Stillhouse Lake

  "If Cade did this," I tell him, "then you nail his ass to the wall. For God's sake, do it."

  He sighs. He's in for another long day, and I can tell he knows it. He reads the file folder again, flipping pages, and I let him think about it.

  When he finally stands up, he gathers his files and pictures. I can see he's made a decision, and sure enough, he holds the door open for me and says, "Your kids are down the hall to the right, in the break room. Sam drove them here in your Jeep. Take 'em home. But don't leave town. If you do, I'll make it my personal mission to set the FBI on your trail, and I will ruin whatever life you've got left. Understand me?"

  I nod. I don't thank him, because he's not really doing me any favors. He realizes that he's got precious little to hold me on, if anything, and a good defense attorney--like, say, one from Knoxville--would knock his case into the trash without even breaking a sweat, especially with Sam Cade right there hiding in plain sight. Christ, I even feel a little sorry for Prester in that moment.

  But not enough to hesitate. I am out the door in a second, rushing past the small bullpen room of the Norton Police Department. I see Officer Graham filling in some paperwork, and he looks up as he sees me pass. I don't nod or smile, because I'm too fixed on the break room door. It's clear glass with miniblinds hanging at a cockeyed angle, and through the gap I see Lanny and Connor sitting together at a square white table, dispiritedly picking at a bag of popcorn sitting open between them. I take a breath, because seeing them alive and fine and unharmed feels so good it physically hurts.

  I open the door and step in, and Lanny stands up so fast her chair skids backward across the tile and nearly tips over. She rushes to me and remembers that she's the oldest just in time to not throw herself into my arms. Connor blasts past her and flings himself at me instead, and I hug him fiercely and open one arm to her, and she grudgingly accepts. I feel the stabbing relief start to melt, replaced with something sweeter, warmer, kinder.

  "They arrested you," Lanny says. Her voice is muffled against me, but she pulls away to look directly at me on the last word. "Why did they do that?"

  "They think I might be responsible for--"

  I don't finish the thought, but she does. "For the murders," she says. "Sure. Because of Dad." She says it like it's the most logical conclusion in the world. Maybe it is. "But you didn't do it."

  She says it with casual conviction, and I feel a swell of love for her, for that unthinking trust. She's usually so suspicious of my motives that having her grant me this one thing means more than I can begin to comprehend.

  Connor pulls away, then, and says, "Mom, they came and got us! I said we shouldn't go, but Lanny said--"

  "Lanny said we're not getting into a stupid fight with the cops," Lanny supplies. "Which we didn't. Besides, they didn't come for us, exactly. They just couldn't leave us there alone. I made them bring the Jeep. So we'd have a way home." She hesitates for a moment and tries to make the next question look casual. "Um . . . so did they tell you why they want to talk to Sam? Was it something you told them?"

  I don't want to open up the subject of what their father did, how many people he destroyed, how many families he shattered, including his own . . . but at the same time, I know I have to explain. They're not little children now, and things--I know this instinctively--are about to get a whole lot worse for all of us.

  But I'm reluctant to destroy Sam Cade in their eyes. They like him. And as far as I could tell, he liked them, too. But then again, I thought he liked me.

  Maybe he is part of the murder plot that has cost those two girls their lives. I still can't see Sam killing them, even now, and yet . . . yet I can easily understand how grief and rage and pain pushes someone past limits they never think they'd cross. I destroyed the old Gina Royal and rebuilt myself from her ashes. He's focused his anger outward, at me--at his imaginary enemy. Maybe the young women were, to him, collateral damage, cold military math to reach an objective. I can almost, almost believe that.

  "Mom?"

  I blink. Connor's looking at me with real worry, and I wonder how long I've wandered off in my thoughts. I'm so tired. Despite the sandwich, I find I'm starving, and I need to pee so badly I wonder if my bladder will burst before I can make it to the bathroom. Funny. All these were unimportant details until I knew the kids were safe.

  "We'll talk on the way home," I tell him. "Quick pit stop and then we'll go. Okay?"

  He nods, a little doubtfully. He's worried about Sam, I think, and I hate to break his heart, again. But this one isn't my fault.

  I make it to the toilet in time and shiver and cry silently as I sit there. By the time I've washed my face and hands and taken some deep breaths, the face staring back at me from the mirror almost looks normal. Almost. I realize that I need to get a haircut and renew my hair color; a few gray hairs are starting to make an unwelcome appearance. Funny. I always thought I'd die before I got old. That's a whisper from the old Gina, who'd seen the day of The Event as the end of her entire life. I hate the old Gina, who'd somehow naively believed in the power of true love and the smug certainty that she was a good woman, and her husband was a good man, and that it was something she deserved without putting out any effort at all.

  I hate her even more now that I realize I'm still, even after all this, very much like her.

  The drive home starts in silence, but I can tell it's weighted. The kids want to know. I want to tell them. I just don't quite know how to find the words, so I reach out and fiddle with the Jeep's radio knobs, jumping from new country to southern-fried rock to old country to what sounds like tinny folk music, until Lanny reaches forward and switches it off with a decisive punch of her finger. "Enough," she says. "Come on. Spill. What's the deal with Sam?"

  Dear God, I don't want to start this, but I swallow that impulse of cowardice and say, "Sam's sister--it turns out that Sam isn't who he said he was. Well, he is, but he didn't tell us the whole truth."

  "You're not making any sense," Connor tells me. He's probably right. "Wait, is Sam's sister in the lake? Did he kill his sister?"

  "Hey!" Lanny says sharply. "Let's not jump right to killing sisters, okay? Sam didn't kill anybody!"

  I wonder why I didn't see it before, because right now, with a single glance over at her face, I can see that she's irate, agitated, and truly defensive. She'd had an instacrush on Officer Graham, but this is different. This I read not as a crush, but as a need. Sam, who's been quietly in her life, being strong and kind and steady? He's the next-best thing she has to a father.

  "No," I tell her, and reach out to squeeze her hand just for a second. I feel her tense up as I do. "Of course he didn't. Connor, they took him to the police station because they found out he has a connection to us. From before."

  Lanny draws away to press against the vehicle's door. I see Connor sit back, too. "Before?" my son asks quietly. His voice trembles slightly. "You mean, like, when we used to be other people?"

  "Yes." I'm guiltily relieved I don't have to lead them to it. "When we lived in Kansas. His sister . . . his sister was one of the people your father killed."

  I don't tell them his sister was the last one. Somehow that makes it even worse.

  "Oh," Lanny says in a small voice. It sounds empty. "So. He followed us here. Didn't he? He was never really our friend. He wanted to watch us. Hurt us because he was angry about what Daddy did."

  Oh God. She called him Daddy. It cuts deep and leaves me feeling frantic with anguish. "Honey--"

  "She's right," Connor says from the back. When I glance in the rearview mirror, I see him staring out the window, and in that moment he looks quite chillingly like his father. So much that I stare for too long and have to correct a little sharply back into my lane as we drive up the winding road to the lake. "He wasn't our friend. We don't have any friends. It was stupid to think we did."

  "Hey, that's not true," Lanny says. "You've got the Geek Squad playing nerd games with you. And what about Kyle and Lee, those Graham kids? They'r
e always asking you to do things . . ."

  "I said I don't have any friends. Just people I play games with is all," Connor says. There's an edge to his voice I haven't heard before, and I don't like it. At all. "I don't like the Graham kids, either. I just pretend I do so they don't beat me up again."

  From the look on my daughter's face, she didn't know that until this moment, either. I think that Connor must have confided in Sam, and that with Sam's betrayal, Connor has no more use for his secret. I feel frozen. I remember the stiff way Connor held himself when he was around the Graham boys. I remember his warning, that first time, about how he hadn't lost his phone, that one of them must have taken it. I hate myself for not questioning that. In the rush of events, in my worry about what Mel was doing and the murder, I'd forgotten. I'd let my son down.

  When Sam found him with the bloody nose, the bruises, that was the work of the Graham brothers.

  I grit my teeth and don't say anything for the rest of the drive. Lanny and Connor don't seem to want to talk, either. I pause at the entrance to the driveway, put the Jeep in park, and turn to face them. "I can't fix what's gone wrong for us. It's just happened. I don't know whose fault it is, and I don't really care anymore. But I promise you one thing: I'm going to take care of you. Both of you. And if anybody tries to hurt you, they're going to have to come through me first. Understand?"

  They do, but I can see it doesn't soothe something in them that's still wire-tense. Lanny says, "You're not always here, Mom. I know you want to be, but sometimes we have to look out for each other, and it'd be better if you'd let me have the code to the . . ."

  "Lanny. No."

  "But--"

  I know what she wants: access to the gun safe. And I'm not willing to do it. I never wanted this. I never wanted to raise my kids to have to be gunslingers, warriors, child soldiers.

  As long as I have the power to protect them, I won't allow it.

  I put the Jeep in gear in the fraught silence and crunch up the gravel road to our house.

  As the headlights hit it, I see blood. That's all I see in the first rush of recognition: a vivid red splash over the garage door, splatters and whorls and drips. I brake hard, throwing us all against restraints. The halogens pick it out, and I realize the red probably isn't blood at all; it's too red, too thick. It's still wet and glimmering in the lights, though, and as I watch I see one of the drips is still lengthening its descent.

  It hasn't been long since this happened.

  "Mom," Connor whispers. I don't look at him. I'm staring now at the words scrawled on our windows, across the brick, on the front door of our house.

  MURDERER

  BITCH

  SCUM

  KILLER

  WHORE

  FUCK YOU

  DIE

  "Mom!" Connor's hand grips my shoulder, and I hear the panic in my son's voice, the very real fear. "Mom!"

  I jam the Jeep in reverse and spray gravel, rocketing down the driveway toward the road. I have to brake suddenly, because there are vehicles in the way. Two of them. A mint-condition, dust-free Mercedes SUV and a dirty jacked-up truck that might be red under the mud coating. They've blocked us in.

  The Johansens, the nice, quiet couple from up the hill, the ones I introduced myself to when I moved in . . . they're in their SUV, not looking at me. Staring at the road, as if blocking my fucking driveway is an accident. As if they're not involved.

  The asshole in the muddy red truck and his friends have no such scruples. They're happy to be noticed. There are three of them getting out of the extended cab, and another three sloppily crawling out of the bed of the truck. Drunk, from the lack of coordination, and pretty thrilled about it, too. I recognize one of them. He's the jackass from the range, Carl Getts, the one Javier blackballed for bad behavior.

  They start walking toward us, and I realize with a chill that I have my kids with me and I am unarmed, and Jesus, the cops haven't even bothered to leave a cruiser in the neighborhood to watch out for harassment. So much for Prester's good intentions, if he ever had any. Less than a day out from being hauled in and we're already in fear of our lives.

  This is why I drive the Jeep.

  I slam it into low gear, go uphill a bit, and then take it on a bouncing course down the steep slope, over wild grassland littered with buried, jutting stones. I steer around the worst of it, but I have to speed up as I realize that the truck's driver and crew are piling back in. He's got four-wheel drive, too. He'll be coming after us, fast as he can. I need to put distance between us.

  I need my gun, I think desperately. I don't have a weapon in the safe at the back right now. I'd taken it out in preparation for trading the Jeep to Javier. Doesn't matter, I tell myself. Depending on anything or anyone else is bad. I have to rely on myself, first, last, and always. That's the lesson Mel taught me.

  First, I have to get us to safety. Second, regroup. Third, get my kids away from this place, however that has to happen.

  I almost, almost, make it to the safety of the road.

  It happens like this: I have to twist the wheel sharply to avoid a jutting boulder that's hidden by a clump of thick weeds, and in doing so, I run the right wheel into a wide, unseen gully. The whole Jeep tips, and for a heart-stopping moment I think about the high incidence of rollover crashes, and then we bounce up and back out even before Lanny's sudden yelp hits my ears, and I think, We're okay.

  We're not okay.

  The left wheel hits and glances off a half-buried rock, and we veer over it. I hear the metallic crunch of collision, and the whole steering assembly shudders out of my hands, jumping wildly. I grab hold again, heart thudding in a steady staccato race, and realize that the axle's broken. I've lost control of the front wheels and the steering.

  I can't go around the next rock, which is big enough to smash us right in the center of the Jeep's hood and send us all flying forward into the restraints, hard enough to leave bruises, and I know the airbags deploy because I feel the puff of it against my face, the impact, the burning smell of the propellant. My face hurts and feels hot from the rush of blood and friction. I'm more aware of surprise than pain, but my first instinct is not for myself. I twist in my seat to look frantically at Lanny, at Connor. They both seem dazed but okay. Lanny makes a little whimpering sound and probes at her nose. It's bleeding. I realize I'm bleating questions at them--are you all right, are you okay--but I'm not even listening for answers. I'm grabbing up handfuls of tissues to press to the flow of blood from her nose even as I'm looking anxiously at Connor. He seems okay, better than Lanny, though he has a red mark on his forehead. The flaccid white silk of a deflated airbag is draped over his shoulder. Side curtain airbags, I remember. Lanny's deployed, too, which is why her nose is bleeding.

  Mine might be, too. I don't care.

  I compose myself enough to remember that we didn't just accidentally get into a car wreck, that there's a truck full of drunken men rambling over this same hillside, hunting us. I've screwed up. I've put my children in mortal danger.

  And I have to fix it.

  I scramble out of the Jeep and almost fall. I catch myself on the door and realize I'm trailing fat drops of blood in a ragged line down the front of my white shirt. Doesn't matter. I shake my head, sending red drops flying, and fumble my way to the back of the Jeep. I do have two things: a tire iron and an emergency flashlight that strobes disorienting white and red with a flick of a switch. It even has a built-in piercing alert signal. The batteries are fresh, because I changed them out just last week. I grab it and the heavy iron curve of the toolbar, and before I slam the driver's-side door again, I find my cell phone and pitch it to Connor, who seems more together. "Call 911," I tell him. "Tell them we're being attacked. Lock these doors."

  "Mom, don't stay out there!" he says, and I worry that he won't lock the doors after all. That he'll hesitate and get dragged out. So I open the door and trigger the locks, which thunk down solidly. Then I roll up the windows to leave him, Lanny, and the keys ins
ide.

  I turn with the tire iron in my right hand, the multipurpose flash in my left, to wait for the pickup truck to get closer.

  It doesn't make it. Halfway down the hill they hit something, skid sideways, and I watch as the men in the back throw themselves out, yelling, as the truck overbalances on the downhill side. One screams in a way that makes me think he's broken something, or bent it pretty badly, but the other two bounce up the boneless way drunks have. The truck rolls over in a long screech of metal and a cymbal crash of shattering glass, but it doesn't keep going down the hill. It stops on its side, tires spinning, engine still roaring like the driver hasn't the good sense to take his foot off the gas. The three inside start yelling for help, and the two still upright from the truck bed scramble to help them. They nearly overbalance the whole thing and send it tumbling farther downhill. It's a bit of a comedy.

  I see the Johansens' SUV suddenly start up and peel out hastily on the road, as if they just remembered they are late to their own party. I'm assuming they faint at the sight of blood. Even mine. I know they won't be calling the police, but it hardly matters. Connor's already done it. All I need to do, I tell myself, is to keep anyone hostile occupied until the lights and sirens show up. I haven't done anything wrong.

  Not yet, anyway.

  One of the drunk guys peels off and heads my direction, and I find myself tremendously not surprised that it's the one from the range, Carl. The one who insulted Javi. He's yelling something at me, but I'm not really listening. I'm just trying to see if he has a gun. If he does, I'm sunk; not only can he kill me from where he stands, but he can claim I attacked him with my handy tire iron and it was self-defense. I know Norton well enough to guess how that will go. They'll hardly pause for five minutes before they acquit the bastard, even if my kids give testimony. I was in fear for my life, he'll say. The standard defense of murderous cowards. Problem is, it's also the defense for legitimately frightened people. Like me.

  A relief: he doesn't seem to have a gun, at least, not that I can see, and he's hardly the type to be coy about it. He'd be waving it around if he had it, which makes my tire iron into a real threat.