by Noelle Adams
“How would I get there?”
“It’s not that long a drive.”
“I don’t have a car.”
“I know, but you could take a taxi or something.” He thought of something then. “I’ll take you if you want to go. I know right where it is.”
“What do you mean? You know I don’t want to—”
“You won’t have to talk to anyone. It will just be you and me in the car. We’ll drive right to the spot on the beach without stopping, and we’ll make sure no one else is around before we get out. Then we’ll come right back. It will only take a few hours. We could do it today if you want.”
He didn’t know why, but it felt important to him that Holly take this step even if it was just a small one. He desperately wanted to draw her out, keep her from living in fear, and he had no idea how to do it except through a series of small steps.
She wouldn’t go into Cape Charles with him, but maybe she would do this.
“I… I don’t know.” Her eyes were very wide, and the color had left her face.
“Do you want to visit that spot?”
She nodded mutely.
“Then let’s do it. Let’s do it today. I need to run into town to get some gas and get some clean clothes, but then I’ll come back and pick you up. You won’t have to talk to anyone but me.”
She took a shaky breath. “Okay.”
His heart jumped in excitement. “Really?”
“Yeah. Let’s do it.”
He smiled and leaned over to kiss her, feeling like he’d accomplished something really good. “Excellent.”
“But let’s do it early, before I get scared and change my mind.”
He nodded and started to sit up, stretching his back and smoothing down his hair, which he was sure was standing straight up on end. “I can leave now and be back in less than an hour.”
“Okay.”
He looked at her closely. “You’re not going to change your mind?”
“I hope not.”
“I’ll be back before you can.”
Cade checked his phone on the way back into Cape Charles and discovered a message from Greg, a buddy he had in the New Jersey state police.
At Cade’s request, Greg had done a search on Mason Devereux, the cousin of John Fontina. Mason had evidently been a small-time crook, arrested numerous times for robbery and assault. He’d been in and out of prison until he’d skipped out on his parole six years ago.
It happened a lot, Greg said. Most of the folks who knew him were glad Mason was gone.
Cade’s head was spinning with this new information, and he pieced it together with the rest of what he knew as he took a quick shower at his mother’s and then changed into a decent shirt and a pair of jeans.
If Mason was Holly’s father, then maybe he’d killed her mother.
Or maybe her mother had killed him.
He chatted briefly with his mom, slightly disturbed when she asked him if he had a new girlfriend. He asked her why she assumed such a thing, and she said he looked alive in a way she hadn’t seen him in a really long time.
He wasn’t sure what to make of that, but he was certainly more invested, engaged in this situation than he could ever remember being.
Even more than the first true-crime book he wrote, when he’d gone home physically ill after some of the interviews with the rapist’s victims.
This was so much more than that, and he knew it was because of Holly.
He gave his mom a quick kiss and headed out the door, grabbing a mug of coffee and one of her muffins as he did since he hadn’t eaten breakfast and was hungry.
He was reviewing dozens of possibilities for the fates of Meg and Mason as he filled up his tank with gas. When he got back in the car and noticed his phone was ringing, he checked the screen and connected quickly when he saw it was his friend in the local police station.
“Hey, Jed,” Cade said, his heart beating more quickly with the hope that he would finally have the piece of information that would answer all his questions. “Any news?”
“Yeah, not much. But I did find an old record where a Margaret Chaney came into the station about twenty-five years ago.”
“What about?”
“That’s the thing. No complaint or charge was filed, so I just have the notation that she came in.”
“What would that mean?”
“Probably that something happened, but she decided not to file a complaint or press charges. Could have been anything. She could have just been complaining about her neighbor playing their music too loud.”
Cade sighed. “Yeah. Maybe.” He didn’t believe it was nothing. Twenty-five years ago would have been around the same time that Mason would have been in Cape Charles. Surely that wasn’t a coincidence.
Something happened. He’d known there was a story here—hidden away by time and fear. He’d known it the first time he laid eyes on Holly.
He was strangely torn between vindication and worry for Holly, for what secret she was hiding from him.
He asked Jed to poke around some more and ended the call. When it rang immediately afterward, he picked it up automatically, assuming Jed was calling back.
It wasn’t Jed. It was his agent in New York.
“What’s going on?” she demanded, sounding frustrated, which was perfectly naturally since she’d called several times over the past weeks and he’d ignored all her calls.
“Nothing. I’ve been busy. Sorry I didn’t call back.”
“So you’re working on a book? What is it?”
He felt trapped in this conversation, and he hated feeling that way. “I’m… I’m not sure.”
“You’re working on something, but you’re not sure what it is?”
“I know what it is, but I’m not sure it’s going to turn into something.”
“This isn’t like you, Cade. What’s the deal?”
“There’s no deal. I just haven’t gotten far enough in the research to know for sure.”
“So give me a hint at least.”
He sighed, something holding him back from mentioning Holly. It felt like a betrayal, admitting out loud that he was seriously contemplating writing a book about her background, when it was the last thing she would want.
“Are you lying to me?” his agent demanded. “Do you even have an idea at all? That’s what losers and failures do, Cade. I thought you were better than this.”
He’d thought he was better than this too. He’d thought he had a successful career. He’d thought his books would keep selling. He’d thought he’d never turn back into that pitiful little boy that everyone looked down on.
A loser. A failure.
He wasn’t going to be that person again.
“I’m not lying,” he said in a rush. “I’m tracking down this story about something that happened here in Cape Charles about twenty-five years ago. There aren’t any official records, so I’m having to find out the information in roundabout ways.”
“That’s fine then. Why the hell wouldn’t you tell me?”
He cleared his throat. “It’s going to be a smaller book than the ones I wrote before. It’s not serial. It’s one crime that has far-ranging consequences.”
“And you’re worried about that? I actually think it’s a good idea to scale back a bit. You can write it more quickly, and everyone won’t be comparing it to your other books. It won’t be so dramatic if it doesn’t do as well.”
Cade swallowed hard. She was trying to be helpful and encouraging, but it just made him feel worse.
Not for years had he thought of himself as the kind of person who would need accommodations or excuses for failure. He’d assumed that was a thing of the past.
“Okay,” he said, feeling sick and wanting the conversation to be over so he could put it out of his mind and think about Holly instead. “I’ll let you know how it’s going.”
“Make sure you do.”
He was still stewing over the conversation as he drove back to Holly’
s home, but his mind jumped topics immediately as he turned up her gravel drive.
This was a big step for Holly, and he really wanted everything to go well.
He wasn’t sure he was invited into her house, but he pulled into the driveway and got out, standing beside his SUV.
She came out of the house almost immediately, carrying a crocheted bag.
“No changing your mind?” he asked, his eyes devouring her slim form, long hair, and sober features as if she were the only way to quench his thirst.
“No changing my mind.” She gave him a little smile. “I’m a little nervous though.”
“That’s okay. As long as it doesn’t keep you from going.” He opened the door for her and helped her in before he went around to the driver’s side.
She was fumbling with the seat belt, and he realized it had probably been a really long time since she’d ridden in a car. He reached over to help her with it.
“It’s not a very long trip,” he said, hoping to encourage her. “Maybe ten minutes to the bridge-tunnel, then over it, then maybe ten minutes more to the beach.”
“Okay.” She took a deep breath, her eyes focused on him. “I’m ready.”
She trusted him, he realized. She was looking at him that way because she trusted him. She believed he would take care of her, help her when she needed it, not push her into anything that would threaten her.
He couldn’t remember anyone really trusting him that way before—not even his mother, who never stopped thinking about him as a boy.
He wondered if he could possibly live up to that trust.
Then he wondered if he would ever even write this book.
Maybe not—if it meant he would have to break the trust in her eyes.
Holly loved the bridge.
She’d been huddled in her seat, obviously nervous and uncomfortable about being in a car, even though Cade made a point of driving under the speed limit. But, as soon as they drove upward onto the first stretch of bridge, she straightened up and gazed out the window in awe.
It was a very compelling view—the roadway low across the bay, water on both sides, and seagulls resting on every column. It was like Cade had never really seen it before, as he looked around and saw what Holly was seeing.
“I always wanted to go out in a boat,” she said, turning to look at him with a smile, “so the bay would be completely surrounding me.”
“I have a boat. I can take you out.” He wished he’d thought about it before. How could he have missed something so obvious that would bring Holly joy? “Anytime you’d like.”
“Maybe.” She turned her head to stare out at the stretch of water, the motion of the waves highlighted by the sun. “I used to feel… trapped all the time. In that hiding place. And out of it, really. So nothing was as nice as being out in the open. Nothing surrounding me. Completely free.”
A familiar knot of angst rose up as he brooded over what she’d gone through as a child. “Why did you get in that hiding place? Did someone come into the house looking for you?”
“No.” She cleared her throat. “Usually, she would hear something and think someone was breaking in, so we would go hide. We were always hiding.”
“From whom?” he asked very softly.
She didn’t answer for a really long time, and Cade held his breath, recognizing that some sort of inner battle was going on inside her. She was close to telling him. He could feel it. He desperately needed to know.
Finally she gave him a flicker of a smile. “Do you always use ‘whom’ correctly in conversation?”
Cade blinked until his mind tracked with the question. Hiding a surge of disappointment, he said lightly, “I do my best.”
That made her laugh, and he gave up on the questioning for the time being.
At this time of day, there were very few people on the bridge-tunnel. He passed a Pepsi truck, and there was a sedan behind him, paced at exactly his own speed.
Holly gasped when they started to descend into the first stretch of tunnel, the concrete walls very high and very close.
“The tunnel isn’t very long,” he said, recognizing that her entire posture had tensed up. As much as she loved the bridge stretches, she would hate the tunnel. It felt as constricting and claustrophobic as could be.
He glanced over at her, and she nodded at him, but she was also huddling her body up as the sunlight vanished and they drove through a constructed tube, deep under the water of the bay. The bridges were made up of four lanes, two in each direction, but the tunnels narrowed down to two, so the oncoming traffic—a slow-moving work truck and three cars that were trapped behind it—were very close to the SUV as they passed by. Holly’s eyes were wide, and her face went dead white as they reached the bottom of the descent and started back up.
“We’re almost through,” he murmured, hoping she wasn’t going to pass out. He should have realized the tunnels might be a problem for her. He should have warned her.
She nodded speechlessly and hugged herself tightly.
He drove as quickly as he could up the ascent toward the sunlight, and Holly gave a loud, shaky breath as soon as they were out of the artificial light of the tunnel. There was an emergency pull-off on the next stretch of bridge, so Cade pulled off onto it, putting the SUV into park and opening all the windows.
Holly breathed deeply as the car behind them passed by.
Cade’s eyes were focused on Holly’s pale face. “Do you need to get out?” he asked at last.
She shook her head and gave him a wobbly smile. “I’m fine. I’m sorry.”
“What are you sorry about?”
“For freaking out like that. You probably think I’m… I’m damaged.”
She was damaged. Fragile. Ready to flee at a moment’s notice. But also beautiful and incredibly strong.
Like the deer that ate her weeds and apples every morning.
“Everyone’s damaged,” he said. “Everyone is damaged in different ways. That’s what the world does to us.”
She inclined her head to acknowledge his words and turned her face toward the open window, toward the sunlight. The color had returned to her face, which was a great relief to Cade.
It was so strange and new to him—this feeling of wanting desperately to take care of someone, to shield her from anything that might hurt her.
“There’s one more tunnel stretch,” he said. “But the second one is a little shorter than the first. Is that going to be all right?”
“Yes. I’ll be okay. I’ll know what to expect this time.”
Cade pulled back out into the road and drove far slower than he normally did, to give her more time before they went through the next tunnel. The silver sedan behind them didn’t appreciate this. He hadn’t cut the other car off when he’d pulled back onto the road, but Cade wished he’d waited to let the other car pass by first. Now the sedan was on his tail, and the driver wasn’t backing off or pulling over into the passing lane to get by him.
Cade was driving slower than he needed to for Holly, but the other car could easily pass and wasn’t. Frustration kept building inside him as the sedan stayed on his tail, even when he speeded up.
“What’s the matter?” Holly asked, looking behind her. She must have noticed that he was distracted.
“Just an asshole behind us, riding my tail because he’s mad that I pulled out in front of him.” Cade slowed down dramatically until he was barely crawling. A tractor-trailer went flying by them in the passing lane, but the sedan didn’t change positions at all.
“Why isn’t he passing?” Holly twisted in her seat until she was facing backward.
“Just being a jerk, I think. Some people are like that.”
Her expression was confused and worried as she looked between Cade and the car behind them. “I don’t like it.” Her voice was a little wobbly.
Cade’s chest clamped down at the rising fear in her voice. She’d grown up with a mother who believed someone was always coming after them. Now the first time
she’d dared to leave the safety of her home, it would feel to her like a threat was closing in. He cursed himself for not letting the car get by before he’d left the emergency pull-off.
He sped up again, glancing over at Holly to say in as relaxed a voice as he could muster. “It’s really nothing to worry about. He’ll get bored in a minute and move on.”
Despite his words, he wanted to grit his teeth at the tailing car. It was obviously just an asshole—exactly as he’d said—but Holly perceived it as a threat.
And he couldn’t stand for anyone to threaten Holly.
He suddenly accelerated, nearly flooring the gas pedal, and soon he was going well over the speed limit. The next tunnel section was approaching quickly, and the tractor-trailer was still well ahead of him.
The sedan had sped up too.
Holly was perfectly still, her face almost white as she turned her gaze between the front windshield and the car behind them. After a few seconds, she said, “You’ll have to go faster if you want to pass that truck before the tunnel.”
That was exactly what Cade wanted to do. He needed to get past the truck before the tunnel so the sedan would be trapped behind it. That was the only way they’d be able to lose the asshole.
He accelerated even more until he was going way too fast. His heart raced as he reached the tractor-trailer, pulling beside it just as the two lanes started merging down into one before the tunnel.
He never would have tried the move under normal circumstances, but it wasn’t so risky as to be dangerous and Holly’s fear was the most important thing.
The truck driver laid on his horn as he got by, and the ass in the sedan, which had been trying to keep up, was forced to slow down and pull behind the slow-moving tractor-trailer.
Cade only slowed down a little since it was necessary as they drove through the narrow tunnel. Holly was obviously nervous again by the tight quarters, but the car following them must have been enough of a distraction that she didn’t get as pale as she had before.
The truck had to drive much more slowly through the narrow two-lane tunnel, and it was out of sight as they cleared the tunnel and started on the final stretch of bridge. Cade drove as fast as he safely could so the sedan couldn’t catch up again after he’d passed the tractor-trailer.
