Killman Creek (Stillhouse Lake #2)(95)

And then I do.

It’s a flash of memory rather than what’s on the screen, sparked by the sight of a dirty eighteen-wheeler moving past the coffee-shop windows. And from that random glimpse, my viewpoint shifts, and I get it. I know why all this is happening. Why I’ve been feeling this shadow, this weight, almost from the beginning.

I wish I could feel relief. I don’t. I feel real horror twisting my guts into a knot. This can’t be happening. Can’t be right.

Mike sees it in me as I take my headphones off, and he pauses the video midscream. “What? What is it?”

“We got it wrong. No. No, I got it wrong from the start.” My voice sounds rough and distorted. It’s my fault. That fact yawns in front of me in a black, bottomless canyon of blame. “Christ, I did this, Mike. It’s—”

“Hey, man, focus. What did I miss?”

“You didn’t miss anything,” I say. “Come on. We’ve got to move, now.”

I’m already on my feet. He grabs the tablet and shoves the headphones in his pocket. “Where are we going?”

“The airport.”

“Airport? Tell me you’re not taking their bait and going to Kansas, man. You’re smarter than that . . .”

The walkway’s been coated with rock salt, and it crunches under my boots as we head for the Jeep. The air tastes heavy, sharp in my lungs with ice crystals, but the sun’s a thick, hazy glow behind the clouds. The front will burn off soon. I’m thinking about that because I’m trying to figure logistics. Logistics is better than the guilt, because if I fall into that chasm, I’m never climbing out of it alive.

“Let me ask you a question,” I tell him. “What was the name plastered on that eighteen-wheeler on the access road last night?”

Mike pauses to stare at me over the hood of the Jeep. “The hell are you talking about?”

“Last night we were following the white van. It was about a half a mile up when the pickup wrecked, remember? When we came over the hill, we saw a red sedan, another black Jeep going too fast, a police SUV with lights burning. And an eighteen-wheeler.”

He’s frowning now, and I can tell he thinks I’ve completely dropped my marbles. Maybe I have. Maybe coming at this crazy is the only way to understand it. “What about the eighteen-wheeler?”

“Rivard Luxe,” I tell him. “The truck on that road had Rivard Luxe written on the side of it. Mike, it’s big enough to fit a van inside.”

I see it when I blink: fancy gilded script on the dirty side of that eighteen-wheeler, as if it’s suspended on a jumbotron hanging right in front of me. The most vivid memory I’ve ever had. I noticed, but I didn’t pay attention. I was too focused on Gwen, on that van, to see what was right in front of me.

Mike still isn’t getting it. I open up the driver’s-side door and get in, and when he’s inside, too, he says, “Even if you’re right, what the hell does the truck have to do with the video we were just watching?”

“The first time we talked about the video, I asked if you knew the name Rivard,” I say. “And you told me that Ballantine Rivard is famous. From that moment on, we were making the wrong assumptions. We just did it again, while we were watching it.”

“Jesus.” Mike drags out the word, and it’s so reverent it’s almost a prayer. “That poor bastard PI wasn’t hired by Ballantine Rivard. He just said Rivard.”

“Exactly,” I say, firing up the Jeep. “He wasn’t hired by the old man at all. He was hired by Rivard’s son. The dead one.”

“And that’s not a coincidence,” Mike says. He gets it now. All the way. “Fuck.”

So now we know. The problem now is . . . what can we do about it?



There’s a reason I want Mike on my side. FBI agents carry weight.

Mike has a backroom conversation with an airline manager who magically produces two tickets for us, despite the backlog of travelers, and we’re rushed through security on the strength of his badge and into business-class seats to Atlanta on the first available flight.

I’m reminded of the plush seats on the Rivard Luxe plane we took to and from Wichita, and I feel angry and sick that I fell for it. I keep chewing on it. I can see it all now, every step. Ballantine Rivard has gone out of his way to mislead us, misdirect us, threaten Gwen, sow doubt and fear to split us up.

I’d lay heavy bets that Rivard’s son was never hounded to his death by Absalom. Not the way his father described to us, anyway.

“Rivard’s never going to talk to us,” Mike says. “I don’t have a hope in hell of getting a warrant based on a supposition and a wild-ass guess.”

“I know you don’t.” I sound bitter and angry, and I am, because I’ve been a damn fool. I’ve left the idea that Gwen’s guilty in the rearview. I don’t know why I ever fell for it in the first place, except that I was already conditioned to believe it. She’s only ever been straight with me. I’m the one who lied. I’m the one who came into her life intending to tear it apart.

And now I’ve done that, and I need to find her and help her put it back together. It’s the only way I can even start to make up for what I’ve just done to her.

“How do you feel about helping me out without that badge?” I ask Mike, and he sighs.