Wolfhunter River

by Caine, Rachel

  He stares at me for a second, frozen. He drags in a breath and wipes the heel of hands across his face. “I’m sorry,” he says.

  “I know that.”

  I wait until he’s getting back in before I join him. Connor gets in behind us. That just leaves my daughter. She hesitates, glares at me, and then slides into the backseat.

  “Thank you,” I tell her. Lanny crosses her arms and looks away. Not ready yet, but she will be. I hope.

  We’re not a family. But we’re together, and that’s a new start.

  “Please tell me we’re leaving this damn place,” Lanny says.

  “Can you?” I ask Sam. He shrugs as he fastens his seat belt. “The bail . . .”

  “It’s Miranda’s money.”

  That’s enough to make me accelerate.

  We are fifteen minutes out when my phone rings.

  I look at the name. I intend to blow it off, but it’s Hector Sparks, and I feel obligated to answer. I put it on speaker. “Gwen Proctor.”

  “Ms. Proctor, I need your assistance immediately. You have to find her!” He sounds breathless.

  “Find who?”

  “Vera Crockett,” he says. “She’s escaped. And I think she’s in very great danger.”

  “What? How the hell did she—”

  “The police claim they were careless,” he says. He sounds nervous, and it sounds like he’s pacing the floor. “But I think they were very deliberate in allowing her to get away; she was left unattended in the van at the courthouse. I believe this is a plot to have her silenced. Now that she’s on the run, she can easily be killed.”

  “Because of what she knows?” I sharpen my tone. “After talking to her, my whole family is on the same list, don’t you realize that? Did you know this would mean whoever killed Marlene would also come after us? Or are you just that stupid?”

  Sparks is quiet for a moment. Then he says, “I can turn to no one else in this town for help. Not a single person. If you find Vee and bring her to my house, I promise you that I can and will keep all of you safe. But she has to be found. Now. Ms. Proctor, I am not exaggerating when I tell you that this girl has no chance without our help.”

  Dammit.

  I should keep going. I don’t owe this girl anything. I don’t.

  I look at my daughter in the rearview mirror. Her lips are parted. All her defensiveness is gone. She’s staring at me as if she expects me to do something.

  And right now I can’t bear to let her down.

  I turn the car around.

  “I know where she’s going,” Lanny says.

  “How could you possibly—”

  “She’s going to her mom’s house. She’s scared, and she knows they’ll kill her. That’s where she’d go, right?”

  My kid’s smart. Smarter than I am, because it makes perfect sense, and it makes me wonder if Lanny’s thought about ending things. If she’s ever been that desperate and alone. Then I know, from the look in her eyes. She has. Of course she has, with the life she’s been forced to live. That’s a wound that Sam and I inflicted together, for very different reasons.

  I have to make damn sure I don’t let her down.

  The police are doing a grid search, fanning out from the courthouse; it won’t take them long to make it to the taped-off Crockett house. I head straight there and slide to a stop at the curb. No police cruisers in sight so far. I see that the tape that once sealed the front door—the one with the shotgun blast through it—has been ripped off and is flapping in the breeze by one corner.

  “Stay here,” I order, and I’m directing it at everyone, but no one listens to me. As I run for the door, I look back. Sam’s coming. And worse, so is my daughter. I slow as I come up the front steps. Vee tried to kill the last person who surprised her. I gesture for the other two to stay back, and I enforce it with a scorching look.

  Sam grabs Lanny and pulls her to a halt. I proceed carefully. Slowly.

  The house is worse than I’d imagined. A leaning, neglected thing, with a half-rotten porch with no railing. The front door creaks as I ease it back. The stench of old blood hits me, and I try not to gag. “Vee?” I say. “Vee, are you here? It’s Gwen.”

  I look back at Sam, who’s still holding Lanny back. I point to the car. To Connor, who’s hesitating next to it. I mouth Look after them. Sam nods and goes back. No hesitation. I send him a silent thanks for not second-guessing me, and I realize that he rarely does. That’s a gift he’s been quietly giving me this whole time, and I never saw it.

  I step inside. The place is dim, rank with the smell of death, and yet oddly neat. Marlene tried, I think; the carpet is worn but clean. Pictures of Vera as a little girl hang on the wall, along with a set of plaster praying hands and a simple cross.

  Vera is sitting in an old rocking chair, hunched over, motionless. She’s still wearing the jail jumpsuit we saw her in before. Her hair hangs lank over her face. As my eyes adjust, I see she’s got something in her hands.

  A knife.

  That’s when Lanny slams breathlessly through the front door. “I’m not waiting in the car!”

  Oh God. I step between the threat and Lanny. “Vee. Please put the knife down.”

  I hear Lanny slide to a stop. She realizes the situation, and at least she holds back from doing anything more impulsive.

  “You can’t help,” Vee says. She sounds different. When she raises her head, she looks different. The frozen lake has thawed. She looks like a girl who’s finally starting to feel something, and it’s hellish. “They killed my momma. And they’re going to kill me too. I’d already be dead except you tried to help me, and I’m sorry, I heard them talkin’, and they say you’re next. I’m sorry.” She’s crying. There are tears running down her cheeks. She’s shivering. I want to wrap her in a blanket, but I can’t; I can’t even comfort her as long as she’s holding that knife. “I was just so scared.”

  “This isn’t your fault,” I tell her. “Come with us. We can help you.”

  She shakes her head, and she puts the edge of that knife to her arm; it’s set to cut upward, tearing open the long artery. People bleed out quickly from that. I hear Lanny gasp. I see the skin indent from the pressure of the knife. There’s a tiny, tiny impulse that’s holding Vee back, and anything can tip things in the other direction. I don’t dare say anything.

  My daughter does. “My dad was a murderer, did you know that? And they thought my mom helped him. They wanted to take her away from us forever. And”—Lanny gulps air—“I didn’t see any way out. I was twelve, and so many people hated us, Vee. So many. I just wanted . . .”

  Vee hasn’t moved, but she’s listening. “Did you try?” she asks when Lanny pauses.

  Please say no, I think. But my daughter says, “Yes. Once. When I was living with my grandma. I got scared after I took the pills. I threw them all up. She never knew.”

  I never knew, either, and it shakes me to my core.

  “You can change your mind,” Lanny says to the girl in the chair, the girl who is one-quarter of an inch away from death. “I did. You can be braver than this. You aren’t guilty. My mom wasn’t either. Look at her. She fights every day, and you can too. I believe in you, Vee.”

  “Why?” Vee’s crying harder now, and it’s a quiet, wrenching wail. “Nobody else ever did.”

  “Well, then, somebody should,” Lanny says. “Come on. Stay with us. Fight. Do that for your mom.”

  Vee gasps. She drops the knife, and it bounces away. I quickly pick it up, and my daughter heads straight for the girl; she wraps Vee in a hug, and Vee shudders and relaxes into that embrace like it was all she ever wanted. Someone to believe, for just a moment, that she was worth saving.

  “Come on,” I tell them quietly. “Vee, you’re coming with us. We’ll take you to Mr. Sparks.”

  She nods listlessly. It’s like she’s back to a passive state again, but it’s not as eerie. More like relief.

  We make it outside. I wipe the knife and toss it out into the weed-
covered yard. Best not to have my fingerprints on anything here, or Vee’s either.

  We switch around. Connor comes up front. Sam and Lanny bracket Vee in the back, in case she suddenly decides to bolt again. And I accelerate away from the house and round the next corner just as one of the Wolfhunter PD cruisers turns down the street. It doesn’t follow. It stops at the first house.

  Grid search. It’s helpful right now.

  Hector Sparks’s home office looks like a safe harbor. I pull up to the immaculately kept house and stop the engine. Then I turn to look at Vee Crockett. “Before we go in, I need you to tell me something, okay? What did your mother know? Because I think you do know, or you wouldn’t be so afraid they’d kill you.”

  “If I say, they’ll kill all y’all,” she says. “You know that, right?”

  “Well, they already tried anyway,” Sam says. He sounds calm and strong, and it’s just what she needs, I can tell. She nods slowly. Lifts her chin. This kid has problems, there’s no doubt about that; she needs help. But she’s got something inside, I can see that too. Trauma leaves a mark. So does character.

  “My momma saw the wreck,” Vee says.

  Connor turns and stares at her. He gets it first, I think. “The ghost car wreck?”

  “Wasn’t a ghost car,” she tells him quite seriously. “Ghost car’s an old Tin Lizzie as drives out on the road by the river. This was two cars that hit head-on. One was an old man who drinks and lived up in the hills.” She swallows hard. “He died. Momma told me she saw him with his head all crushed in.”

  The supposed ghost car wreck, I remember, was just about a week ago. “Vee,” I say, “your mom worked for the garage dispatching wreckers. How did she see it?”

  “They was shorthanded a driver, so she drove one of the two trucks. She helped haul them off to where they got buried.”

  “You said the old man from the hills died. What about the other driver?”

  “He died too,” she said. “But he weren’t the only one in the car. Mom said she heard somebody crying in the back. She thought it was his ghost at first. But then they opened the back and . . .”

  “And what?” Lanny asks, and takes her hand. Vee seems to steady again.

  “And they found the little girl,” she says. “She’s still here, I guess.”

  “What little girl?” Sam asks, but I already know.

  “Ellie White,” I tell him.

  It all fits. Marlene, seeing the wreck. The involvement of Carr, who owns the garage, plus the police chief and cops, plus the banker to demand another ransom payment to their own offshore bank. No wonder they want us all dead, if they’re this close to getting paid. They’ve already assumed that she told us in prison during that interview.

  And they’re all implicated. Most of the cops, if not all. Everyone at the garage. Maybe it stretches further than that.

  “Vee? Did your mom say what happened to the little girl?” I ask.

  “Mr. Carr took her away,” she says. “He told Momma she’d get ten thousand dollars if she kept her mouth shut.”

  But Marlene hadn’t kept her mouth shut. She’d called me instead, worried that she was in over her head. Worried that a little girl’s life was on the line. She must have heard something to make her doubt the child would be returned safely.

  What we need to do now is call the FBI. Let them descend on this town like locusts until they get to the truth. The problem is, if we do that, there’s no guarantee that Ellie White won’t be dead and dumped at the first sign of a federal badge. They didn’t seem afraid of the TBI, which is obviously looking in the wrong place.

  I follow that trail to the end, and I realize I’ve forgotten something.

  They have seen a federal badge. Mike Lustig’s. He flashed it last night in the process of protecting Sam from whatever was coming for him. Oh Jesus. They have to believe it’s all coming down on them.

  We might have killed this little girl already.

  “Mom?” Lanny says. I realize I’ve been silent too long. “Are we going inside? We shouldn’t be out here too long, right?”

  This has suddenly gotten very, very complicated. There’s only one road through Wolfhunter that I know of. All these people have to do is wait for us to try to leave town, and they can close their trap and get us all at once. I suddenly wonder what’s happened to Mike Lustig. And Miranda Tidewell, if she was with him.

  If these people want to get away with collecting a fortune in ransom, they have a lot of people they need to eliminate. Fast.

  And we’re high on the list.

  “Out of the car,” I tell them. “Let’s go.”

  15

  GWEN

  I bang hard on the door, and Mrs. Pall greets me with a grim look. “He’s not here,” she says. “You should have called. You’ll have to come back later.”

  She’s already shutting the well-polished door. I ruin the shine by putting a hand flat against the wood and pushing back. “Where is he?”

  “He’s not available.”

  “I don’t care. He called us,” I tell her. My tone tells her not to screw with me. I’m not about to be left outside, exposed, with Vee and my kids at risk.

  Mrs. Pall gives us a sour look, but stands back. She’s wearing what I would swear is the same dress as before, but in a different color, and another nineteenth-century–style apron. She stares out at my rental car while I move past her, and finally says, “Do I have to watch over your children now as well?” There’s a strong implication that Social Services should have taken them away long ago.

  “No, thank you,” I say. “What a kind offer.” I head straight for the hallway that leads to his office. I can see Sparks behind the desk. He’s rising from his seat when Mrs. Pall suddenly cuts in front of me, and I have to stop or run right into her. “You’ll have to wait in the parlor,” she says. “It’s behind you to the left.”

  Hector Sparks is swinging his door shut. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’ll need just a few minutes to finish a phone call.”

  I heard nothing on a speakerphone, and he hadn’t been holding a phone either. But before I can tell him that we have his missing client, he’s slammed the door on me.

  If this is a trap . . . Paranoia surges back. But the fact is, we have few options left. Yes, I’ve got a gun; I’m guessing that Sam doesn’t because it would have been held as evidence by the police. My extra weapon is locked up in my SUV, held at the county sheriff’s substation. I’m no longer sure that Mike can help us. I remember those black SUVs in town. If Carr and his coconspirators hired outsiders to come in and blockade the road, take anybody who wasn’t part of the plot . . . then help is very far away right now.

  “What the hell was that?” Lanny asks. She’s still holding on to Vee, or Vee’s holding on to her; it’s hard to be certain. “I thought he wanted us to come here!” She sounds both outraged and nervous. I don’t blame her. I’m still facing Mrs. Pall. The dislike radiates off her like a dark cloud.

  “Behind you,” she says again. “To the left.” Each word is overly enunciated. I’m not really tempted to comply, but I can hear the others turn and head in that direction. I’m the last to move, but I finally follow.

  “Seriously, a parlor,” Lanny says, as Mrs. Pall slides doors shut on us. “Didn’t those go out, like, ages ago?”

  She’s right. It’s severely dated: a formal receiving room with stiff Victorian horsehair sofa, a leather chair by an empty fireplace, antique wallpaper, glossy curio cases filled with teacups. There’s a poker by the fire. I take note of it, just in case. Sparks had sworn we’d be safe here, but how is he planning to defend this house? If he is.

  “You’re sure about this guy?” Sam asks me. He’s looking around as if he finds this as strange, as alien, as Lanny does. Vera is huddling close to my daughter, and Lanny, after turning up her nose, leads the other girl to the sofa. They sit. There’s a knitted blanket sitting on a chair, and Lanny retrieves it to drape it over Vee, who’s still shivering.

&nb
sp; “I’m not sure about anyone right now,” I tell him. “We need to find something for Vee to put on. That jail jumpsuit has to go.”

  “But . . . I thought you had to take me back to jail?” Vee seems dazed. I don’t blame her. “Why should I change?”

  “I’m not here for Sparks to turn you back over; I’m going to convince him we need to get you out of town. So we’ll need a different car, one that can’t be traced back to us, and we need a disguise for you.”

  “Mom, that’s . . . What do they call it? Aiding and abetting a fugitive? Can’t we go to jail for that?” Trust my son to know the proper statutes we’re about to violate.

  “We can,” I say. “But the thing is, if we can call in the TBI and FBI, and get Vee safely out of here and into their custody, we can make the case that we weren’t aiding and abetting; we were all working on the side of a kidnapped child. All of us. Including Vee, who has direct knowledge even if she didn’t know it.”

  “And you think this guy’s going to help?” Sam says. “We should call Mike.”

  “I thought you didn’t trust him,” Lanny says. I can tell by the way she frowns at him that she’s not completely Team Sam anymore either.

  “I don’t,” he tells her. “But that’s personal. This is a kid’s life. I can trust him with that.”

  I don’t want to admit my suspicion that Mike—and Miranda—might never have even made it out of Wolfhunter. “Then text him what we know,” I tell Sam. “The faster they’re on this, the better. But don’t tell him where we are.”

  Sam, I’m relieved to see, has his phone; I suppose they had to give it back when he was released. He quickly texts. While he does, I slide the parlor door open. Mrs. Pall is standing in the entryway as if she’s been listening, or waiting. It’s creepy. “Do you have anything we can give Vera Crockett to wear?”

  She thinks for a moment, and then smiles. I don’t think I like that expression any better than her usual sour one. “Why, yes, I think I do,” she says. “I’ll be right back. Please wait there.”

  She marches off down the hall on the other side of the stairs. I look toward Sparks’s closed door. I can’t hear any conversation, but I suppose he could be on the phone, after all.