Stillhouse Lake (Stillhouse Lake #1)(54)

I think about my kids, and I hold up my hands. “I’m not armed. Please. Check me.”

Prester does the honors, quick, impersonal sweeps of hands over me, and I flash back to the first time this happened to Gina Royal, bent across the burning hood of the family minivan. Poor, stupid Gina, who’d thought that invasive. She hadn’t had a clue.

“Clean,” Prester says. “All right. Let’s make this nice and easy, shall we?”

“I’ll come quietly if you let me talk to my kids first.”

“All right. Javier, you go in with her.”

Javier nods and reaches down to take a black case from his pocket and slot it onto his belt. A gold-washed deputy’s star gleams there. He’s officially on duty now.

I go inside and find Lanny and Connor sitting tensely, staring at the door; relief melts over them, but then I see the change as Javier comes in, too, and takes up a guard stance at the door. “Mom?” Lanny’s voice breaks a little. “Is everything okay?”

I sink down on the sofa and put my arms around them both, holding them close. I kiss them before I say, as gently as I can, “I have to go with Detective Prester for now. Everything’s okay. Javier is going to stay here with you until I get back.”

I look up at him, and he nods and looks away. Lanny’s not crying, but Connor is, very quietly. He wipes his eyes with both hands, and I can tell he’s angry with himself. Neither of them says a word.

“I love you both so much,” I say, and then I get up. “Please look out for each other until I’m back.”

“If you’re back,” Lanny says. It’s almost a whisper. I pretend I didn’t hear because if I look at her now, I’ll break, and they’ll have to drag me away from them.

I manage to walk on my own out of the house, down the steps, and I join Prester at the car. When I look back, I see Javier stepping inside and locking up the house.

“They’ll be okay,” Prester tells me. He ushers me into the back and ducks in after me. It’s like sharing a cab, I think, except the doors don’t open from the inside. At least the ride’s free. Graham gets in the front seat and drives.

Prester doesn’t say anything, and I don’t get any kind of vibe from him; it’s like sitting next to a piece of sun-warmed granite that smells faintly of dry-cleaning fluid and Old Spice. I don’t know what I smell like to him. Fear, probably. The sweaty aroma of a guilty woman. I know how cops think, and they wouldn’t have come to get me if I wasn’t a—as they like to term it—person of interest. Which is a suspect that they haven’t quite collected enough evidence on to charge. I worry about Lanny, with so much responsibility landing on her at just the wrong time in her life. Then I realize I’m thinking like I’m actually guilty.

Which I’m not. Not of the murder at the lake. Not of anything except marrying the wrong man and failing to notice he was the devil wearing human skin.

I take in a slow breath, let it out, and say, “Whatever you think I did, you’re wrong.”

“I never said you did anything,” Prester says. “To borrow a colorful phrase from the English, you’re helping us with our inquiries.” He’s nearly as bad at British accents as he is at ties.

“I’m a suspect, or you wouldn’t have a warrant,” I tell him flatly.

For answer, Prester unfolds the paper. It’s good, official stock, with the logo of the city on the top, and the word WARRANT printed on it in bold letters, but where the particulars should be, it’s just nonsense words graphic designers use to fill space. Lorem ipsum. I’ve used the same text so often, I can’t help but let out a soft laugh. “Ain’t no way we could get a warrant with the information we have right now, Ms. Proctor, I’ll tell you that for free.”

“Nice prop. Does it work often?”

“All the damn time. Fools around here take one look at it and think it’s in Official State Latin or some such nonsense.”

This time I laugh, because I can imagine a drunk, angry guy trying to parse out the words. Official State Latin. “So what’s really so urgent that you have to come get me in the middle of the night?”

Prester’s near-imaginary smile vanishes, and he looks unreadable. “Your name. You’ve been living a whole pack of lies, and let me tell you, it doesn’t exactly sit well with me. We got an anonymous call about your real name today and heard you might be planning to beat it out of town, so I had to make a move fast.”

I go a little cold, but I’m not really surprised. It was a logical play for my ex-husband to make, to make my life harder and more miserable. Any little, spiteful thing to hurt. It also locked me here, in Norton, and prevented me from starting the cycle again. Instead of answering, I turn my head.

“You know how strange all this looks,” Prester says. “Don’t you?”

I don’t answer. There’s really nothing I can say to make any of it better. I just wait as the cruiser bumps onto the main road leading to Norton, and we speed toward town.



I don’t flinch when Prester spreads out the photos in front of me. Why would I? I’ve been faced with Melvin Royal’s gruesome work a hundred times now. I’m fully acclimated to the horror.

There are only two that still wake a flutter in my chest.

The photo of the woman hanging limp from a wire noose in my old garage, naked and yet stripped even further by the removal of pieces of her skin.