I had him. I had him. And I let him go. I hear a high, thin buzzing in my ears, and that dreadful weight on me again. Panic attack incoming.
No. I refuse. No.
I close my eyes, lean my head back, and breathe through it, ride the twisting waves of panic and sickness until the flood subsides, and when I finally am able to look again, the car is stopped. Kezia is staring at me. We’re in the breakdown lane of the freeway, cars and trucks whizzing past without a thought for the way the world has just changed.
I tell her the truth. All of it. MalusNavis’s targeted attacks on me. Jonathan Watson’s flattened skull. His unlimited resources to fuck with our lives.
She takes it in silently. I can read her expression by the dashboard lights. Then she says, “If he hadn’t wanted you to find out, he wouldn’t have given you a smartphone. He wants us to come prepared. Know what we’re getting into.”
I look up the number for the FBI and start to dial it. Kez takes the phone away.
“If you’re thinking about calling in the cavalry, I already thought of that,” she says. “Gwen . . . we don’t have anything. Prester died of a goddamn heart attack. Everything else we have can’t be traced to Jonathan Watson, not fast and not directly. We’ve got threats, sure. But every one of them is vague. He’s made sure of it.”
“We’ve got video of him at the gas station,” I say.
“Pumping gas. It’s not a smoking gun, even if he’s with Sheryl. He could claim she was a hitchhiker and he let her off ten miles down the road, and there’s no way to prove otherwise unless Sheryl’s alive to tell her side of the story.”
I feel sick now. “You don’t think she is?”
“This man’s got a purpose,” she says. “He saw his sister get taken. He failed her. You said Sam looked into other cases MalusNavis was into. What do those have in common with Sheryl?”
I don’t like where she’s going, but it feels right. “They were all suspected of murder at some point. At least on the Lost Angels boards.”
“Like I said, he’s got a type.”
“Like me,” I say. “Melvin’s little helper.”
She reaches over and takes my hand. “Not like you,” she says. “Not at all. We need to make a decision, now that we know this. Forward, or back? Your choice, Gwen. But this is higher stakes than we bargained for. If you want to call in the feds, the state police . . . we can do that. I just . . . I feel like he’s walled himself off for anything like fast action. He’ll have time to deal with us. Hurt us. And if he’s still got lottery money left, he can disappear without a trace, fast.”
“Nothing’s really changed,” I say. “The stakes are exactly the same. If I don’t go to him, he comes for my family. The only difference is that now we know he can actually destroy them without breaking a sweat.” I have to swallow bile to do it, but I say, “Forward. He says he wants to judge me. Let him do that.”
“I saw the photo,” she says. “His head. That man’s got brain damage. You can’t put your life in his hands, expecting him to be fair.”
My life is already in his hands, in all the ways that matter. I just shake my head. “I don’t trust him,” I say. “But I trust us. If we’ve got to fight on enemy ground, what do we need?”
“A goddamn army.”
“Knowledge,” I say. I hold up the phone. “And he’s given us the keys to the library.”
Kez glances at the clock in the dash. “If we’re going, we need to make time,” she says. “Miles to cover. A lot of them. And Gwen? If he’s as smart as you think he is, he’s cloned that phone. He’s watching everything you do. And tracking calls. If you do call anyone—TBI, FBI, anyone—he could know. And he could be a ghost before we get anybody to move on him for real.”
“So it’s just us, or nothing.”
“I think so,” she says. “Until we have proof. Unless you want to bet the lives of your kids that he won’t follow through on his threats.”
I don’t answer that. I just get to work.
When I’m done, I’ve filled pieces of notepaper with details. A paper version of the online map, just in case. A rough sketch of the map of Salah Point, including the bay.
I find more about the Watson family. The cannery’s abandoned and locked up, rusting away. The Watson house looks to be located nearby, and both sit on the bay—Cully Bay, according to the map.
The lighthouse still stands, but it’s a grim-looking place, regardless.
I buy a new burner phone from the racks and activate it before getting back on the road. We’re going to need something that Jonathan Watson can’t control. Some way of summoning help if we need it.
I hope it’ll be enough.
I don’t ask Kez. I just bury the phone Jonathan gave us in the industrial dumpster on the side of the gas station. He’ll know we’re headed that way. And I don’t intend to give him any more advantage than that.
The drive to Salah Point is relentless after the efficient transport of the freeway. The only signs tell me I’m on the right state road, but if you judged by condition, it’s long disused. The trees are thick for a while, gloomy, and once they give way to low, swampy growth, it looks even gloomier. Gators sun themselves in muddy ponds, and I watch out for any crossing the road.
It feels like we’re going nowhere, and then there’s a turnoff and a weathered, shotgun-pocked sign announcing SALAH POINT. I take the turn down a road that isn’t better than the state road, and is arguably worse. The landscape looks wild and dangerous. It’s probably a wildlife preserve area, or else developers just took one look and decided that swampy wetlands without a single industry to support it wouldn’t work out. The animals won. For once.
We’re here.
You need to get ahead of him, Gwen. You’re prepared. You have weapons and knowledge of the area now. Think like the hunter you are. If you play defense, you will lose. I expect the whisper in my head to be Melvin; it’s always Melvin. But that voice just called me Gwen.
The voice in my head, the warm and quiet and loving voice . . . that’s Sam. My eyes fill with tears . . . not pain this time. Gratitude that it’s Sam who’s with me now.
Gratitude that Melvin’s gone quiet at last.
Kez wakes up as I slow down. She hasn’t slept long, or well, but when she swipes at her eyes and says, “Are we close?” she sounds fully alert. And tense.
“A couple of miles until we get to town.”
“Damn. Should have ditched the phone once we got everything we could.”
“I did,” I tell her. “Gas station about a hundred and fifty miles back. But there’s only one way into town. And he’ll have eyes on it.”
The little town comes up on us suddenly, like a stalker from the shadows. We round a curve on the bumpy, crumbling road, and suddenly there are buildings. Not many of them, though—maybe a dozen clustered around the main road. Two or three intersections with no lights, just rusted stop signs. The first block we cruise through, driving slowly, is deserted; there’s an old gas station, long since shuttered, the islands where pumps once stood completely bare. A useless FOR RENT sign hangs crookedly in the window. A couple of anonymous square stone buildings look like they could date back to American-style antiquity—1800s, at least. Empty shells, no windows or doors. Waiting to fall.