So cold.
He felt himself settle on the bottom among the white bones. As his lungs ached and pulsed, he suddenly remembered being a child. Waking from a nightmare. The last thing in his mind, the very last, was his mother whispering, Hush, baby. You’re safe now.
1
GWEN
When my personal phone rings, I check the caller ID. Force of habit. There are only six people in the world I take calls from on this number. Sure enough, it’s Sam Cade. A little bubble of warmth explodes inside me as I hit the button and lift the phone to my ear.
“Hey, stranger,” I say. I hear the purr in the back of my throat.
“Hey yourself,” he replies. I hear the husky tone in his voice too. Oh, subtext. So sexy. “What’s going on?”
“Right now? Exactly nothing,” I say, and yawn. It’s three thirty in the morning, and I’ve been sitting in this chilly rental car for three hours, not counting a quick dash into the convenience store down the road for a pee and a giant coffee I’m going to regret. “I’m waiting for my guy to make a move.”
“A move to do what?”
“Good question.”
“You’re not going to tell me?” He sounds amused.
“Well, you know. Not until I’m sure. Anyway, you’re up late. Or early. Which is it?”
“Early. Just getting some paperwork ready for the day,” he says. “Kids are still fast asleep, by the way. I checked.” My kids are my life, and he knows that. Sam’s also well aware that he’s one of a very select group of people I trust with my children. My daughter, Lanny, is at a difficult sixteen-feels-like-twenty. My son, Connor, is too adult for his age at thirteen and too young for it at the same time. Not easy people to handle, my kids.
There’s no reason they should be. They’ve spent half their lives now with the horrifying knowledge that their father was a serial killer, and with the equally heavy burden of having people unfairly hate them by association. I want to protect them from the world. I can’t, of course. But I still want to try.
“You going to be home before six?” he asks me, and I sigh. “Okay, fair enough. You want me to wake up Lanny when I leave?”
“Yeah, better plan on that. I can’t trust her to hear the alarm and get Connor up too. I’ll text and let you know when I’m on my way.” I want to let my kids sleep. They have to be up at seven, but an extra hour of sleep to a teenager is like ten to me.
Neither of them will want to get up, and still less head to school, but they’re used to facing unpleasant situations. I flatly refuse to homeschool them. Their lives are going to be incredibly difficult given our family history. I want them to learn how to handle it now, not hit eighteen as protected little china dolls.
There lie monsters.
Counseling has done all of us some good. I started the kids in individual therapy for a few months, then together, while Sam and I met with another counselor as a couple. Now we do it as a family once every other week, and I dare to think things are . . . better.
If not for the fact that town itself has closed ranks against us.
I’m not really sure what tipped Norton residents over to utter dislike; maybe it was Sam’s unintentional but ongoing feud with a bunch of drug-dealing but influential hill folk. And some of it I brought on myself by agreeing to do a TV interview. The situation had turned utterly toxic. That had triggered even more media attention to rush into the calm backwaters of Stillhouse Lake. I’d thought I was doing a good thing, but it had been like unloading a dump truck of ten-day-old garbage on my head.
The internet trolls are back, relentless and ghoulishly gleeful as ever. I’m never sure what they get out of trying to destroy my life, but I’ll give them this much: they’re dedicated. I recently found a post on a message board that said their goal was to drive my kids to commit suicide live on camera. The level of sociopathy that takes goes to eleven, but no mistake, it’s out there. And, disturbingly, it’s not that rare.
That’s who we deal with on a daily basis. I don’t like to call them monsters; they’re just bored, angry, empathy-free humans without a cause who see me as a target for their rage. After all, I was married to Melvin Royal, the infamous serial killer. He slaughtered women for fun, so I must have been somehow responsible for that too. No, the swarm of ever-present trolls are not the monsters. I’ve known monsters. I’ve faced them down, including Melvin.
I kill monsters. You’d think they’d keep that in mind.
I talk to Sam for about half an hour, lulled into comfort and warmth and a deeply coiled need to feel him with me, but we both know that’s not going to happen right now. Thanks to the closed-minded town of Norton mostly shunning us, his construction work has dried up, and he has to go farther out to find jobs. That means longer drives, shorter times at home.
I’m working for an out-of-town detective agency that tosses me a wide variety of cases within my specified driving distance; I can turn down what I can’t handle or what I just don’t feel like doing. But the pay’s good, and I’m decent at this kind of job.
A very wealthy CEO named Greg Kingston is getting my full attention right now. The assignment came to us from his company’s board of directors, who were concerned by what they considered strange behavior and some worrying financial results. I’ve already uncovered embezzlement out of his Florida PR firm, and his digital fingerprints are all over that. Easy enough—that goes back to his board to decide what to do about it. Kingston’s days are probably numbered.
But in the process of following Mr. Kingston, I’ve found something that disturbs me a whole lot more. I’m not sure what it is yet, which is why I didn’t say anything to Sam. Right now it’s just clues, instinct, and one important question.
Why in the world would a man with Greg Kingston’s hefty bank balance and social standing be staying in a no-stars motel in a shady part of Knoxville when he also has a room booked in the very upscale Tennessean Hotel?
There are a few reasons a man like Kingston stays in a place like this: hiring prostitutes, buying drugs, or something darker than either of those. I’m actually hoping he just has a taste for sex workers on the rougher side of town. That would be the best possible outcome here.
But it isn’t what I get.
I watch as an anonymous dark car pulls up. A dumpy-looking white man gets out. He’s wearing jeans and a plain jacket, and he has a ball cap pulled low over his face. No bag, so if he’s a drug dealer, he’s not bringing more than what’s in his pockets. I don’t think someone of Kingston’s monstrous ego would be just in for a dime bag.
As the man opens the back door of the car, I realize that is not what he’s bringing.
The girl can’t be more than twelve at best, and my mouth goes dry. My heart starts hammering harder. I force myself to be calm and take as many pictures as I can. The license plate. The car’s details. The best shots I can of the girl. She’s in a blue dress that belongs on a younger child, and she has a vacant, defeated expression on her face that makes me want to scream.
I get an absolutely clear picture of Greg Kingston’s grin as he opens up the motel room door and shakes the dumpy man’s hand. He ushers the girl and the man inside the room and shuts the door.