Stillhouse Lake (Stillhouse Lake #1)(19)

Officer Graham perches on one of the barstools at the counter to sip his tea. He looks comfortable enough and gives me a friendly grin as he raises eyebrows in appreciation. “Good tea, ma’am,” he says. “Hot day out in the squad car. I can tell you this goes down well.”

“Anytime, and please, call me Gwen. We’re neighbors, right? And your sons are Connor’s friends?”

I glance at Connor as I say it, but his expression is closed. He is turning his phone over and over in his hands. I think with a stab of guilt that he is probably worried what kind of rant I’ll tear off on once the company is gone. It comes to me with ruthless clarity that I’ve been far too militant with my kids. We’ve finally settled in a nice place, surrounded by peace. We don’t have to act like hunted animals now. There are eight broken trails between the address the troll discovered online and us. Eight. It’s time to stand down from red alert, before I damage my kids irreparably.

Lancel Graham is looking around the place now with a curious expression. “You’ve sure done a great job with this house,” he says. “I was told it got trashed, right? After the foreclosure?”

“God, it was a total mess,” Lanny says, which startles me; she usually isn’t one to voluntarily jump into a conversation with a stranger. Especially a uniformed one. “They destroyed everything they could. You should have seen the bathrooms. Utterly gross. We had to wear white plastic suits and face masks to even go in there. I puked for days.”

“Must have been kids partying here, then,” Graham says. “Squatters would have had a little more care for the place, unless they were high all the time. Speaking of that, I should tell you that even out here, we have our own drug problems. Still some meth cooking going on up in the hills, but mainly the big business is heroin these days. And Oxy. So you keep an eye out. Never know who’s using or pushing.” He pauses in the act of raising his glass to his lips. “You didn’t find any drugs in here when you were clearing up?”

“Whatever we found, we tossed,” I tell him, which is entirely true. “I didn’t open any boxes or bags. Everything went out that wasn’t nailed down, and half of that we pried up and replaced. I doubt there’s anything hidden around here now.”

“Good,” he says. “Good. Well, that’s most of my job around here in Norton. Drugs and drug-related robberies, some drunk driving. Not a lot of violent crimes, thankfully. You came to a good place, Ms. Proct—Gwen.”

Except for the heroin epidemic, I think but don’t say. “Well, it’s always nice to meet neighbors. Strong ties make the community better, right?”

“Right.” He drains his tea, stands, and pulls a card from his pocket, which he lays down on the counter and taps with two fingers, as if nailing it in place. “My numbers are on there. Work and cell. You have any trouble, any of you, don’t be afraid to call, okay?”

“We will,” Lanny says, before I can, and I see that she’s studying Officer Graham with a shine in her eyes. I resist the urge to sigh. She’s fourteen. Crushes are inevitable, and he looks like the poster child for what workouts can do. “Thanks, Officer.”

“Sure thing, Miss—”

“Atlanta,” she tells him, and stands up to offer her hand. He gravely shakes it. She never calls herself Atlanta, I think, and nearly choke on my sweet tea.

“Pleased to meet you.” Graham turns and shakes Connor’s hand, too. “And you’re Connor, of course. I’ll tell my boys you said hi.”

“Okay.” Connor, by contrast to his sister, is quiet. Watchful. Reserved. Still holding on to his phone.

Graham puts his hat back on and shakes my hand last of all; then I walk him to the door. He turns, as if he’s forgotten something, while I’m disarming the alarm to let him out. “I heard you go to the range, Gwen. You keep your guns here?”

“Mostly,” I say. “Don’t worry. They’re all in gun safes.”

“And believe me, we know gun safety,” Lanny says, rolling her eyes.

“I’ll bet you’re both good shots,” he says. I don’t like the quick brother-sister look Connor and Lanny exchange; the fact that I’ve not allowed them to touch my guns, or to learn to shoot, is a constant bone of contention between us. It’s bad enough that I run panic drills in the middle of the night. I don’t want to add loaded weapons to the mix. “I’m there evenings on Thursdays and Saturdays. I’m teaching my boys.”

It isn’t quite an invitation, but I nod and thank him, and he’s on his way in another few seconds. He stops in the open door again and looks at me. “Can I ask you something, Ms. Proctor?”

“Sure,” I say. I step out, because I sense he wants it private.

“Rumors say this house had a safe room,” he says. “That true?”

“Yes.”

“You, ah, been in there?”

“We got a locksmith out to open it up. There wasn’t anything inside it. Just some water bottles.”

“Huh. I’d always thought someone was stashing something in there, if it even existed. Well.” He points back to where he left his card on the counter. “You call me if you need anything.”

He leaves without more questions.

Something tight and animal-hot eases up in me as I lock the door again, enter the code, and walk back toward the couch. Having a strange man in my house makes me itch all over. It reminds me of evenings spent on the couch with my kids. With Mel. With the thing that wore Mel as a disguise. I’d never seen through it. Oh, he could be cold and uninterested and cross, but any human in the world has those flaws.