Wolfhunter River (Stillhouse Lake #3)(49)

I hang up on her. That probably drives her wild; Miranda’s used to cursing, but only when she’s the one doing it, and she’s a narcissist. She hates to be ignored. She’s lived in a padded box her whole life, handled carefully like a breakable treasure; when reality crashed in on her, she could only believe that her pain, her loss, was bigger and more urgent than anyone else’s. And that will never change.

I felt something for her once. Not tenderness. Not love. But a shared delusion that expresses itself in violence is almost more intimate than love.

Miranda Tidewell is back. I know she’s not going away.

And everything I’ve built, everything I love, is about to come crashing down on top of me.

“Sam?”

I look up. Lanny’s standing in the doorway of the room that Gwen and I are sharing.

She’s got her phone in her hand. Holds it up. I see there’s a call open. She hands it to me.

I lift the phone to my ear, and Miranda’s voice says, “Did you really think it would be that easy?”

I know Lanny can see me flinch, and I quickly turn my back to her, and say, “You just called a child’s phone to make a point. Well, I get it. Trust that. What the hell do you want? What is your endgame here?”

“I have all your numbers,” she says. “Would you rather I call Gina next, or are you going to come out and talk to me face-to-face?”

She refuses to call Gwen by any name other than her old one. I swallow hard. I’m shaking; I can feel it. “Where are you?”

“Outside in the parking lot of your motel,” she says. “I’m in a rented Buick. Definitely not my style, I know, but this isn’t Lexus rental territory.”

Shit, shit, shit. She tracked our phones. Of course she did; we got careless about changing them. If she got our numbers, it’d be easy as hell for her to pinpoint our locations. Norton’s not that far away. And we’re sitting ducks inside this room.

“I could have you arrested for stalking,” I say.

“Really?” She laughs. It sounds half-crazy. “And are you going to explain what we are to each other to the police? Maybe you should also confess all the illegal things you got up to while you were with me. Stalking, as I recall, was also involved.”

I look over my shoulder. Lanny’s still there, frowning, trying to listen. I walk over and close the door. I’m struggling just to keep it together. “Leave,” I tell Miranda.

“No. You didn’t just screw me over, Sam, oh no. You fucked over your dead sister and my dead daughter and all those other dead girls too. That’s how low you are. And how much of a gullible coward. Come out and face me.”

I go to the door that opens out to the parking lot. Put my hand on the knob. It’s as warm as blood, easy to turn. I make myself stop, and I crouch down still holding it, breathing hard against the impulse to go out there, break her windows, beat the holy living shit out of the car, if not the woman inside it.

Because that’s what she wants. A confrontation. One that gives her something to use.

“Sam?” I can barely hear her over the ringing in my ears. Christ. She knows how to push my buttons. She learned that over those years we nursed our grudges together, hand-fed them on diets of hatred and booze and still-bleeding wounds. She remembers. “The longer you wait, the worse this is going to get. Understand?”

I stand and pull open the door. There she is, Miranda, unmistakable behind the wheel of a running blue Buick, and she’s right, the car’s too pedestrian for her even on this trip to nowhere. Her hair looks perfectly styled. Her makeup perfectly applied. I’ve seen her raw and desperate and agonized, stumbling and screaming, but this Miranda is her public face. Rich, entitled, and proud of it.

I don’t go out. She sits in the car. We stare at each other for a long, long moment as heat shimmers up between us, and I lift the phone back to my ear and say, “I’m done.”

I shut the door and hang up the call. I turn to put my back against the wood and slide down until I’m sitting, a human shield between her and the kids, because she’ll come for me first; she’ll have to. I don’t know what I’m expecting. Gunfire through the door, maybe. I know she’s got it in her.

But I hear a change in the pitch of the Buick’s engine. It’s backing out.

Then I hear it drive away.

Lanny’s knocking on the connecting door, urgently. “Sam? Sam, are you okay?”

I get up and open it. I hand the phone back to her. “Block that number,” I tell her. “Do the same for Connor’s phone, okay? I don’t want you talking to her.”

“Who is she?” She’s eyeing me warily, and I can’t say I blame her. I probably don’t look like the same man who listened to her breakup story. “Is she—she’s not—”

“An old girlfriend?” I finish for her, because that’s naturally where she’d go. She nods. “No. Someone . . . someone I used to work with.”

“You sounded so angry, though.”

“Yeah, the job didn’t end well.” Not that it’s ended at all. Miranda’s right about one thing. Sooner or later, I’m going to have to face her.

And sooner or later, I’m going to have to tell Gwen what I’ve been holding back from her, before Miranda does it for me.