Bitter Falls (Stillhouse Lake #4)(2)

Father Tom smiled at him like he couldn’t feel the chill at all, and said, “Do you believe in the power of our lord Jesus Christ, and his heavenly father?”

He just nodded. It felt like a convulsion. It hurt. He just wanted to sleep.

“Then be washed in the blood of the lamb, and begin anew. You have struggled in your faith, but no more. You are a saint of the Assembly.”

He wasn’t prepared for Father Tom to dunk him under the water; it was done fast, expertly, as if he’d done it a thousand times. He struggled, but Tom held him pinned for a few long seconds before he was allowed to pop up into the steaming morning air again.

He wanted to scream from the shock and the cold, but relief set in. He’d done it. He’d survived. He turned his face up to the rising sun and took in a deep, whooping breath. I’m alive. I’m alive! I’m going to get out of this.

“God is with you, Brother,” Father Tom said. “Your service ensures our salvation.”

He hadn’t seen them coming, but there were two more men in the water around him now, and he realized something wasn’t right. He tried to head to shore.

But one of them grabbed his shoulders, and the other ducked under the water.

He felt something tugging at him. He didn’t know what it was until he put his hands into the water.

It was a big, thick chain drawn tight around his waist, and Father Tom clicked a padlock closed to secure it.

The men let go of him and stepped back.

You said you’d let me go. Begin anew, you said. That was a wail in the back of his mind, as his teeth clenched together and he felt the black, despairing rush of what was coming.

“God bless you, Saint,” Father Tom said, and pushed him over the edge into the abyss.

The last thing he saw was the heavy iron weight at the end of the chain dragging him down into the dark, and the last glitters of dawn on the water above him.

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.