Stillhouse Lake (Stillhouse Lake #1)(96)

I can’t help it. I scream. I scream the names of my children as my heart breaks and my mind snaps and all I want to do is die.

Graham never meant for them to live. He only meant for me to see this.

I’m still holding the Sig, and for a terrible, beautiful moment of clarity, I think how perfect it is that I’m going to die here, in the same way that Gina Royal withered away and perished. Looking at the same horrors. Feeling the same sense of complete loss.

And then I hear my son say, “Mom?”

It’s a whisper, but it is as loud as a shout, and I drop the gun, drop it like it’s on fire, and I scramble on all fours across the floor, the rug, around the hulking horror of that winch, and behind it, behind it, I see the barred grate set into the false wall. It’s padlocked. I stumble back to the tools and rip a crowbar out of the pegboard with such force I send things flying and clattering, and I run back to the door. I jam the forked end under the hasp and yank. Wood splinters. Gives. The hasp tears free.

I use the crowbar to lever the door, and inside I see Connor, I see Lanny. They are alive, alive, and all the strength leaves me in that moment and I crash to my knees as they rush toward me and throw themselves on me as if they want to disappear inside me.

Oh God, it’s so beautiful. The relief hurts, but it’s the hurt of a wound being cauterized, all the bleeding stopped.

I am still rocking my children back and forth on the floor of this hell when Kezia and Sam find me. Both are breathless, braced for the worst. I see Sam’s face and I think, My God, because he has just walked through a shrine to the place where his sister suffered and died, and I can only imagine how hard this has been, to take these steps past that winch and reach us.

But we’re alive.

We’re all alive.





15


The blood in my house, I find, was from Kyle. And it was Lanny’s doing.

“I heard them fighting,” she tells me, once we’re outside again in the clean night air. Kyle and Lee Graham are both tightly handcuffed, and Kezia has fastened them to a hook set into the cabin’s wall. I can’t imagine what it’s for. I don’t want to. “I grabbed the knife and I came in and I cut him. Kyle, I mean. I would have got him, too, if his damn dad hadn’t been with him. I got us to the panic room just like you taught us, but he knew the code. I’m sorry, Mom. I let you down—”

“No, I did.” Connor’s voice is a bare whisper, almost pulled away by the wind. “The code was in my phone. I should have said so. You could have changed it.”

It all fits together now. Connor’s phone, taken from him by Graham’s kids. I remember my son’s hesitance the night Graham brought the phone back, how Connor had almost told me something important. He hadn’t wanted to make me mad, because I’d told him over and over again not to write the codes down.

I can’t let him believe this is his fault. Ever.

“No, baby,” I tell him. I kiss his forehead. “It doesn’t matter. I’m so proud of you both. You stayed alive. Right now, that’s what matters, okay? We’re alive.”

Kezia’s got foil blankets in her survival kit, and I wrap the kids up to preserve their body heat. They’re bruised. They took a beating in the fight. I ask if there’s anything they want to tell me about what happened at the cabin. Lanny says nothing happened. Connor says nothing at all.

I wonder if my daughter is lying to me.

We sit in the clearing. Backup finally arrives in a swarm of NPD uniforms, and I see Javier Esparza’s there, too. He nods to me, and I nod back. I doubted him. I never should have.

Detective Prester himself has made the climb; he’s still got a suit that’s never going to survive this mud, but he’s thrown on a heavy pea jacket. He comes immediately to us, and I see something new in his face.

Respect.

“I owe you one hell of an apology, Ms. Proctor,” he says. “They okay?”

“Time will tell,” I say. “I think so.” I don’t know, but I have to believe they will be. It’s going to be hard. They’ll have questions. I can’t imagine what Lancel Graham told them about their father. I think that, more than any other trauma, is what keeps my son mute.

Prester nods and sighs. He doesn’t look like he wants to go down into that basement, but I imagine he’s seen worse. “Kezia says you have Graham’s phone. I’ll need that for evidence, and anything else you took.”

“I left most of that stuff in his truck,” I say. “The gun’s mine.” I’ve retrieved it from the floor of the basement; I don’t need more complications. “Here.” I dig the phone out of my pocket.

The screen is on. I pushed the button accidentally. It’s just the lock screen, and without Graham’s thumbprint or code I can’t unlock it, but what freezes me is the text message that’s appeared on the screen.

It’s from Absalom, and it says, He wants an update.

I show it to Prester. He doesn’t seem surprised. “Who’s Absalom?”

I tell him about my hacker benefactor. My ally, who’s been selling me out the entire time. I don’t know how to find Absalom, and I tell him that, too. I hold out the phone and say, “My turn. Who do you think Absalom is talking about?”

Prester takes an evidence bag from his pocket, and I slip it in. He seals it before he answers. “I think you can guess.”