Stillhouse Lake (Stillhouse Lake #1)(84)

Nerdy.

I try to chase that thought, but I can’t; it shatters as Prester says, “I’m going to need for you to come down to the station. Lots to do here, and you can’t be in the way. Mr. Cade, I’d like you to join us, too. Need some more information about this shooting situation.”

I say something meaningless, an agreement of some kind, but I am not agreed. My mind is working fast, too fast, spinning out in a thousand different directions, and nothing makes sense anymore. But there is something I can do, I realize. Just one thing.

I ask for my phone back, and I text Absalom to say, Someone has my kids. I don’t know who. Please help.

I hit “Send,” not knowing if that is going out as a prayer into the darkness or a cry of despair. I can’t be angry if he doesn’t want to get involved; Absalom is a bottle thrown into the vast, dark ocean of the Internet, and the Internet, as I have good reason to know, is not a friendly place.

No reply comes. I ask Prester to wait, which he does, impatiently, for a solid five minutes, and then he takes the phone away and seals it into an evidence bag.

If it chimes again, I don’t hear it, because it goes into a brown cardboard box, part of an inventory of evidence that will be taken back to Norton from the house. Not my home, not anymore. Just bricks and wood and steel, with a not-quite-finished deck. I regret not finishing it and sitting out there, at least one time, with Sam and the kids. Maybe I’d have one last happy memory of this place.

Sam offers his hand to me, and I stare at it without much understanding until I realize that Prester’s waiting by the sedan. It’s time to go.

I won’t be back here, I think.

One way or another, it’s not home.



The interrogation room at the police department is wearily familiar, even down to the chipped corner. I work at it with a fingernail restlessly, waiting. Sam’s been taken to another room—separate interviews, of course—and Kezia left us to go put on her uniform and join the rest of the force out on patrol, tracking down my children. I don’t put much faith in the police, even though Prester’s given me calm, logical talk about roadblocks and local knowledge and hiring up some of the finest tracking dogs around to get the scent out of Connor’s bedroom.

I imagine all it will do is lead them to a place where a car once sat, or a truck, or a van. If parked at the right angles, I think, the van that Javier tried to sell me would be perfect for the purpose . . . angled in toward the front of the house, a sliding side door behind the passenger seat. Perfect cover to carry unconscious young bodies from the house out to the van, load them in, lock them down.

The dogs wouldn’t take us to them. They’d only take us to where they’d been last, maybe to the road.

I hadn’t noticed it until the car ride, but the heavy, humid air has finally turned dark overhead, clouds wisping and clumping and layering, and as I wait in the interrogation room, I hear the faint drumming of the beginning of rainfall. Rain, to wash away the scent tracks.

Rain, to wash away tracks and evidence and wipe it all clean, until the bodies of my children float slowly to the surface, breaking like pallid bubbles of flesh.

I put my face in my hands and try not to scream. At least I muffle it, but someone outside the door opens it and looks in, frowning, then closes it when they see I’m not bleeding or unconscious. I don’t know how they’d have treated the parent of two other missing children, but Gina Royal? Gina Royal is a suspect first, last, always.

Prester takes his good time getting to me. When he finally does, the rain has intensified into a hissing storm on the roof, and although there are no windows, I can hear the distant booms of thunder rolling through the hills. It’s distinctly cooler in here. Damp.

He’s been out in the storm, that much is clear, because he’s using a hand towel that has probably last been on a rack in their break room to wipe his face and hair, and dab the worst of the rain off his suit jacket. It patters down to make dark stars on the floor, and I think of the drops, the smears in Connor’s room. Brown smears, brown drops now, surely. It no longer looks like what people expect when they think of blood.

Connor’s blood is hours old, and I am sitting in this room, cold and shivering and desperate, and Prester is telling me that he hasn’t found them yet. “We haven’t found Javier Esparza, either,” he tells me. “Sophie up at the range tells me he took a fishing trip.”

“That’s convenient.”

“Not a crime, not up here. About ten percent of Norton’s out camping, fishing, or hunting any given week. But we’re looking hard. Got Fish and Game on it, checking campsites; we’ve asked Knoxville for a helicopter. Have to wait a bit for it to get free, but it’s coming.” He walks me through a map of the area around Stillhouse Lake, of the search parties, roadblocks, checks of every Stillhouse resident. I tell him about the Johansens in their shiny SUV, looking the other way while offering us up for a beating, or worse. My fists clench hard and press down, and I realize that where the edge of the wood is chipped, the hardened top surface is a little curled up, a little sharp. With work, someone could cut a wrist here.

“Can I leave?” I ask him quietly. He studies me over the top of the reading glasses he’s put on to look at the map. He looks like a dry college professor, like the horrific abduction of my kids is some kind of academic puzzle. “I want to look for my children. Please.”