Stillhouse Lake

  A lawyer? My first impulse is shock and rejection, but then I reconsider. It might be a good idea. I could confess everything about my past to an attorney, and he'd have to keep it under seal. Maybe finally unburdening myself would feel good. And maybe it wouldn't. If I still can't fully trust Sam with all my secrets, trusting some country lawyer out of Norton would be nearly impossible. It's a small town. People talk.

  I change the subject. "How are the kids?"

  "All fine. Pizza for dinner. They've got homework. Not too happy about it. The homework, I mean. They were really into the food."

  "Well, that's normal." I suddenly realize that I'm starving; I've gone without anything more solid than coffee and a soft drink all day. "Any pizza left?"

  "With two kids? You're dreaming if you think they didn't finish a large all by themselves." Sam smiles a little. "But I ordered two for that very reason. Just needs a little heating up."

  "Sounds like heaven. Join me?"

  So we find ourselves sitting at the kitchen table in companionable silence as I eat two slices and think about a third. Lanny breezes in from her bedroom to grab an energy drink and steal a slice. She raises an eyebrow and says, "You're back."

  "Don't sound so thrilled."

  She rounds her eyes and flutters her hands and pitches her voice into the annoying, saccharine level. "You're back! Oh, Mom, I missed you so much!"

  I nearly choke on my pizza. She smirks and retreats to her room, slamming the door even though she doesn't need to. That makes Connor stick his head out. He sees me and gives me a quiet grin. "Hi, Mom."

  "Hi, honey. You need any help with your homework?"

  "Nah, I got it. It's easy. I'm glad you're back."

  From him, it sounds sincere, and I smile back with real warmth. The warmth fades as Connor withdraws back into his room, and I'm faced with a stark reality: Mel knows where we are. He knows. He talked about Brady. Specifically about my son.

  The answer's obvious. Javier has the van ready. All I have to do is drive the Jeep over and pick up the van, load us up, and go. Find a new place to start over. We can use the emergency IDs I have buried in the geocache fifty miles from here; I've also split part of the money there, and I'll leave it for now. I have better than thirty thousand with me, still. I'll have to pay Absalom in Bitcoin to get us new, clean papers and backstories once we burn these identities, and that'll cost us another ten thousand, at the least. From the ease with which he does it, I can only think he works for some shadowy spy agency where false identities are as common as junk mail.

  Melvin expects me to run; he said as much. But everyone runs from the monster. Everyone except the monster slayer, a voice in my head says. Not Mel's, this time. My own. It sounds calm, and cool, and utterly capable. Don't do this. You're happy here. Don't let him win. You have the upper hand, and he knows it. He doesn't want to die, and you can always, always pull that trigger.

  I think about it, finishing the pizza and the beer. Sam watches me, but he hasn't broken the silence, hasn't asked. I like that he doesn't.

  I finally say, "Sam . . . I have something to tell you. If you walk away, that's okay; I won't blame you at all. But I need to trust someone, and I've decided that it's going to be you."

  He looks ever so slightly taken aback, and he says, "Gwen--" I sense he wants to tell me something, and I wait, but it doesn't come. Finally, he shakes his head. "Okay. Hit me."

  "Outside," I say. "I don't want the kids overhearing."

  We go out into the coolness and settle in the chairs together. There are wisps of cloudy vapor coming off the lake tonight, rendering it eerie and mysterious. The moon's only half, but it rides a clear sky scattered with stars, like a country road sign that's been shotgunned. It's bright enough to see each other.

  I don't look at him as I start, though. I don't want to see the moment of realization. "My real name isn't Gwen Proctor," I tell him. "It's Gina Royal."

  I wait. His body language, from the corner of my eye, doesn't change. He says, "Okay." And I realize he must not know the name.

  "I used to be the wife of Melvin Royal. You might remember him. The Kansas Horror?"

  He takes in a sharp breath and sinks back in the chair. Puts his beer to his lips and drains it dry, then sits silently, turning the bottle in his hands. I hear a ripple from the lake. Someone's out in the fog, I guess. No engines. They're rowing. It's a dark night for it, but some people like the dark.

  "I was put on trial as an accessory," I tell him. "They called me Melvin's Little Helper. I wasn't. I didn't know anything about what he did, but that hardly mattered; people sure wanted to believe it. I was married to a monster, sleeping in his bed. How could I have not known?"

  "It's a good question," Sam says. "How?" There's something hard in his voice. It hurts.

  I swallow hard, and I taste metal on the back of my tongue. "I don't know, except . . . he was good at pretending to be a human being. A good father. God help me, I didn't see it coming. I just thought he was . . . eccentric. That we'd drifted apart, like married couples do. I only found out when the SUV ran through the wall of the garage, and they discovered the last victim there . . . I saw her, Sam. I saw her, and I can never, ever forget what it was like." I stop and look at him. He's not facing me. He's watching the lake ripples, the fog rising. His face is so blank that I can't get any sense at all of what he feels. "I was acquitted, but that doesn't mean much. The people who believe I'm guilty won't let go. They want to punish me. And they have. We've had to move, run, change our names more than once."

  "Maybe they have a point," he says. It sounds different. Rigid and harsh, now. "Maybe they still think you're guilty."

  "I'm not!" It aches now, this place inside where I'd thought hope might eventually grow. I can feel it dying in real time. "And what about my children? They don't deserve any of this shit. Ever."

  He's silent for a long, long time, but he isn't standing up and leaving. He's thinking. I don't know what he's going over in his head, and I think half a dozen times he's going to speak, but then he thinks differently, and the moment's gone.

  When he does say something, it isn't what I expect. "You must worry about being tracked down. By the victims' families."

  "Yes. All the time. It's hard for me to trust anyone, ever. You understand why? We finally have a home here, Sam. I don't want to run away from it. But now--"

  "Did you kill her?" he asks me. "The girl in the lake? Is that why you're telling me this now?"

  I'm speechless. I stare at his profile, and I can't form words. I feel numb, the way one does after a deep injury. I've made a terrible mistake, I think. Stupid, stupid woman. Because I would have never guessed Sam would make that turn, that fast.

  "No," I finally say, because what else can I say? "I've never killed anyone. I've never hurt anyone." That isn't quite true, I think. I remember Mel's bruises and cuts, the bitter satisfaction I got today from seeing the damage. But it's true except for that one special case. "I don't know how I can convince you of that."

  He doesn't answer. We sit in the well of silence for a while. It's not comfortable, but I'm not willing to be the one to end it, either.

  Sam finally does. "Gwen, I'm sorry. Should I still call you--"

  "Yes," I tell him. "Always. Gina Royal is long dead, as far as I'm concerned."

  "And . . . your husband?"

  "Ex-husband. Alive, in El Dorado prison," I tell him. "That's where I went today."

  "You still visit him?" I can't miss the revulsion in it. The betrayal, as if I've shattered some image he's held of me. "God, Gwen . . ."

  "I don't," I tell him. "This is the first time I've seen him since he was arrested. I'd rather slit my wrists than look at him, believe me. But he threatened me. He threatened my kids. That's what I'm trying to tell you: he's found out where we are, God knows how. All he has to do is drop a word to one of the people who've been stalking us. I had to see him to make it very clear that I wouldn't play this game with him."

  "And how
'd that go?"

  "About like I expected," I say. "So I have a big decision to make. Run or stay. I want to stay, Sam. But . . ."

  "But it'd be a whole lot smarter to go," he says. "Look, I have no idea what you're going through, but I wouldn't be as worried about an ex in prison as I would . . . relatives of the victims. They lost a family member. Maybe they think if he loses one, that's justice."

  I do worry about that. I worry about real, righteous grief and anger. I worry about the sterile, uncaring malice of the Sicko Patrol, for whom it's just an exercise in sociopathy. I worry about everyone. "Maybe," I tell him. "God. I can't even say I don't understand that, because I do." I stop and take another pull of my beer, just to rid myself of the bad taste. "Mel's on death row, but it'll be a long time before they ever strap him to a table, and I think he'll kill himself just before that happens. He won't want to give up that control."

  "Then maybe you shouldn't run," Sam says. "That's what he expects, to keep you scared and on the move." He pauses and finally puts the bottle down on the floor of the porch. "Are you? Scared?"

  "Out of my mind," I tell him. With Mel, I'd have said, Out of my fucking mind. It's odd. I cursed like a sailor in Mel's presence, because he'd brought out the rage bottled inside me, but I have no wish to use that language around Sam. I don't feel so defensive. I don't need the shield. "I won't say I don't care what happens to me; of course I do. But my kids. They have enough to deal with, just being the children of someone like . . . him. I know it's better for them to stay, but how do I take that risk?"

  "Do they know? About their father?"

  "Yeah. Most of it. I try to keep the horrible details from them, but . . ." I shrug helplessly. "Age of the Internet. Lanny probably knows almost everything by now. Connor--God, I hope not. It's hard enough for an adult to handle knowing the worst. I can't imagine what it would do to someone his age."

  "Kids are stronger than you think. Morbid, too," Sam says. "I was. I poked around dead things. Told gory stories. But there's a difference between imagination and reality. Just never let them see the pictures."

  I remember he was in Afghanistan. I wonder what he saw there, to give him that dark tone. More than I had, most likely, even though I'd had to be faced with all the horrible pictures, the horror and rage of the victims' families at my trial. Those who had the stomach to come, which by that time wasn't nearly as many. When I'd been acquitted, there had only been about four of them who'd stayed for the verdict.

  Three of them had threatened to kill me.

  Most of the families had been there for Mel's trial, or so I'd heard, and they'd been destroyed by it. He'd found it all very boring. He'd yawned, fallen asleep. He'd even laughed when a mother fainted on seeing for the first time a picture of the decaying face of her child floating under the water. I'd read the accounts of it.

  He'd thought that woman's pain--that mother's pain--was the shit.

  "Sam . . ." I don't know what I want to say to him. I know what I want him to say: that it'll be all right. That he forgives me. That the peace we'd formed between us, the fragile, unnamed relationship, hasn't just been murdered by my words.

  He stands up, still facing toward the lake, and puts his hands in the pockets of his jeans. I don't need to be a psychologist to know that's a withdrawal.

  "I know how hard this was for you to talk about. And I'm not saying I don't value your trust, but . . . I have to think about this," he tells me. "Don't worry. I won't tell anybody. Promise you that."

  "I'd never have told you if I'd thought you would," I say. The hard part, I realize, isn't letting him know the truth; it's this ripping fear inside now that he'll turn his back on me, that this is the last moment we'll be friends, or even friendly. I never thought that would hurt, but it does. The fragile little roots I'd been putting down, ripping away. Maybe it's for the best, I try to tell myself, but all I feel is grief.

  "Good night, Gwen," he says as he starts down the steps . . . but he doesn't go quite all the way. He hesitates, and finally he looks back at me. I can't read his expression well, but it isn't angry, at least. "You going to be okay?"

  It sounds, to my mind, like good-bye. I nod and say nothing, because nothing I can say will help. Paranoia bursts out of its shell and starts to wind tendrils around me. What if he doesn't keep his word? What if he gossips? Goes online and talks about this? What if he posts who we are?

  In a way, I realize, I've made the decision without making any decision. I've closed off options with this conversation. Mel knows where we are. Now Sam Cade knows everything, too. Friend or not, ally or not, I can't trust him. I can't trust anyone. I never could. I've been fooling myself for months now, but the dream is over. It might set my kids back, but I need to protect their bodies first, their minds second.

  I watch him walk away into the dark, and then I take out my cell and text Absalom.

  Last msg for a while, I send. Leaving soon. Have to burn idents & phones, will need new packet on the fly. Can use standby docs for now.

  It only takes a few seconds to get a reply. I wonder when Absalom sleeps, if he ever does. New idents same price in Bitcoin. Might take a while. You know the drill. He never asks what's happened to make us run. I'm not sure he even actually cares.

  I go inside and check the kids. They're fine, living in their own separate worlds; I wish for that peace, that luxury. The savage, black joy in Mel's stare has ripped all that away, and now that Sam's gone, I feel naked to the world in a way I never have before.

  I get another beer and sit at the computer. I follow the steps that Absalom has drilled into me to send the Bitcoin payment. It occurs to me that I'm going to have to burn this computer, too; it has too much info buried in it, and I'll need to take it with me, fry the hard drive, smash it to bits, and sink it in a river. Start over with a new machine from the backup drive.

  Fresh start, I tell myself, and I try to believe that it isn't just another retreat, another layer of self that I'm stripping away. I'm almost sanded to the bone by now.

  I start making a mental list of the things to destroy, the things to pack, the things to leave behind, but before I can get very far, I hear a hard, firm volley of knocks on the front door. It's so loud and forceful that it shocks me out of my chair, and I retrieve my handgun before I go to check the security camera feed and see who's outside.

  It's the police. Officer Graham, tall and broad and as sharply creased as ever. I don't like it, but I put the gun back in the safe, lock it, and open the door. He's been a casual visitor, has eaten at my dining table, but now, he doesn't even smile.

  "Ma'am," he says. "I need you to come with me, please."

  A number of things flash through my mind as I stare at him: first, he must have been surveilling me to know I'd arrived back home. Either that, or Sam has called him, which is equally possible. Second, this late hour is designed to startle me and keep me off my game. Tactics. I know the game as well as he does; I'm almost certain of that.

  I wait a few seconds without replying, without moving. I fight the irresistible tide of memory and fear, and finally say, "It's very late. You're welcome to come inside if you have questions to ask me, but I'm not leaving my kids on their own. No way in hell."

  "I'll get a colleague to stay with them," he says. "But you need to come with me to the station, Ms. Proctor."

  I stare him down. Gina Royal, the poor, stupid weakling, would have fluttered and complained and still gone along passively. She'd been nothing but passive. Unfortunately for Officer Graham, I am not Gina Royal. "Warrant," I say, in a flat, businesslike tone. "Got one?"

  It takes him back a step. His eyes study me harder, reevaluating his approach of shock and awe. I see him consider and reject a few, before he says, in a far friendlier tone, "Gwen, this will sure go a whole lot easier if you just come voluntarily. There's no need to put yourself through the mess that happens if we end up getting a warrant. And what happens to your kids if this all gets ramped up and you end up with a criminal record? You
think you keep them?"

  I don't blink, but it's a good line of attack. Cunning. "You need a warrant to compel me to come to the station with you. Until you do, I don't have to answer any questions, and I choose not to. That's my right. Good night, Officer Graham."

  I start to close the door. My pulse jumps, and my muscles tense as his palm hits the wood and holds it open. If he puts his weight into it, he can push me off-balance and step inside. I've already considered options. The gun safe is useless now; even the fingerprint lock takes too long, he'll be on me before I can clear it. My best move is to fall back to the kitchen, where I have a small .32 concealed at the back of the junk drawer, not to mention a bristling block full of knives. This calculation is involuntary, drilled in by years of paranoia. I don't honestly expect him to turn violent.

  I just know how to react if he does.

  Officer Graham stands there, holding the door ajar, looking slightly apologetic. "Ma'am, we've received a tip from someone in the neighborhood that you were seen in a boat out on the water the night that woman's body was put in the lake. As it happens, the description fits the same boat your daughter described. Either you come with me now or the detectives will be here in half an hour, and they're not taking no for an answer. If it takes a warrant to compel your cooperation, they'll bring one. It'd just be so much easier for you, and show better good faith, if you'd come with me right now."

  "So what I'm hearing is you've got nothing but an anonymous tip," I say, even while my brain is howling, Sam, Sam could have done this to you. But it's more chillingly probable that Mel's behind it, somehow. "Good luck with that warrant. My record's clean. I'm a law-abiding woman with two kids, and I'm not going anywhere with you."

  He gives up then and lets me shut the door. I do it quietly, though I want to slam it. My hands are shaking a little as I affix all the locks and bolts back and reactivate the alarm.

  I turn to see Connor and Lanny standing in the hall, staring at me. Lanny has moved in front of her brother. In her hand is a kitchen knife. It strikes me in that moment how my paranoia's touched both of them, especially my daughter, who's so obviously ready to kill to protect her brother, even when there's no immediate threat. I'm so glad she didn't get her hands on a gun.