Wolfhunter River (Stillhouse Lake #3)(37)

Connor’s eager to catch me up. He’s clearly been following the case. “The discussion boards say that the dad paid the ransom, but nobody knows for sure,” he says. “So maybe there was a secret payment to get her back.”

“Back up, Connor: Discussion boards?”

Some of the brightness fades out of him. “Sorry. But I don’t go to the ones that talk about my father. I promise.”

“Don’t go to any of them,” I tell him. “And you know you can’t believe what you read on Reddit,” I say. “Stay off the boards, okay?”

“I don’t post, I only read.”

“Don’t make me put them on the block list, Connor.”

He gives me a frown. “I’m not some little kid. But you never want me to know anything.”

I don’t. Earnestly. Not about child abductions, and certainly not about the depths of horror that human beings have in them. Not about his dad, though I know he already knows much more than I think. “I want you to know things. I also want to be sure you’re ready for it,” I say, and mean it. “I don’t want you to get a warped view of the world either.” Not like mine. “People are good most of the time. Bad some of the time. Rely on the internet for how you look at the world, though, and you’ll see the worst side of people represented far too much.”

“That’s not true, Mom,” he says. “People put together big movements on the internet. They help each other. Strangers help strangers. It isn’t all bad.”

He’s right, of course. My son’s more well balanced than I am. “Okay. But I mean it. Do not fall for things that feel right, and sound wrong. Understand?”

“Like the lies my father was telling me,” he says. “Yes. I know.”

“I’m sorry, sweetie,” I tell him, and he looks down at the book he’s turning over in his hands. “He shouldn’t have done that to you.”

He shrugs, a loose circle of his shoulders. “Yeah, well, it wasn’t as bad as what he would have done to you, probably.”

I blink. I see a cold black camera lens, focusing on me. My throat tightens up, and I know I’m going to have to deal with this trauma sooner rather than later, and in a more constructive manner than pushing it away. But right now there’s a girl in Wolfhunter who’s all alone. A dead woman who asked me for help.

“I’m sorry about the little one,” I say. “I wish I could help her too. But first we’re going to see what we can do for this girl, okay?”

He nods, and adds more books to his already overstuffed bag. Connor builds his walls out of stories. As far as coping goes, he could do a whole lot worse. I have.

I check on Lanny. She’s already packed, in one backpack. Less than what I’m taking. She’s pacing in the living room, arms folded, and when I say her name, she jumps and turns with a smile that I know isn’t real. “Hey! Don’t sneak up on me like that.” She seems genuinely distressed.

“Are you okay?” I ask her. That sets her back a step, and I see her put up her sarcasm shields to full strength.

“Oh, sure. I’m super okay with a sudden trip to nowhere, to do nothing, when I was going to see Dahlia tomorrow! You know how much I wanted to do that, right?”

I’d never leave her on her own, but I do briefly consider leaving her in the care of Dahlia Brown’s mom, Mandy . . . except that if Lanny and Dahlia are having trouble, putting the two of them in the same house for a day or two might shatter that relationship for good. I don’t want to be responsible for that. So I say, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”

“Such bullshit.”

“Lanny.”

“Yeah, okay, fine. Let’s go already!” My daughter is nerves and edges, and I wonder why. I want to ask, but I know her. This isn’t the time. She doesn’t want confidences. She wants to be on the move. I leave her pacing, gather Sam and Connor, and head back for the living room and front door.

We all stop when the doorbell rings. Sam’s closest to the monitor; he steps back to look at the camera feed. “It’s Kezia,” he says, and I open the door.

Kez looks tired. She nods to me, and I step back to let her in. She embraces Lanny, bumps fists with Connor, and the kids are genuinely glad to see her. I’m not sure I am. I close and lock the door and cast a glance at Sam.

“Yeah, so, I thought I’d better come by,” she says. “Y’all are going out there?”

It’s not a huge deductive leap. The four of us carry bags.

“We are,” I say. I’m half expecting her to object, but she looks relieved.

“Good, because my little chat with Wolfhunter PD didn’t go so well. Good ol’ boys seem to have declared this case open and shut, but they want you to get up there to give them a statement, not just about what happened tonight but why you were in touch with the dead woman in the first place.” She wants to ask, but she also knows better. Kezia understands the kind of people who call me for help, and what their situations usually are: dire. She wouldn’t want to discuss it in front of the kids. “Call me when you get there,” she says instead. “Not sure I trust these . . . officers.” If we were alone, she’d call them a whole lot worse. “Seems like there’s only a couple of lawyers anywhere near Wolfhunter, so I texted you numbers for them. If you don’t want to memorize them, put them on your arms in permanent marker.”