The Girl Who Survived(15)

Even today in what seemed a lifetime later, Wesley felt his own heart twist and his jaw set. He’d been robbed of the father he remembered all too clearly. Edmund had been a big man, overweight and a smoker, but only forty-seven years old when he’d taken that fateful plunge into the icy water.

Tate’s hands clenched over the bottle. He stared at the ice-covered lake, its smooth surface stretching for half a mile, though tonight the view was cloaked by falling snow. The houses on the far shore were indiscernible, no lights from windows piercing the whispering veil.

He tipped up his bottle and took a long swallow, a cold wind rattling the trees and swirling the icy flakes.

That damned lake.

He’d loved coming here as a kid with his parents and younger sister. It had been a sanctuary, a haven away from the city, a place to explore in times when their small family had bonded and his father’s work was miles away. He’d fished from the old dock, hunted in the surrounding woods, played one-on-one at the rusted hoop planted in the sparse gravel. How many times had the old man let him win?

Of course, that was before the night that had changed everything, he thought, shivering in his stockinged feet. His love for this place had soured, the sanctuary turning to a hated place—heaven turning into hell in the space of a heartbeat.

“Nothing in life is fair,” his mother had reminded him when he’d complained. “He died doing what he loved—protecting others.” Of course Selma Tate had been devastated, too, hiding her bitterness from her children, standing proudly in the icy rain at her husband’s burial, and forcing a smile she didn’t feel when she was presented with a flag as Edmund had served in the marines before becoming a cop and marrying his high school sweetheart.

But, late at night, Wes had heard her crying in her room, over the sound of the country music she played loudly. He, lying on the top bunk in his bedroom, had been able to make out her sobs through the thin walls and hollow-core doors of their condominium.

He rubbed the back of his neck and turned toward the McIntyre estate, but he saw only dark forest looming through the swirling snow. During the day, part of the roof of the big house was visible between the tops of the firs and pines, and when the sun was setting, one could catch the glimmer of fading sunlight on the old panes of the window cut into the top floor, the attic where Kara had sworn she’d been locked.

But tonight it was dark.

Lost in shadows.

While the snow fell softly, an opaque veil hiding the rotting shingles and cracked glass.

God, he hated that place.

He didn’t doubt that Kara McIntyre felt the same.





CHAPTER 5


Detective Cole Thomas was pissed.

Pissed, pissed, pissed.

No way that murdering bastard Jonas McIntyre should be out of prison. No friggin’ way. McIntyre was the single worst murderer to have ever set foot in Hatfield County, and he should have been locked up for the rest of his natural life. But no. Once again the system had failed.

“Son of a bitch,” he muttered under his breath as he glared at the computer screen mounted on his desk and swore a blue streak just as he heard footsteps, the sound of his partner as she approached.

“Good day?” she asked, sliding her arms through the thick sleeves of a ski jacket as she paused at his office. The department was slowing down for the night, only a few day-shift cops still hanging out while the night crew was taking over.

From somewhere near the break room he heard a ripple of laughter and farther off the sound of a heavy door banging shut.

“Yeah, right. The best,” he growled, setting the coffee back on his desk. “Just fuckin’ awesome.”

Aramis Johnson sent him a wry grin and shook her head, black hair scraped into some kind of bun gleaming under the harsh overhead lights. Tall and slim, her features sharp, her mocha-colored skin flawless, she could have been a runway model, he thought, not for the first time. Instead, Johnson was a cop. And, he had to admit grudgingly, a good one. Those gorgeous near-black eyes didn’t miss much. He didn’t know why she’d joined the force, but he suspected it might have something to do with her special needs child who didn’t seem to have a father, at least not one he knew about. “Let me guess: You’re not happy with Jonas McIntyre being released.”

“You must be a detective.”

“Lighten up.” She flashed him a quick smile as two uniforms passed by his open door, their conversation low and intense, the taller scratching his crown before squaring his cap on a head of short cropped hair.

“Lighten up? Really? Even though a family annihilator is now walking free—no wait”—he held up a finger—“make that a convicted family annihilator.” Thomas’s desk phone rang. He recognized the number. Didn’t answer. Within seconds his cell phone buzzed. Same number. He ignored it.

“You under the radar?” Johnson asked, leaning a hip against his desk. “Not picking up?”

“Reporter.”

“On your cell, too?”

“Yeah. Somehow she’s got my private number.”

“Somehow?” Johnson repeated, arching a suspicious eyebrow. “She?”

“Yeah.” Of course he knew how. Didn’t go there. Sheila Keegan could stand in line and talk to the PIO with the rest of the TV and newspaper people. That’s why the department had a public information officer, wasn’t it? To deal with the press.