Stillhouse Lake (Stillhouse Lake #1)(45)

Not that I don’t trust him. Just that I need some kind of reassurance.

I do say this: “Sam? Do you have a gun?”

I catch him in midgulp, and he turns to look at me with a curious expression as he coughs. I cock an eyebrow at him, and he turns it into a rueful laugh. “Sorry,” he says. “Caught me off guard there. Yeah, I’ve got a gun, sure. Why?”

“Would you mind making sure you have it with you while you’re here? I’m just—”

“Worried about leaving your kids? Yeah. Okay. No problem.” Still, he continues to watch me, and his voice drops a little. “Any specific threats I need to know about, Gwen?”

“Specific? No. But—” I hesitate, thinking how to put it. “I feel like we’re being watched. Does that sound crazy?”

“Around Killhouse Lake? Nope.”

“Killhouse?”

“Don’t blame me for that one. Blame your daughter. I think one of her goth buddies came up with it. Catchy, isn’t it?”

I hated it. Stillhouse was plenty creepy enough for me. “Well, just—take care of them, that’s all I ask. I’ll be gone less than twenty-four hours.”

He nods. “I might work on that deck some, if that’s all right.”

“Sure. Thanks.”

On impulse, I reach out to him, and he takes my hand and holds it for a moment. That’s all. It isn’t a kiss. Isn’t even a hug. But it’s something strong, and it makes both of us sit for a moment savoring it.

He gets up eventually, draining the last of his pecan porter, and says, “I’ll be back early morning before you leave, yeah?”

“Yeah,” I agree. “I leave for Knoxville at four a.m. The kids will be off to school by eight, and they can get themselves up and on the bus. You’ll have the place to yourself until they’re back at three. I’ll be in sometime after dark.”

“Sounds good. I’ll be sure to eat all your food and watch only the highest-dollar pay-per-view. Mind if I buy a bunch of stuff on your account on the shopping channels?”

“You know how to party, Sam.”

“Damn right I do.”

He gives me a full, sweet smile and leaves to walk up the hill toward his small cabin. I watch him go, hardly aware that I’m smiling, too. It feels normal.

Normal, I think, as the smile finally fades, is so dangerous now. I’d been fooling myself into thinking I could live in that world, but my world is the one beneath, the one in the shadows, the one where nothing is safe or sane or permanent. I’d almost forgotten that with Sam. If I stay here, I am helping my kids, but I’m risking everything, too.

There are no good answers, but this time I’m not just going to be strong. I’m hitting back.

The next day I take an eye-wateringly early morning flight from Knoxville to Wichita, where we once lived, and from there I drive a rental car to El Dorado. It’s got a strangely industrial feeling, like a large manufacturing campus surrounded by miles of nothing, but there’s no mistaking what it really is once you see the shimmering fences around it in a lace ruff of razor wire. I’ve never been here before. I don’t know how to do this. The air smells different, and it reminds me of my old life, my old house that’s long gone. It was foreclosed on by the bank while I was in jail. A month after that, someone had set it on fire and burned it to ruins. There’s a memorial park there now.

When I want to punish myself, I look at the spot where I once lived on Google Maps. I try to overlay the house on top of the park from memory. It seems to me that the large stone memorial block sits in the center of what had once been Mel’s garage and killing floor. That seems appropriate.

I don’t take the detour to look on the way to El Dorado. I can’t. I am focused on one thing and one thing only as I follow instructions from the guard on where to park, what I can take inside with me. I’ve left my Glock locked in my Jeep’s gun safe back in Knoxville, and all I have with me now are the clothes on my body, a preloaded cash card for $500, phone and tablet computer, and my old Gina Royal ID.

I endure the sign-in process, where my ID is scrutinized, my fingerprints are taken, and I am subjected to stares and whispers from not just the prison staff but other women coming to see family. I don’t meet anyone’s gaze. I am an expert at being remote. The guards are certainly interested. I’ve never been to see Melvin before. They’ll be hotly discussing it up and down the corridors.

Next, everything but my clothes is taken and stored in a guard station, and then I’m strip-searched; it’s a humiliating, invasive process, but I grit my teeth and get through it without complaint. This is important, I think. Mel likes to play chess. This move, this visit, is my checkmate. I can’t afford to flinch at the cost of making it.

Dressed again, I’m shown to another waiting room, where I pass the time reading a dog-eared gossip magazine left by some woman before me. It’s an hour before a guard appears to summon me on—he’s young and hard-faced, this one, with sharply clinical eyes. African American. A bodybuilder, I think. Nobody I’d want to cross.

He leads me into a small, claustrophobic booth with a stained, worn counter, a chair, a phone fastened to the cubicle wall. Scratched, thick Plexiglas for a barrier. There’s a whole row of booths, and desperate people sit hunched in every one of them, searching for some peace, some humanity in a place that offers none of that. I hear whispers of conversation as I go. Momma’s not feeling right . . . brother’s been locked up for driving drunk again . . . Can’t afford to pay the lawyer this time . . . I wish you could come home, Bobby, we miss you.