Wolfhunter River (Stillhouse Lake #3)(36)

“I do,” I tell him. “These documentary people are circling like vultures. And they will seize on this if the police roll up to our door. Better if I handle it away from home.”

I want to talk to him about Melvin’s note in his sister’s journal, about the awful shock of that and the emotional wreckage of last night, but I know that this has to take priority.

He shuts the bedroom door behind him. “Gwen. Stop.”

I pause, at least. I look up at him, restlessly folding and refolding a shirt.

“You’re a target,” he says. He walks to me. “You can’t put yourself in the middle of something when you’ve got no idea what’s going on up there.”

“I can’t leave a fifteen-year-old girl out there by herself either. She called me,” I tell him. “Her mother’s dead. If it was Lanny—”

“But she isn’t Lanny, she isn’t,” he says. He puts his hands on my shoulders, and I ache to be pulled into an embrace, but he doesn’t do it. He holds me there, at arm’s length. “You can’t take on trouble in a strange town. You don’t know the players, or the people. And you’ve got no stake in this thing.”

“But I do.” I meet his gaze, and he blinks first. “Sam, I know you’re just looking out for me. I know the risks. I know. I’m not that much safer staying here. Leaving and avoiding the cameras . . .” I have a second of bone-deep panic, of losing my breath. I’m back in Louisiana, in a room with a camera and blood and a dead woman and my brutal ex. I’m on the Howie Hamlin stage, trapped in a nightmare.

If I face another video camera right now, I’ll lose it completely.

“Goddammit,” he says, but he’s not angry. Just resigned. He leans his head against mine, foreheads gently touching. Then lips, in a sweet, quiet kiss, as if I hadn’t shattered him just last night. “Okay. But you’re not going alone.”

“But the kids—”

“The kids go too,” he says. “We all have to go, or you don’t.”

What he’s not saying is, We go as a family, but I feel that. I need that. I kiss him again, more fiercely, and feel his hands drift up to cup my face. He brushes hair back from my forehead and looks at me like I’m something he’s trying to memorize.

Then he steps back. “I’ll tell the kids to get packed.”

The kiss still lingers on my lips, makes me tremble inside, and I want . . . more. It scares me. I never expected to find this, not here, not with him, but Sam Cade is never what I expect, moment to moment. I want to heal the gulf between us. I need to.

I have the oddest feeling, though. I feel like he’s relieved.

Like he wants to escape Stillhouse Lake right now as much as I do.



“But where are we going?” Connor asks as I watch him stuff way too many books in his bag. “Someplace cool?”

“Probably not, kiddo,” I tell him. “A place called Wolfhunter.”

He pauses. I can tell he’s never heard of it. “It sounds cool.”

“I don’t know. I’ve never been there. But it’s at the edge of the Daniel Boone.” The Daniel Boone National Forest is a huge swath of dark forest, and just saying it sets a mood. Connor’s eyes widen. We’ve been there, of course; it was one of the first things I did with the kids when we moved here.

“Are we camping?” he asks.

“I sure hope not. There ought to be a motel we can stay at. I’m hoping it’s just for a day or two.”

He hesitates, then packs another book. I have to hide a smile. He’s as bad about that as I am about self-defense equipment. The collapsible baton in the bottom of my bag weighs at least as much as three of his paperbacks, and it’s far from the only thing I have in there.

“Why are we going?” he asks.

“You remember the lady who called me the other day for help?” He nods. “Her daughter’s in trouble.”

“How old is she?”

“Lanny’s age.”

“Oh. I thought maybe it was the other girl.”

“What other girl?” I ask.

“The one from the TV show.” He picks up his phone, and calls something up. He hands it to me. On the screen is a picture of a beautiful little African American girl of maybe six or seven, smiling for the camera and bursting with charm. “Remember? Her parents were on there. She was kidnapped from her school. They were in the waiting room with us.”

I remembered now: the traumatized couple in Howie’s greenroom. I’d barely registered them at the time, so intent on fleeing that I didn’t care about anyone else’s reasons for being there. I’d just wanted out. “Oh.” I sit down on the edge of Connor’s bed. “How long has she been gone?”

“Almost a week now,” he says. “She’s probably not coming back, right?”

I don’t want him to know these things. Not at his age. But statistically speaking, he’s on point; most young children who are abducted don’t survive more than a few hours. “Didn’t I hear there was some kind of ransom demand, though?” The details are filtering back to me. Abducted from her school in a slick, organized effort. Not an impulsive, need-driven act, but a planned and orchestrated one. That doesn’t mean the girl is alive. But it indicates she has a better-than-average chance to survive.