Wolfhunter River (Stillhouse Lake #3)(82)

She doesn’t answer immediately; she’s slowing the car, and now she’s making a turn into a familiar parking lot. The Motel 6. “I’m giving you a choice, Sam. You have a job offer in Florida, a chance to start over and do something positive with your life. Just . . . take it.”

I get it then. Finally. And it sucks. “Mike didn’t recommend me for the job, did he? You twisted some corporate arms. Got me a nice, cushy position far away from Gwen.”

“I did recommend you,” Mike says. “I want you alive, man. And I don’t see that happening if you stay on this path.” He sounds genuinely unhappy about this. I think he really is. He never liked Miranda and her crusade; he never liked who I was when I was part of it, though he never gave up on me either. I understand why he’s done this now.

But he’s completely fucking wrong.

I listen to the engine idle. I count pulse beats because it keeps me calm when I want to rip this car to pieces.

“You have a choice to change your life,” Miranda says. “I’m driving Mike back to the Nashville airport. If you say yes, I have a private jet ready there to fly you to Florida. Mike and I will get these charges dropped against you, because it’s obvious you’re not a murderer; you were defending yourself, and the state police’s investigation will fully bear that out. You take that job. You find someone else. You heal from what she’s done to you. And you never, ever come back.”

“Or?” I ask tightly.

“Or you get out of the car and wait for Gina. I swear to God if you make that choice, I will make it my personal mission to destroy you both,” she says. “I will make you and Gina Royal so toxic, so poisonous, that everyone that touches you is destroyed by association.”

Scorched earth. She means it. I hear Mike protest that, but I’m not listening; he might not have realized what she intended, but he bought into this, and he stays in for the full ride.

“You can’t do that,” I tell her. I even manage to be gentle about it. “You can’t punish innocent kids like that.”

“I look forward to the day someone destroys those children the way Melvin destroyed mine. Then I can rest, because the last trace of Melvin Royal will be gone from this earth.”

It’s horrific, but she means it. I know this woman. I cared for her, once. And seeing the fanaticism, the cruelty . . . it’s like looking into a mirror and seeing myself two years ago.

“You’re insane,” I say. I’m actually sorry for her. And frightened of her. “You’d go that far.”

“I would go to hell to punish Gina Royal,” she said. “And if you get out of this car, Sam . . . that’s where you’re going too.”

I look from her to Mike. He looks nakedly appalled now. He didn’t know she’d do this, or take it this far. I feel sorry for him for a tiny second, before I remember that he’s trying to pull me away from the people I love.

“See you both in hell, then,” I tell them, and I open the door and get out.

I watch the car drive away. Dawn’s showing on the eastern horizon, but the morning is oddly cold for the season. Ghosts escaping the ground.

I sit down against the wall of the Motel 6, and I wait for whatever will come for me now. If it’s the Wolfhunter PD, I’ll be dead before I see the sun.

But if it’s a choice between watching Gwen suffer, or suffering with her . . . I’ll be with her, every time.



I’m sitting there half an hour before they show up. Three men, not here to mind their own business because they look around, see me and head right over. The one in the middle of the trio is a lanky red-haired man with a thick, unkempt beard; the other two are shorter, both with dark hair and beards. Under all the hair I see a resemblance. I don’t know them. And they damn sure shouldn’t know me.

“Fellas,” I say. I don’t get up. I’m tired. “We really have to do this right now?”

I expect them to lead with the obvious, the killing of their local hero Travis, but they surprise me. The big redheaded one says, “Where is she?”

“Gwen?” I shrug. “Why?”

“We got a date,” he says, and laughs the way a donkey brays. “Bitch is gonna suck my dick, I hear.” He stops laughing, because he sees it’s not working. I really don’t want to do this. I really don’t. I feel sick and lost and utterly not in the mood. Until he says, “Not the mother, I wouldn’t do her with a thousand condoms. I’m talkin’ about that fine daughter.”

Everything else stops. The exhaustion. The depression. The fear that I can’t quite suppress. I stand up. “You mean my daughter.” Because she is. And I’m not letting this asshole get away with it. “Nice mouth you got. You kiss your brother with that?”

Not surprisingly, they come for me. They were only waiting for the excuse.

It’s not like the damn movies, where two wait politely while the first one has a go at you; they rush me in a jumbled, stumbling group, and two of them keep my right arm pinned back while the third—the big one—slams a fist the size of a coffee can into my stomach so hard I feel it up my spine. I take it, because I’m trying to spot their weaknesses, other than lack of discipline. The big one’s ungainly, and listing his weight to the right. Easy fix. I gag back the pain of his punch, raise my work boot, and slam it into the side of his right knee. I feel the crunch of tearing cartilage, and his high-pitched scream echoes off the concrete bricks of the motel court.