The Girl Who Survived(117)

EDMUND W. TATE

U.S. MARINE CORPS

SEMPER FIDELIS





“Semper fi,” he said aloud.

“What?” She turned to face him. “What did you say?”

His breath stopped in his throat. “Semper fi,” he repeated. As he did he felt a sizzle in his nerves, like an electrical connection, a link to twenty years ago, to the night when he’d lost his father and, for a while, lost his way. His mind spun as he stared at the shadow box.

What was it he’d overheard in the hospital when the hospital security guards in the cafeteria were talking about the last words of his father’s life?

“He wasn’t sure, but it sounded like, you know, like fee or fie . . . maybe it was fee, fi, fo, fum . . . or backwards.”

But that was wrong. Edmund Tate hadn’t been deliriously saying “fee-fi-fo-fum” from some kid’s fairy tale, but “semper fi,” a phrase dear to his heart, the shortened motto of the Marine Corps, the way it was usually said aloud.

But what did it mean?

Why had his dad muttered that phrase during his dying breaths? He’d served in the marines, yes, but he was also a cop and he would be trying to tell the EMTs what he’d seen. He yanked his cell phone from his pocket and punched out Wayne Connell’s number. As Connell answered, Tate said, “Can you check on anyone connected to the McIntyre Massacre who served in the military before it happened. Especially anyone in the marines.”

“Sure.”

“Good. I’ll explain later.” Then Tate clicked off and walked through the kitchen and open door outside to the back deck, to the spot where his father had first heard the screams from the neighboring property. Kara was standing at the rail, her gaze fastened on the lake, visible though a shifting curtain of snow. “I’m sorry,” she said as she heard him approach.

“For?”

“For running from your father,” she said, and as he reached her side, he noticed she was fighting tears. “I’ve been so caught up in my own misery, my own pain, the damned tragedy of my childhood, I’ve never really considered what anyone else had gone through. No . . . it was all about me.”

He placed an arm over her shoulders. “You were seven.”

“And now I’m almost twenty-eight. Time, I think, to grow up. You’re right. You lost your childhood that night, too.”

He folded her into his arms, holding her close while energized that he’d made a breakthrough, that finally he was going to unearth answers that had been hidden for too, too long. “We’re going to figure this out,” he promised, “and we’re going to figure it out tonight.”





CHAPTER 33


Kara’s heart was in her throat as she stared at the splash of light from the Toyota’s headlights against the rusting gate. They were parked on the turnoff to the lane leading to the house—her house—where all of the horror had begun.

On the short drive from the cottage where Tate had spent his summers as a child, he’d told her that he was certain his father had been trying to convey something about what he’d seen that night. Tate thought that Edmund Tate had whispered, “Semper fi,” in his dying breath. “It’s got to be someone he knew in the Marine Corps. Someone he saw,” Wes had said, gripping the steering wheel tightly, his face a mask of steel as the wheels turned in his mind. “I’ve got someone checking, but we’re close, Kara,” he’d said. “We’re closer than we’ve ever been.”

And now they were here, at the very gates of hell, she thought, and felt a grave sense of foreboding, a feeling that what they were about to uncover would be as disturbing as the past.

Some secrets are best left undisturbed.

Her hands clenched, her stomach was in knots and she had trouble drawing a breath as the beams of Tate’s RAV4’s headlights bathed the old, rusted gates with an eerie glow. Kara shrank into the passenger seat. What had seemed like a good idea earlier in the day now felt wrong. So very wrong.

“You okay?” Tate asked, cutting the engine, the night closing in on them as snowflakes fell and she heard the wind sweeping through the surrounding forest.

“Am I ever?” she replied as another warning chill slid down her spine. “No, I’m definitely not okay.”

“We don’t have to do this.”

“Don’t we?” Ignoring the mounting trepidations, she grabbed hold of the passenger door handle. “We didn’t come all the way up here for me to wimp out now.” Mentally bracing herself for whatever was to come, she forced herself to push the door open. Air as bitter and cold as the arctic whooshed inside the Toyota. “We’re here now. Let’s get this over with.” She stepped out of the SUV, her boots sinking deep into the snow, and gritted her teeth. Enough, she told herself. She’d been through enough. It was time to end this.

Slamming the door behind her, she walked to the gates. Staring through the grimy bars, she heard Tate get out of the RAV4, then the beep of the remote lock that seemed out of place and jarring in this hushed, frozen forest.

What the hell had she been thinking?

This is a mistake, Kara! Go back to Tate’s loft. Forget this. Have another drink. Have five. You don’t have to go back in. Tate said so.

No, she had to go through with it. Had to.