Useless Bay(39)

Sammy nodded. “He wanted someone sneaky, and he knew about Meredith and me meeting on the sly. He figured he stood a better chance with us than he did with you two.”

While it still bugged me that Grant hadn’t come to me first, knowing what I did now, I couldn’t help thinking he was right. Sammy said he and Meredith had been together forever, but I had no clue until this moment. They seemed so easy about it, but that took stealth.

Sammy was still talking. “I know this will be hard to hear, but Grant was in the closet in the Breakers when Joyce strangled Lyudmila. The poor kid was totally traumatized. He begged us to take him and hide him. So we enlisted Hannah’s help. Her wai po runs the berry farm in Greenbank. He would be safe there.”

“I know,” Pixie said. “That’s a good place for him.”

I stared at her. I felt betrayed. “You knew where he was? You let me think he was drowned or kidnapped all this time?”

“No, I had no idea,” she said. “But I talked to Hannah before I went looking for you and she told me about her wai po. Grant is safe. She has a huge farm. And she sounds like someone you can count on.”

“And you two,” I pointed at Sammy and Meredith. “Do you have any idea the scale of the manhunt you’ve kicked off? Good people are out there, dragging the bay, searching through beach grass. To say nothing of the APB and the FBI here and at every ferry landing on the island . . . ”

“Sorry, man,” Sammy said. “We didn’t think that one through. All we cared about was getting Grant away from Joyce. Mere says she’s one slippery bitch. We didn’t think she’d heard of Hannah’s wai po. We were really just trying to buy some time until something better came up. We’ve been trying to think of a way to prove that Joyce did it while Grant is still safely hidden. We didn’t want him to have to relive it for the cops after what he’s just been through. You’re the planner, Henry. What do we do next?”

The seawater leaking from under the doors was up to our calves now, and Meredith was shivering.

My plan, direct confrontation, wasn’t any better than theirs.

Any instant now the psycho that I’d threatened was going to come in through that side door. “First, get to high ground. The tide’s coming in quickly. Grab everyone who’s left down here. Get ’em to Pixie’s house.”

“Don’t even bother with a car,” Pixie said. “Everyone will be trying to get out on the shore drive. Just take what you need and run up the dike path through the lagoon.”

“What about you two?”

“Henry has some unfinished business,” Pixie said.

I felt as if I were going to rupture, as though someone had poked me with a stick.

The doorknob started to rattle. She was here.

“Too late. Get out of sight. Now,” I said.





twenty-one


PIXIE


Stay . . . Good girl . . .

I knew I should be more worried about Joyce than I actually was, but I couldn’t concentrate. The troll was so loud! That skulking whisper I’d heard all those years in my nightmares? It was now a menacing growl. It sounded as though he were just on the other side of the seaward doors, which thumped loudly as each wave hit.

The water splashed around our calves. There was seaweed in it that grabbed for our legs and threatened to haul us out into the bay.

This was bad. This was tsunami-bad.

Henry was more worried about Joyce. She trudged in, her raincoat floating around her, just as Sammy and Meredith hid on the other side of the Lexus. She sloshed two steps into the garage, forcing the side door closed behind her.

Joyce smiled, and I hated her almost as much as Henry did. How could such a psycho smile so professionally? All this time, no one had seen what was behind that smile. But I was beginning to.

Her eyes glimmered with a perverse sort of excitement as she looked at Henry and me, as though she was ready to take us on.

The seaward doors rattled and groaned. Seawater gushed underneath.

“Well, little soldier,” she said to Henry. “I see you brought your security blanket.” She jutted her chin at me.

“You can’t control me anymore, Joyce. I’m not a little kid. You killed Lyudmila, and now you’re out of time. Agent Armstrong is going to prove what you really are, and I’ll be first in line to see you marched off to prison,” Henry said.

Joyce sighed. “Oh, my little soldier. You grew up so fast. I should’ve counted on this happening one day. Finally throwing off that blanket of denial.” She reached out to touch his cheek, but he jerked away. “So it’s going to be that way, is it?” She pulled out a gun. “Now. Give me your phones. We don’t want anyone recording this, do we?”

I pulled my phone out of my jeans pocket and slid it toward her. It wasn’t a clean slide since it was under a foot of water, but, fishing around, Joyce managed to find it and then smash it hard with one of her best shoes. Same with Henry’s phone.

Henry’s plan was now floating in pieces.

Yess . . . crunch you . . . reap you . . . , the troll groaned.

Something was going to get us—if not Joyce, then this creature. It was as inevitable as the rising tide.

“Believe me, this isn’t the happily ever after I expected,” Joyce said. “I thought we’d be one big happy family. I thought there was still time for your dad and me to have a child of our own. I’m only forty-two. That’s not too old, is it?” We said nothing. “You’re right, I suppose. Tick tock. It was supposed to be thirty. That was when you and I got rid of your mother.”