Killman Creek (Stillhouse Lake #2)(77)

Sneaky. She means like Dad.

I hate her in that instant. Pure, white hatred that makes me feel like I’m suffocating. You’re the sneak. You snuck out over the fence today. Don’t you dare say that.

I don’t like being angry. It makes me cold again, and shaky, and I wish she’d stop talking.

But she goes on and says, “It’s not Connor’s fault. He always thought Dad was okay. Probably because Mom was always too worried to tell him the truth, all the truth. He’s old enough now to know it. Dad’s a monster. I’m never letting Connor go near him.”

She says that like she’s in charge.

She’s not in charge.

As long as I have this phone, I’m in charge.





19

GWEN

I feel naked without my phone, small comfort though it is. The motel room feels cold and empty and generic, and Sam’s gone too long. Way too long. I try watching TV, but everything irritates me. People treat life and death as entertainment, serial killers as a delicious Halloween joke, and it disgusts me. I watch part of a horror movie and feel dirty, and finally I end up staring blankly at the news, watching the slow disintegration of the world I used to know.

Sam finally calls me on the hotel phone. It’s near midnight. I’m aching with exhaustion but too tense to sleep; I feel breathless as I grab the heavy receiver and lift it to my ear. It’s old-style, tethered to the phone by the coiled cord, and I almost immediately pull the whole assembly off the table and onto the floor with a clang. “Hello? Shit! Sorry. Hello?”

There’s static for a second, and I think that I’ve broken the damned thing, but then I hear Sam’s voice. “Hey. I thought I’d better call.”

He sounds odd. Maybe that’s the poor connection, but I go still, as if I’m waiting for the hammer to fall. “What’s wrong?”

“Weather’s way worse now,” he says. “I had to pull off the freeway, it’s an ice rink. It might take me hours to get back. I just wanted you to know . . .”

“Know . . . ?” It feels like there’s more there. More than he’s saying.

“Not to expect me back until the morning,” he says then. “I’m going to get a room here, try once the sun burns some of this mess off. Okay?”

“Does it matter?” I ask. “You don’t have a choice, then I don’t, either.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Sorry, Gwen. I’m really sorry.”

I wonder, then, if he’s really never coming back. I can’t blame him if he’s not, if he’s changed his mind with a little distance and time. I’m a black hole of trouble and pain and need, and just being around me has to be agony for him right now. He deserves better than to be dragged into the hell I live in.

It doesn’t really matter, I tell myself. I intended to go on with or without him.

“Okay,” I say. I don’t sound right, either. “It’s fine. I’m fine. Thanks, Sam. For everything.”

That’s final. I hear the ending in the words, and it makes me catch my breath because though I hadn’t believed anything else could ever touch me, this hurts. This time it leaves a scar.

“Gwen . . .” There’s something in his voice, and I can feel him wanting to tell me—and then the silence stretches, rattled with static. “See you soon.”

It feels false. I force a smile, because I know if you smile when you’re talking on the phone, it sounds cheerier. Something about the shift in voice pitch. Nothing magical about it. “Okay,” I tell him. “Be careful out there.”

He doesn’t wish me the same. A quick goodbye, and I’m listening to a dial tone. I slowly lower the phone into the cradle. The phone cord immediately coils up into an unmanageable knot, and I unplug it from the receiver and smooth it out until it slips free, then reconnect it.

A little order in a world spinning out of control.

I have a wild, dark need to call my kids. They wouldn’t know this number. They might answer the call, and I’d get to hear one of their voices. I want that with such force it feels like I might burn up from the blaze of it.

I stretch back on the bed, turn on the TV, and wait. In the morning I’ll make a plan.

In the morning, I’ll find a way through this.



I try to stay awake but as the night drags on, my eyes drift shut. When I open them, I see Melvin Royal leaning over the bed.

He can’t be here. He can’t. I think for a beat that I’m imagining it, and that’s long enough to cost me.

I go for my gun. It isn’t where I left it. I spot it tossed on the other bed. Too far to reach.

I fight. My first punch, off balance and robbed of power by the springy mattress beneath me, still connects.

It knocks Melvin’s face askew, and I pause for a dim second in horror. Unreality slips over me in a cold rush, and I feel my skin tighten, as if shrinking from the impossibility of it.

It isn’t Melvin. It’s someone wearing a fright mask of Melvin’s face.

His punch doesn’t have the disability of being thrown from a bed. It lands hard. The mattress does absorb some of the shock, but not enough. I’m dazed from the blow, and my ability to resist is down by half as he drags me off the bed and onto the carpeted floor, where he rolls me on my stomach. I use the chance to shove myself up, and I lift my right leg in a fast, vicious mule kick.