The Lullaby Girl (Angie Pallorino Book 2)

by Loreth Anne White

  She climbed into the passenger seat. He bent down to pick up Jack-O.

  “Here, let me hold him,” she said.

  He stilled and met her gaze. An unspoken bond of kinship surged between them. He placed Jack-O on her lap, and then he leaned in, kissed her on the mouth, and he whispered into her ear. “Keep thinking about it.”

  She smiled. “I am.”

  Maddocks shut the front passenger door and climbed into the rear seat. As Holgersen started the engine, he said, “So, what yous gonna do now, Pallorino?”

  “Don’t know yet.”

  He put the vehicle into gear, pulled out of the lot, and fed into the stream of downtown traffic. “Yous did a pretty good job investigating on your own. Ever thought of getting a PI license, like, specializing in cold cases and shit, finding missing peeps? You could work with that Jacob Anders guy again if you needed forensics stuff done.”

  She snorted. “Who knows—maybe. But I’ve got some things I need to take care of first.” Like seeing a therapist as she’d promised Maddocks. “Like maybe going over to meet my relatives in Poland. I learned I have an uncle there who is still alive. I contacted him. He said my grandfather was a brave political dissident in the Solidarity movement. Ana fled when my grandfather was carted off to prison. They never knew what happened to her, until now. They want to meet me, Ana’s daughter.”

  “And Kaganov’s moms is also your relative,” Holgersen pointed out.

  She stroked Jack-O’s head and watched the scenery go by. She could not think of Kaganov’s mother as her own flesh and blood. One couldn’t choose one’s family, but Angie didn’t have to honor that woman, although she was probably a victim, a prisoner in her own way. Maybe time would change how she felt—but not now.

  “I gots some things to sort out, too,” Holgersen said as he met her eyes briefly.

  “Like?” Angie said.

  “Like Harvey Leo.”

  “What about Leo?” Maddocks said from the rear.

  Holgersen snorted. “I has a plan. Guy’s going down, busted. Hooooo.”

  “For what?” Angie said. “He didn’t do anything criminal in talking to Grablowski about me, if that’s what you’re referring to.”

  Holgersen just shrugged, a strange look changing the shape of his face.

  Angie studied him a moment, then gave up. Holgersen was an enigma and probably always would be. She turned to look out the window instead, observing her city as he drove. Victoria. A peace filled her heart at the sight of the familiar landmarks.

  She had no job, nothing. And yet she had everything, for she had her identity, her biological place in the fabric of things, and her sister and mother would finally be laid to rest. Closure—it was everything it was cracked up to be. She could now look in the mirror and know she’d done justice for Mila, the little ghost girl in pink.

  She turned and glanced into the back. Maddocks met her eyes. A seriousness entered his features. And yes, she now had a chance at a future with Detective James Maddocks. They also had a dinner date for tonight with his daughter.

  All felt right in the world.

  A SNEAK PEEK AT THE NEXT ANGIE PALLORINO NOVEL—COMING SOON.

  EDITOR’S NOTE: THIS IS AN EARLY EXCERPT AND MAY NOT REFLECT THE FINISHED BOOK.

  A SECRET RUNS THROUGH IT

  And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

  —Genesis 2:9

  SEPTEMBER 1994

  Twilight lingers at the fifty-first parallel, painting the sky deep indigo as tiny stars begin to prick and shiver like gold dust in the heavens. It’s cold, winter’s frost already crisp upon the breath of the late-September evening. Mist rises wraithlike above the crashing whitewater of Bridal Falls. Fog hangs dense over the forest, playing peekaboo with the ragged peaks of the surrounding mountains. She moves carefully along the slime-covered rocks at the edge of the deep-green eddies and pools of the Nahamish River. Stopping for a moment, she watches a cloud of small insects that have begun to dart just above the water’s mercurial surface. Peace is complete, a tangible thing that feels akin to a gentle blanket wrapped about her shoulders. She’s in the moment as she crouches down to her haunches and removes a wallet-size fly box from the front pocket in her fishing vest. She opens the silver box, listening to the rush of Bridal Falls just upstream and the more distant boom of Plunge Falls downriver. The wind hushes through the forest up on the ridge at her back. She selects a tiny dry fly that best matches the insects hatching over the water. Gripping the fly between clenched front teeth, she draws the line from her rod with her fist. With practiced movements, she knots her fly onto the tippet attached to the leader at the end of her dry line. A hidden silver hook nestles in the feathers, which are designed to fox the trout into thinking the fly is food. A smile curves her mouth as she thinks of her father. H—he tied this fly for her. He’s fished the Nahamish many times. When she told him she was going on this trip with the girls, he’d given her some of his favorite flies. He’d said this one would work best just as the light started to fail at this time of year.

  Rising to her feet, she begins to cast—a great big balletic sequence of loops, her line sending diamond droplets shimmering into the cool air. She settles the tiny fly right at the edge of a deep, calm eddy, just where the current begins to riffle along the surface, where she’s seen fish rising for the hatch.

  But as her fly begins to drift downriver, she senses something. A sentience. As if she’s being watched. With intent. She stills, but her pulse has quickened. Her hearing becomes suddenly acute.

  Bear?

  Wolves?

  Cougar?

  She can no longer hear the others. They’re upriver of Bridal Falls. They all went up to the camping area once the boats had been taken ashore at the pullout. They were around the campfire, waiting for their two male guides to prepare dinner, getting ready to drink and laugh and eat and settle in for the night. But she’d been hungry for more, just a few last casts before full dark on this second-to-last day of their trip. It was a failing of hers—always wanting just one more, of everything, not being able to stop. Perhaps it was not a good idea. Feeding time in the woods. She swallows and slowly turns her head, looks up at the rocky bank. Nothing moves in the dark shadows between the trees that grow shoulder to shoulder along the ridge. Yet she can still feel it—a presence. Tangible. Watching. With malevolence. Something is hunting her—weighing her as prospective prey. Just as she is hunting the trout. Just as the fish are hunting the insects. Nerves tighten. She squints, trying to discern some shape from the darkening evening shadows. A rock dislodges suddenly. It clatters down the bank, unsettling more stones, which rattle and knock their way down to the river and splash into the water. Fear strikes a hatchet into her heart. Her blood thuds against her eardrums. Then she sees it—a form. It shifts and becomes distinct from the forest. Human. Red woolen hat. Relief slices through her chest.

  “Hey!” she calls out with a wave.

  But the person remains silent, picking a determined route down the bank, making directly for her, something heavy-looking in hand. L—like a log. Or a metal bar, about the size and heft of a baseball bat. Unease slams back into her chest. She takes an involuntary step backward, closer to the water’s edge. Her wading boots slip on greasy moss despite the studded soles designed expressly for good grip on surfaces like these. She wobbles, steadies herself, and laughs nervously. “You spooked me,” she calls out, trying to chase away her own stupid fear. “I was just wrapping up here, and—”

  The blow comes fast. So fast. She spins away, tries to duck out of the reach of the weapon, but her quick twisting motion sends her boots out from under her. Her rod shoots into the air. She lands with a hard smash on rocks and tumbles instantly into the river, entering with a splash. The shock of cold water explodes through her body. It steals her breath. Icy water rushes into her sto
cking-footed, chest-high waders, seeps into her studded wading boots, saturates her vest, her woolen shirt, her thermal underwear, the weight of it all dragging her down. She flails at the surface with her hands, trying to keep her head above water, struggling to grab at slippery rocks as the current moves her downstream. But her nails fail to find purchase. She gains momentum as the river sucks her toward its heart, where its currents muscle deep and strong toward the thundering boom of Plunge Falls, where mist boils thick above the tumbling water. It’s a deadly place, an area people have gone to commit suicide, and their bodies have never been found because the weight and pressure of the falling water traps them deep in pools and pushes them into submerged caves. She tries to kick, to swim, to angle back toward shore. But the Nahamish has other plans. It clutches at her with newfound glee, with impossible strength, tossing her about like a toy, drawing her down and into its churning bowels. Her lungs begin to burst.

  With a teasing thrust, the current shoots her briefly to the surface.

  “Help!” she screams as her head pops out. She thrusts her clawed hand up out of the foam, pleading.

  “Help!” She chokes, goes under again, swallowing water, gagging. Again, the river gives her false hope and shows her the surface. For a moment she manages to keep her chin above water. She can see the person on the bank, growing smaller, face white under the red woolen hat, dark holes where there are eyes. Behind the figure an army of black spruce marches along the ridge, sharp tips like warrior spears piercing the fog.

  Why? It’s all she can think. It makes no sense.

  The Nahamish tugs her back under, smashes her into a subsurface boulder. Pain explodes through her left shoulder. She knows it will take seconds before hypothermia completely steals her brain function, before she loses all motor coordination, all ability to fight, to swim. Wildly, clumsily, she struggles against the current. She must halt her ride downriver before she reaches the falls. But her hands have frozen into cramped claws. Her waders and boots drag her down as if a monster is pulling her by the legs from below, down, down, down into its lair, into to a watery grave.

  Lungs burning, she is roiled and bashed against more rocks. She no longer knows which way is up or down, which way to fight for air. But as she starts to pass out, the river once more tosses her to the foaming surface. As her head rises, she gasps maniacally for air. Water enters her mouth. She chokes as she is sucked under again. But she grabs for a fallen log wedged into the bank. This time her claw-hands find purchase.

  Hold. Hold, dammit … Hold …

  Her heart pounds against her ribs. She digs her nails into soaked bark as branches trap her like a thing caught in a strainer. But she can feel the spindly branches breaking, her grip slipping in the rotten log detritus. The river yanks insistently at her waterlogged waders.

  Should’ve worn a life vest. W-would it have even helped?

  She manages to take a breath, then another. Absurdly, she notices the indigo sky—the brighter points of two evening stars that hover like emergency flares. P—planets, really. Jupiter? Venus? No idea. But they give her a sense of the universe, of her tiny place in it. A sense of hope.

  Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight … It was nights like this, sitting at a campfire with her dad, who taught her to fly-fish when she was little girl—that was the beginning of a journey that has led her to this point, to this river where she is now going to die … Life is like a river … Life is absurd … The only constant is the water of change …

  She takes another breath, then manages to move her hands along the rough log, gaining a better grip, pulling herself toward the bank. Time is strange how it slows, stretches. She had this experience once before during a head-on collision on a snowy highway. Under extreme life-and-death stress, one really does have occasion to observe things in slow, protracted motion that in real-time occur in a smashing blink of an eye. Claw upon frozen claw, she inches closer to the bank. She gropes for branches of the leafless scrub growing along the river’s edge. The bank is very steep here. For a while she lies panting, half in and half out of the water, the side of her face resting in green, slimy green moss and black loam. It smells like compost, like mushrooms. Like a pond with fish.

  A sound reaches into her consciousness—a raven. Cawing. It must be close, right above her somewhere in the trees up on the bank. Otherwise, she wouldn’t hear it above the boom of Plunge Falls. The raven is a scavenger. It’s smart. It knows she is dying. It will go for her eyes first, the soft parts of her body. Her mind begins to go dark.

  No. No!

  I must keep my brain alive. It’s all I’ve got now. My mind. Use it. To command my body, to live … She lies there in the slippery mulch of soil and moss and fall detritus, struggling to comprehend her situation, the sequence of events that sent her into the river. Her brain fades to black again. It’s almost a relief now. She welcomes it. But a stray little spark in the blackness does not die. It flares slightly. Flickers. Then bursts to life as fear strikes a jumper cable to her heart.

  You.

  I think of you. My fear is suddenly for you …

  Her eyes flare open wide. Her pulse races. Adrenaline pounds through her blood.

  What do they say about people who survive against all odds when others would surely die? About that man who sawed off his own arm to free himself from the rock jaws that trapped him; the young woman who descended a snowy mountain after a plane crash wearing a miniskirt and no panties; the female teen who survived feverish, insect-ridden months in the Amazon jungle after falling like a whirling seedpod from the sky while still strapped into the passenger seat of a commercial airplane; the man who drifted for months in a raft in the ocean … They all returned to civilization with one common refrain. They say they lived, survived, did it for someone. A loved one. The thought of that loved one infused them with a superhuman strength to fight death, because they had to go home. To that loved one … I must go home, for you. I must live for you. This changes everything. Everything. I can’t let you down. I am all you have …

  She reaches slowly for a clump of roots, drags herself up the bank an inch. She gathers breath, reaches for a higher clump, pulls. Pain screams back into her body. She relishes it. She’s still alive. She fights death knowing that one slip, one lost grip, will shoot her back down the slick bank into the water. And over the falls.

  She’s almost at the crest of the bank. She stops, gathering breath, marshaling reserves, retching. Mist creeps over her, thick with moisture and increasing darkness. She senses something again. She’s not alone. A strange combination of hope and dread sinks through her. Slowly, very slowly, terrified of what she might find, she looks up. Her heart stalls.

  A black shape among the trees. Standing deadly still. Silent. Watching from the gloam. Observing her struggle.

  Or is she hallucinating? Wind stirs boughs, branches twist, and the shape moves. Coming closer? Or is it just shadows in the wind?

  Painfully, slowly, she releases a fist-hold on grass, making precarious her position on the slick bank. She raises her free hand, stretching her arm out toward the shape.

  “Help,” she whispers.

  No movement.

  “Please. Help … me.” She raises her hand higher, giving gravity more power. No response.

  Confusion chases through her. Then it hits her. Like a bolt from the blue. And as she realizes what is going on, why this is happening, all hope is sucked out of her body. It takes her last vestiges of strength. Her outreached hand has tipped the balance, and she begins to slip. She gathers speed suddenly, gravity thrilled to have her back, tumbling and sliding her in her waterlogged waders and boots all the way back down to the river. She lands with a splosh. The current grabs at her with delight as the human figure continues to study her in silence from the trees above. A final thought cuts through her mind as she goes under …

  It’s impossible to suffer without making someone pay for it.

  But who will pay if I am drowned?

 
; How will you get justice? How will anyone know?

  Because the dead cannot tell.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Photo © 2013 Paul Beswetherick

  Loreth Anne White is an award-winning, bestselling author of romantic suspense, thrillers, and mysteries, including The Drowned Girls, the first book in the Angie Pallorino series. A three-time RITA finalist, she has also won the Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award, the National Readers’ Choice Award, and the Romantic Crown for Best Romantic Suspense and Best Book Overall—in addition to being a Booksellers’ Best finalist, a multiple Daphne Du Maurier Award finalist, and a multiple CataRomance Reviewers’ Choice Award winner. A former journalist and newspaper editor who has worked in both South Africa and Canada, she now resides in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest with her family. When she’s not writing, you will find her skiing, biking, or hiking the trails with her dog. Visit her at www.lorethannewhite.com.