Wolfhunter River (Stillhouse Lake #3)(86)

Connor steps back. “You can’t leave.”

“But I have to,” Sam says. “Don’t I?”

Sam and I look at each other from opposite sides of the car. I catch my breath on another surge of real pain; I can see the heartbreak in him. The damage done.

“Sam,” I tell him, “get in the damn car.”

He blinks. I see the flash of hope, and then it’s gone. “Miranda . . .”

“You said she’d destroy us. Don’t let her.”

“It’s too late. Isn’t it?”

I honestly don’t know. “You can’t just . . . go. You don’t have money, or any way to get out of town. Unless Mike—”

“No,” he interrupts me. “Mike’s with her.”

I don’t know what to say. I’m not the only one who’s been betrayed today. He was already hurting. Now it’s worse. He’s as alone as he’s ever been, I think.

“You’re right. She did bail me out,” he says. “She and Mike gave me a choice. I chose you. I chose this.”

If he’s telling the truth, it’s the biggest thing that anyone has ever done for us. And despite the gulf between us, despite the pain of what he did that feels new and raw even if it’s years past now . . . I can’t ignore that.

Lanny whispers, “Mom? Mom, but . . . what he did . . .”

“It’s what he’s doing now that counts,” I tell her, and turn to look right at her. “Do you trust me?”

She nods. Unwillingly. There are tears glittering in her eyes. She’s confused and hurt. I understand that.

I turn back to Sam. When I speak again, my voice is gentler. “Please get in the goddamn car.”

He stares at me for a second, frozen. He drags in a breath and wipes the heel of hands across his face. “I’m sorry,” he says.

“I know that.”

I wait until he’s getting back in before I join him. Connor gets in behind us. That just leaves my daughter. She hesitates, glares at me, and then slides into the backseat.

“Thank you,” I tell her. Lanny crosses her arms and looks away. Not ready yet, but she will be. I hope.

We’re not a family. But we’re together, and that’s a new start.

“Please tell me we’re leaving this damn place,” Lanny says.

“Can you?” I ask Sam. He shrugs as he fastens his seat belt. “The bail . . .”

“It’s Miranda’s money.”

That’s enough to make me accelerate.



We are fifteen minutes out when my phone rings.

I look at the name. I intend to blow it off, but it’s Hector Sparks, and I feel obligated to answer. I put it on speaker. “Gwen Proctor.”

“Ms. Proctor, I need your assistance immediately. You have to find her!” He sounds breathless.

“Find who?”

“Vera Crockett,” he says. “She’s escaped. And I think she’s in very great danger.”

“What? How the hell did she—”

“The police claim they were careless,” he says. He sounds nervous, and it sounds like he’s pacing the floor. “But I think they were very deliberate in allowing her to get away; she was left unattended in the van at the courthouse. I believe this is a plot to have her silenced. Now that she’s on the run, she can easily be killed.”

“Because of what she knows?” I sharpen my tone. “After talking to her, my whole family is on the same list, don’t you realize that? Did you know this would mean whoever killed Marlene would also come after us? Or are you just that stupid?”

Sparks is quiet for a moment. Then he says, “I can turn to no one else in this town for help. Not a single person. If you find Vee and bring her to my house, I promise you that I can and will keep all of you safe. But she has to be found. Now. Ms. Proctor, I am not exaggerating when I tell you that this girl has no chance without our help.”

Dammit.

I should keep going. I don’t owe this girl anything. I don’t.

I look at my daughter in the rearview mirror. Her lips are parted. All her defensiveness is gone. She’s staring at me as if she expects me to do something.

And right now I can’t bear to let her down.

I turn the car around.

“I know where she’s going,” Lanny says.

“How could you possibly—”

“She’s going to her mom’s house. She’s scared, and she knows they’ll kill her. That’s where she’d go, right?”

My kid’s smart. Smarter than I am, because it makes perfect sense, and it makes me wonder if Lanny’s thought about ending things. If she’s ever been that desperate and alone. Then I know, from the look in her eyes. She has. Of course she has, with the life she’s been forced to live. That’s a wound that Sam and I inflicted together, for very different reasons.

I have to make damn sure I don’t let her down.



The police are doing a grid search, fanning out from the courthouse; it won’t take them long to make it to the taped-off Crockett house. I head straight there and slide to a stop at the curb. No police cruisers in sight so far. I see that the tape that once sealed the front door—the one with the shotgun blast through it—has been ripped off and is flapping in the breeze by one corner.