Can't Find My Way Home

by Carlene Thompson

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Further Titles by Carlene Thompson

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Epilogue

  Further Titles by Carlene Thompson

  BLACK FOR REMEMBRANCE

  ALL FALL DOWN

  THE WAY YOU LOOK TONIGHT

  TONIGHT YOU’RE MINE

  IN THE EVENT OF MY DEATH

  DON’T CLOSE YOUR EYES

  SINCE YOU’VE BEEN GONE

  IF SHE SHOULD DIE

  SHARE NO SECRETS

  LAST WHISPER

  LAST SEEN ALIVE

  IF YOU EVER TELL

  YOU CAN RUN …

  NOWHERE TO HIDE

  TO THE GRAVE

  CAN’T FIND MY WAY HOME *

  * available from Severn House

  CAN’T FIND MY WAY HOME

  Carlene Thompson

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  This first world edition published 2014

  in Great Britain and the USA by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  19 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM2 5DA.

  Trade paperback edition first published 2015 in Great Britain

  and the USA by SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD.

  eBook edition first published in 2015 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 2014 by Carlene Thompson

  The right of Carlene Thompson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Thompson, Carlene author.

  Can’t find my way home.

  1. Missing persons–Investigation–Fiction. 2. Children

  of criminals–Fiction. 3. Romantic suspense novels.

  I. Title

  813.6-dc23

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8457-2 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-556-8 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-603-8 (e-book)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Falkirk,

  Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  PROLOGUE

  Eighteen Years Ago

  No one was home.

  Brynn Wilder climbed the steps of her porch and turned to wave goodbye to her best friend Cassie Hutton and Cassie’s mother, who’d brought Brynn back from a sleepover at their house. Brynn unlocked the front door, walked into the living room, then stopped and listened. Usually she heard kids stumbling through the piano lessons her mother gave on days off from her part-time job at Lavinia Love’s boutique, Love’s Dress Shoppe, or rock music coming from her big brother Mark’s bedroom, or her father loudly opening and closing drawers in the metal file cabinet in his small office. Now there was only unnatural silence. Then she saw the note taped to the inside of the door:

  Lavinia needs me at the shop. I canceled today’s music lessons. I should be back by four. If Dad isn’t here when you get home, he’s fishing. Lock the doors. Be good and most of all, be careful.

  Love,

  Mom

  Brynn smiled. A miracle – a beautiful spring Saturday morning with Mom at Love’s Dress Shoppe and her sixteen-year-old brother, Mark, on a school trip to the Maryland Science Center in Baltimore. For once, the house was empty and she could do exactly as she pleased.

  Except that faced with this unexpected marvel, Brynn couldn’t think of one thing she wanted to do. What a bummer, she brooded as she slumped upstairs to her bedroom, opened her canvas duffle bag and held it upside down over her twin bed. Out tumbled her nightwear, a plastic sack filled with a bottle of bright pink nail polish, a collection of cheap cosmetics, a curling iron and a travel-size can of super-hold hairspray. Last night, she and Cassie had worked for nearly two hours performing makeovers on each other. Satisfied with the results, they’d agreed they looked at least fifteen and no one would ever guess they were only twelve years old. After that, they’d watched a horror movie and finally fallen asleep at around one a.m.

  Brynn now looked at herself in her dresser mirror, picked up her pink plastic brush – she’d been looking for her favorite silver-backed one since Wednesday – and ran it through her long, wavy dark cinnamon-brown hair, still sticky from too much cheap hairspray. She liked her thick hair, her straight nose and her long-lashed, almond-shaped hazel eyes, but she didn’t like looking twelve, especially when people said she acted more mature than most twelve-year-old girls. Dad always told her that by eighteen she’d look just like her mother, who Brynn thought was movie-star beautiful. That was a long time to wait, but until then …

  She leaned forward and looked closely in the mirror. Was that a zit on her chin?

  Appalled, Brynn dabbed on a spot of acne cream, whirled away from the mirror, walked straight into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. Food and drink usually helped her during bouts of oncoming depression caused by things like thoughts of zits.

  Gazing into the refrigerator, she spotted a pitcher of sugarless iced tea and poured herself a tall glass, telling herself it was non-zit-producing, unlike Coke. Then, on the countertop, she saw a plate of fresh spice muffins covered with cling wrap.

  As Brynn sat at the kitchen table sipping her drink and downing a muffin, she tried to think of something to do – something she wouldn’t be allowed to do if she weren’t alone. After a minute or so, her mind blank, Brynn sighed. She could not miss this opportunity and just sit here doing nothing. Besides, she felt weird. She frowned. Weird? Weird how? ‘Weird, like something’s wrong, spooky,’ she said aloud, startling herself. Something wasn’t right, but she had no idea what.

  Then she knew. Last night she and Cassie had talked a lot about the Genessa Point Killer, the guy who’d murdered eight boys and girls around town in the last three years. They’d turned off the lights, lit candles, and in low, melodramatic voices discussed theories about who could be the killer. Anybody, they’d finally decided, shuddering, frightening each other. Then they’d creeped themselves out even more by watching a horror movie that was way beyond scary.

  Brynn shivered. I can’t stay in this house all by myself, even with the doors locked, she thought, suddenly nervous. Her friends often told her that she was the bravest girl they knew. She
acted modest, shrugging off the label, although she considered it a tremendous compliment. Yet now she didn’t feel brave – she felt afraid, and she wanted to get out of this silent house as fast as possible.

  But Mom was busy at the store. Mom’s boss, Lavinia Love, would get mad if she had to leave to pick up her ‘little girl.’ The Huttons had returned Brynn home over an hour early before they headed to the hospital to see Cassie’s grandfather, who’d fallen down the steps and broken his hip this morning. She couldn’t bother them and the nearest neighbors were gone for the weekend.

  Abruptly, Brynn remembered the note she’d found on the door: If Dad isn’t here when you get home, he’s fishing.

  Fishing! Of course Mom wouldn’t have gone off and left her alone, especially with a killer running loose, she thought. Jonah Wilder went fishing within sight of the house every Saturday morning when the weather allowed. She would rush to his favorite fishing spot and surprise him.

  Brynn grabbed the can of bug spray Dad always forgot and dropped a couple of muffins in a plastic bag for him. She didn’t want to fish – she didn’t even like fishing. She just wanted to be with her dad.

  Jonah Wilder had been the principal of Genessa Point Middle School for four years and moved up to principal of the high school three years ago. Brynn knew how much the job meant to him and that he took his duties seriously. He put up with no nonsense at the school, seemed to know how every student was doing, and had no tolerance for troublemakers. Three-day suspensions had become common since he’d taken over as principal. Many students – and quite a few parents – thought he was strict, harsh and completely without humor, earning him the popular nickname ‘Stone Jonah,’ both for his stone-gray eyes and his austere manner.

  But Brynn didn’t know ‘Stone Jonah.’ At home he was a different man than outsiders saw. He treated her and Mark with love and understanding. He rarely raised his voice, and listened to their explanations when they got in trouble. He adored Mom. He always complimented a new outfit or a different hairstyle and looked fascinated when she rattled on about her days at Love’s Dress Shoppe or teaching a special piano student. Sometimes Brynn had secretly watched them slow dance late at night to ballads. After two or three songs, during which they’d giggle and murmur, Dad would hug Mom, kiss her cheek and call her ‘My sweet Marguerite.’

  She dashed out the back door of the house that stood on a low rise above the Chesapeake Bay. Brynn loved her house at the end of Oriole Lane. Dad diligently maintained the modest, two-story beige home with rust-colored shutters, and Mom kept her summer flowerbeds bursting with a riot of colors. Warm summer air blew Brynn’s stiffened hair and the sun glowed butter yellow in a washed denim sky.

  She hurried through the yard and drew a deep breath, bursting into a run through the saltmeadow cordgrass to the wooden steps leading down to the beach where her father fished. The Wilders had no dock, boathouse, or fishing boat. Dad and Mom said they should save extra money for Mark’s and Brynn’s college funds, not spend it on excesses.

  Halfway down the steps, Brynn spotted her father’s orange and black tackle box, his rod and reel and his folding aluminum chair. But she couldn’t see her father. The tackle box was turned on its side. His rod and reel lay in the sand. The chair was upside down.

  Brynn slowed, almost stopping as her earlier uneasiness returned. Where was Dad? He’d never leave his fishing spot in such a mess. He was the neatest person she’d ever known.

  A scream suddenly ripped through the beautiful, sun-filled scene. A girl’s scream.

  Brynn went stone-still, only her gaze moving to the river birches, sycamores and white oaks growing near the beach. Another scream came from the mass of trees: ‘Please, God, no!’

  Terror filled a girl’s shrill voice. Brynn began to tremble. Her mind told her to run back to the house and lock herself inside, but her body wouldn’t obey. She walked stiffly down the steps and mechanically through the sand toward the trees. Overhead, a sea gull shrieked as if alerting her to impending danger. The sun flashed blindingly on the water of the bay. Brynn blinked in surprise. The sun shouldn’t be shining now, she thought distantly. Darkness should be descending – darkness to shut out what was happening in the woods.

  ‘Dear God, no! Don’t—’

  She barely recognized her father’s agonized voice.

  ‘No more … no …’

  ‘Help me!’ the girl shrieked. ‘Please, don’t!’

  Brynn shriveled into herself. She felt little and helpless and could hardly breathe. The gull screeched again. The sun glared unrelentingly.

  The world stopped for Brynn as Jonah Wilder staggered from the trees clutching his neck, weaving, his steps dragging. He angled toward the bay, then turned. He seemed to look right at Brynn, but somehow she knew he didn’t see her. Even from this distance, she could tell his sight had turned inward, the outside world lost to him as he slowly dropped to his knees then crashed face down on the sand.

  Brynn stared at her father for a few shock-frozen moments before life flowed through her and she ran down the rest of the wooden steps. Almost immediately, a girl emerged from the trees – a teenage girl in jeans and a white T-shirt, her blonde hair garishly streaked with scarlet, a hand clutching a red patch spreading from her back to her side. Her gaze found Brynn’s. She swayed. ‘Help me,’ she called in a weak, ragged voice. ‘P-please … help me.’

  Then she sank down, her slender body sprawling beside Brynn’s father.

  ONE

  Present Day

  A cloud moved across the moon, the shadows deepened, and not far behind her, Evangelista heard a ferocious sound – not human, not animal, not like anything she’d ever heard before … or anything she’d ever hear again, she thought, because whatever was making that sound intended to

  Brynn Wilder paused and frowned at the computer screen. Intended to what? Rip her to pieces? Tear off her head? Paralyze her and take her back to its den? Critics called her novels ‘a rich mixture of supernatural and fantasy, both poignant and thrilling.’ They’d change that label to ‘crude, amateurish horror’ if they got a look at her latest effort.

  ‘This is awful,’ Brynn said angrily, hitting the delete button. ‘Even I don’t know what I’m writing about!’

  She’d been working on her latest book all evening and she’d completed only four awkward, emotionless paragraphs. She couldn’t get into the mood. The heroine’s plight seemed contrived, her fear wooden, her actions stupid. No sensible reader would care about her. At this point, Brynn didn’t care about her.

  Brynn leaned back in her chair, rubbed her neck and glanced at the wall clock: 10:30 p.m. Definitely time for a beer, she thought, going to the refrigerator and grabbing a bottle. She twisted off the cap. A glass? Not tonight. She tilted her head and downed a long, cold swallow. She liked gulping beer directly from the bottle. Something about it made her feel blithe and bold, like a sassy woman who didn’t have a care in the world. She knew it was a childish illusion, but it was better than the alternative: worrying about her brother, Mark.

  Dammit, why was he obsessed with Genessa Point? Why did he have to go back to that awful place last week?

  Because it was where their father had died. Died? Brynn laughed bitterly, nearly choking on her second gulp of beer. A teenage girl named Tessa Cavanaugh had stabbed Jonah Wilder to death. Tessa’s father was the president of Genessa Point’s largest bank. The Cavanaughs were the town’s most affluent family and Tessa’s older brother, Nathan, was a close friend of Mark Wilder, while Tessa had taken piano lessons from Marguerite. Yet based on all the evidence police found at the time, the town, and later the whole country, had labeled Brynn’s father Stone Jonah Wilder, the murderer of eight victims under the age of fifteen.

  At first, people had thought a fifteen-year-old girl couldn’t possibly win a battle for her life against a grown man. Yet it seemed to be true. Although she’d suffered multiple lacerations and puncture wounds – the most critical barely missing a kidney – Tess
a had survived. She’d told police that photography was her hobby and she’d gotten an early start that beautiful day. She’d been taking some photos in the woods behind the Wilder house for the last three Saturdays. That day, Mr Wilder had been fishing nearby and had good-naturedly posed for a couple of pictures. The police had later found the shots on the film in Tessa’s camera. Afterward, she’d gone into the cluster of trees.

  Tessa said she was bent over, taking pictures of the fairy ring mushrooms that flourished in the woods, when suddenly someone had leaped on her, slamming her face into the moist earth. Although she hadn’t passed out, the attacker had ground her face into the dirt and begun stabbing her. He’d said nothing, so she couldn’t identify a voice. Still conscious, she’d fought desperately, her lean, muscular body writhing away from him for an instant and digging in the dirt until her hand closed around her camera. With all her strength, she’d struck him with it.

  ‘I don’t remember much after that except someone grunted, the stabbing stopped and the guy rolled off me,’ she’d told police weakly in the hospital. ‘I was trying to crawl away and something cut my hand. I knew it was a knife and I grabbed it and stabbed him, over and over. But there was so much dirt in my eyes, I couldn’t see who I was stabbing.’ Through sobs, she’d asked, ‘Who was it?’ The police said when they’d told her the person was Jonah Wilder, Tessa had gotten hysterical. ‘Not Mr Wilder!’ she’d cried. ‘It couldn’t have been! Not Mr Wilder!’

  No, there had to be a mistake, most people said. Tessa was traumatized, blinded by dirt and badly injured. Jonah Wilder couldn’t have attacked her. His reputation as a hard-working, law-abiding, devoted family man had never been questioned. Sometimes he seemed stiff, humorless, even quaint, but he was always kind and polite and, over time, most citizens of Genessa Point had realized that he was merely serious and reserved, maybe even a bit shy. People didn’t love him like they did his best friend, the outgoing, good-natured Dr Edmund Ellis, but generally they liked and respected Jonah.