Wolfhunter River (Stillhouse Lake #3)(33)

It’s the camera crew.

They’ve found us.

“Mom?” Lanny, who’s got her door half-open. “Something wrong?”

“Close the door,” I tell her. My tone makes Connor scoot back from his exit too. “Let’s just wait a minute.”

“What’s happening?” Connor starts looking around, and the cameraman fits the viewfinder to his eye.

He’s getting a good shot of the back of my SUV, including the license plate.

“It’s getting hot in here,” Lanny says. “Can we just go in and get some ice cream now?”

“No,” I say. “Sorry, but I think it’s best we just go home.”

“Why?”

From where they’re sitting, they can’t see the van. I might have told Lanny if we were on our own; my daughter understands things better than my son when it comes to our sometimes-precarious social standing in town. But I’m not yet willing to ramp up Connor’s anxiety levels. He’s wound pretty tight; the terrible experience with his dad not long ago has made him even more introverted. I miss the days when he was still hanging out with geeks his own age, enthusiastic for games and movies and Dungeons & Dragons tournaments. I still think those things are inside him, but I don’t think he feels safe anymore expressing them.

Just another reason to hate my ex. Roast in hell, Melvin. Preferably on a slow-turning spit.

“I’ll tell you once we’re home,” I say. I start the engine and back up. I have to pass the van to head for the exit, unfortunately, and that means the cameraman is perfectly positioned to see us. I have a faint hope that the kids won’t see that, but of course Lanny does, right away.

She points straight at them. “What the hell are they doing?”

“Filming us,” I say. “Put your hand down, please.”

My daughter does not put her hand down. Instead, she turns it and effortlessly raises a proud middle finger. “Hope they got that,” she says. “Assholes. Why are they doing that?”

I don’t want to tell them this, but it’s best they’re prepared. “You remember the woman on the Howie Hamlin Show?”

“Miranda Tidewell,” Connor says. “She’s rich.” When we both look back at him, he shrugs. “I looked her up. Since she was doing a documentary about our father. Why is she doing that?”

“People want to hear about him, unfortunately. And us. So we have to be careful.”

“Yeah,” Lanny says. “Which you’d realize if you ever got your nose out of your books.”

They’re fighting again. I wish that they wouldn’t, but I know that’s the standard sibling relationship, especially at this age. Lanny did handle Connor with kid gloves for about two months after I came back from Killman Creek and gave them the hard news about their dad’s death—and that I’d had to be the one to kill him, which was hard—but the peace treaty never really lasts. In fact, there’s even more of an edge to it now. We’ve talked it over, but I don’t think Lanny can get over the idea that her brother was talking to their dad during that time. Melvin, damn him, had convinced our son to trust him, and Lanny just can’t comprehend that. It’s a wound between them, and I hope that eventually it will heal. But it damn sure hasn’t yet.

We’re at the parking lot exit now, and unfortunately there’s traffic coming in both directions, so I’m stuck. The cameraman has walked off to the side, still filming. I’m sure he’s tightly focused on our faces. I hate it. It feels like a violation of our privacy, even if it’s not technically against the law. Or maybe it is against the law? I don’t know what the rules are in this state for filming minors without consent. Might be something to look into.

I look at the oncoming traffic and wish everything would move faster, but there is yet another tractor rumbling toward us at an achingly slow speed. The dark eye of that camera at the periphery of my vision seems to get deeper, like the mouth of a well I’m falling into. I blink, and I see the camera in the Howie Hamlin studio, the feeling of being frozen and helpless.

I blink again, and I see a filthy, moldering Louisiana mansion. A room spattered with blood. Chains.

And a camera filming, filming, filming. Just like the camera Melvin had set up to show my murder to a waiting, paying audience of watchers.

I hear what sounds like an approaching scream.

“Mom!” Lanny’s alarmed voice makes me mash the brakes, and I realize that I’ve drifted almost into oncoming traffic, and the scream was the horn of a passing truck. She rakes her black hair back from her face and gives me a worried look. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I automatically tell her, because that’s what I always tell her. And myself. But it doesn’t take a paid psychologist to figure out that I’m not okay. I’m having flashbacks. Cold sweats. Nightmares. And now this filming, bringing it all back. I need to talk to Dr. Marks.

I take a couple of deep breaths and whip the wheel left when there’s a break in traffic. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the man angle his camera to follow our path.

I don’t really feel safe until we’re over the hill, turned onto the main highway, and headed out of Norton.

Lanny fidgets in silence for a while, waiting for a fuller explanation I’m not willing to give; she finally puts her headphones on and stares out the window. Connor drops into his book and vanishes from the world.