Fuck!”

  “What?”

  “She’s at the house where Jake grew up. His mom’s house. I have to get out there.”

  I’d known Jake my entire life. He would never hurt Lil, or anyone else. He certainly wasn’t capable of murder. But my time with the Bureau had taught me that people were capable of doing things that those closest to them often never expected.

  Luke put a hand on my arm. “Coop… you’re too close to this. You know what needs to be done.”

  “I know. I’m not stepping aside, but I’ll hand you the reins. You take lead.”

  Luke dialed and lifted his phone to his ear. “Sheriff, we need the best you and Paynes Creek PD can put together, and we need them quick. I’m on my way to your office to brief the team. We need to move fast on this.” He lowered his phone. “Let’s go. You’re going to drop me at the station, then take my truck out to that house. But don’t go in. Just stay back and report what you see. And if you lose service, you wait for us all the same.”

  I nodded in agreement. But he and I both knew there was no way in hell I was waiting.

  Forty

  Lil

  I ran to Jake’s side. He looked pale, and one eye was swollen.

  “Jake,” I whispered. “Can you hear me?” He didn’t respond, but when I pressed two fingers to the side of his neck, I felt a pulse.

  I swallowed hard, attempting to pull myself together, then shined my flashlight over the rest of the barn. It contained several large cages, like the kind I’d expect to be used to transport circus tigers. Inside the closest one were two young girls, curled up against each other. Their eyes were wide as they stared at my light, but they stayed quiet. Perhaps they were in shock.

  I moved forward, panning my light over the other cages as I went. When I got a good look inside the second cage, I almost screamed.

  Bryn was lying on the ground inside, as unconscious as Jake.

  After examining the lock on the cage, I knelt down near her head. “Oh, God, Bryn. Who did this to you?”

  There was nothing I could do at the moment for Bryn, so I kept moving.

  In
side the third cage was another young girl, no more than sixteen or seventeen, wearing a pair of jeans and a ripped shirt. She was lying on her side, and as I got closer, she knocked her arm against the bars of the cage. On her wrist was a metal cuff bracelet, and it made a metallic clanking noise. That was the sound I had heard from outside.

  Could this be the girl that had gone missing from the same gas station that I had been taken from. Was this the work of Richardson?

  An uncontrollable shiver moved through me at the thought.

  The rancid smell inside that barn, combined with the horror of what I was seeing and thinking, sent me darting to a corner to throw up my lunch.

  Wiping my chin after one last retch, I shined my flashlight on the fourth and last cage. It was empty, thank God. But as I directed my light over the walls, I saw that many animal skins had been nailed up—rabbit pelts. Splatters of dried blood darkened the wood beneath them.

  What was going on here?

  More importantly, why this specific place? On Jake’s mother’s land?

  I suddenly remembered something Coop had told me about Richardson. He suspected Richardson might have family here.

  My eyes shifted to Jake.

  Maybe this family was a son.

  I’d never known Jake’s father. In fact I was always under the impression that not even Jake had ever known who his father was.

  Jake moaned, and I hurried to his side. “Jake, can you hear me?”

  He grabbed my forearm. “Lil?”

  “Yeah, it’s me. Who did this to you?”

  “When… When… Lil, you have to go. Before they come back.”

  “I’m not going to leave you and Bryn. Tell me who did this. Where are they?”

  He pulled me closer. “When!” he said louder. “You have to go get help. Call Coop.”

  “Can you get up? We’ll go get help together.”

  Jake slipped back into unconsciousness.

  A door creaked and slammed in the distance. A door to the old house, maybe. I shut off my flashlight before it could give away my presence.

  Then I heard a voice. I knew it like it was only yesterday that the owner of that voice had stuck me with a needle and stuffed me in the trunk of a car.

  “Are you sure they’re on their way?” Rudy Richardson said.

  “Yes, I took care of it,” said a second voice. His voice was also familiar. Too familiar.

  “No,” I whispered in the darkness. “It can’t be.”

  “They’re bringing a panel truck,” the second man continued. “I paid them more than enough to turn their backs as we load the cargo. Our shipment will be locked up tight, and the drivers will never know what they’re carrying. I’ll meet them at the destination to unload. It won’t be the payload we would have gotten from the West Virginia job, but it’ll go a long way to getting us back in the good graces of our buyers.”

  “Good.”

  “What do you want to do about Jake? Want me to take care of him?”

  “No, son. Leave Jake to me. You have bigger worries. Like what to do about the fed.”

  “Oh, he’ll pay dearly for taking away my West Virginia girls. This one is personal. And it’s been a long time coming—” The voice stopped. “What the fuck? Someone’s here.”

  The two men went silent.

  I closed my eyes as I realized what they’d seen.

  I’d left Coop’s truck parked in plain sight.

  My heart was beating so rapidly and loudly that I thought it would explode. I crept to the back of the barn and hid as well as I could in a dark corner behind the empty cage.

  I had just gotten into place when the barn doors were shoved open, letting the last of the day’s light filter in. Thanks to the storm clouds, that wasn’t a lot of light, for which I was grateful. I stayed as still as I could, hoping I could avoid being seen.

  And it was there, in the dark corner of a horrific and fetid barn, that I watched as the truth behind my twelve-year nightmare emerged from the shadows and into the light.

  Forty-One

  Coop

  I took the curves way too quickly, barreling out of town toward the house where my best friend spent his high school years. The rain made driving the narrow Kentucky country highway at a fast clip even more perilous.

  As I drove, my phone rang. I figured it was Luke asking me not to go in until I had backup, but when I glanced at the display, I saw the call was from the Lexington Detention Center.

  “Special Agent Adams,” I answered.

  “Hello, Special Agent.”

  “Linda.”

  “That’s right.” By the sound of her breathing, she was smoking a cigarette. Someone must have taken pity on her and given her one.

  “What do you want, Linda? I’m a little busy trying to save the daughter you apparently no longer care about.” If she ever had.

  “That’s not true.” Her voice cracked as she spoke. When she spoke again, I barely heard her. “I was wrong.”

  “Great. You have information that will help me, or did you call to confess your sins?”

  I heard a loud sniff on the other side of the phone. “You were right. I knew Tricia. And I know Bree White.”

  I slowed down as I took the next curve. “Okay. So what?”

  “I need to make a deal. I’ll tell you what I know, if you can guarantee my protection.”

  “Protection from what?”

  Silence.

  “Linda, I really don’t have time for this. Lily is already in trouble.”

  “They’ll kill me.” She sniffed again. “Please tell my daughter I’m sorry. I was a horrible mother. Jake was figuring things out. He was on the right track. That’s why they killed Tricia. They thought she knew too much.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Rudy Richardson’s son.”

  I could barely make out her words. Her voice was low, and she was crying—a side to Linda I wasn’t used to.

  “Richardson’s son? Linda, you have to tell me: is Rudy Richardson Jake’s father?”

  “Yes, though Jake only just figured that out. And Jake isn’t Rudy’s only son. It was Richardson’s other son who killed Tricia, and he’s the one who’s been stalking Lil. He was there the night they kidnapped her. Then he found her in New York, and he wanted to play around with her before he gave her to his dad. They’d been searching for her.”

  “Who, Linda? Who is Rudy Richardson’s other son?”

  “If I tell you, I’m as good as dead. Can you protect me from that monster?”

  Forty-Two

  Lil

  The approaching thunder grew louder. When lightning flashed, the girls in the cage nearest the door turned away from the brightness, moaning.

  The man who had just entered the barn flipped a light switch on the wall, then turned and looked straight at me. “Hello, Lily.”

  I stood slowly, barely able to catch my breath. I was looking into the eyes of the man who had asked me to marry him no more than two months ago.

  I shook my head. “I don’t understand.” My eyes darted to Jake, and I remembered what he’d said. When… When…

  He’d been trying to say Winn. He had been trying to warn me.

  Rudy Richardson stepped up beside Winn, his eyes wild with excitement. “You finally delivered her to me.”

  The man who kidnapped me all those years ago had aged, but there was no question it was him. His hair was grayer, but it was slicked back much the way it had been that night.

  I let my eyes find Winn’s again. “Who are you?” I couldn’t stop the disgust from filling my voice. Years of therapy with New York’s best psychologists had helped me work through what had happened to me that night, teaching me it wasn’t my fault—but it would be so easy to slip back into that unhealthy pattern of thinking. I might have married this man.

  “Who am I?”

  I flinched at the rage behind his words. He took a couple of steps toward me. I tried to take a step backward, but there was nowhere
to go.

  “Who am I?” he screamed a second time. “I made you! I groomed you and promoted you, and I molded you into the brilliant writer that you are. You were nobody before me. And now look at you. You’re a strong, successful, independent woman.”

  “You made me?” I repeated, stunned.

  His words had lit a fire inside me. But the seriousness of the situation I was in stifled my desire to put Winn in his place. I had to play whatever game this was and give Coop time to find me. God, I prayed Coop had gotten my message.

  “What do you want from me, Winn?”

  Richardson inched closer. “Oh, you’ve done a great job with this one. This has been a long time coming.”

  Realization sank in. “I’m the one who got away,” I said softly, and I narrowed my eyes at Winn. “I’m the lamb that muddied up your water.” I thought of the meaning behind that one Aesop’s fable—that tyrants, or wolves, need no excuse for killing a lamb. That was the fable I now suspected Winn had been alluding to with his messages. For I had no doubt at this moment that Winn had been my so-called “stalker” all along.

  Winn smiled—a grin that sent a shiver down my spine—and his face darkened. “You may have gotten away that night, but I found you again. And I groomed you to love me. And now we’re going to sell you to the highest bidder.”

  I glanced at the girls in the cages, noticing a slight movement from Bryn, but I didn’t react. Instead I looked straight into Winn’s eyes. “I never loved you,” I said. Miraculously, my voice was calm. “You were never the one.”

  Winn’s hands curled into fists, and he came at me. But the sound of an approaching vehicle stopped him in his tracks.

  “Silence her,” Richardson said. “I’ll go see to the moving company.”

  As Richardson left, he closed the barn door, muffling the ongoing thunder outside.