Bitter Falls (Stillhouse Lake)(22)

But either way, I’m committed.





7

GWEN

As I idle in the parking lot at Navitat and wait for the kids to finish their last zip line run, I try to focus on the case, the clues. I can’t shake the unsettling truth that is Ruth Landry. Baking cookies no one eats. Begging for a ghost to come home.

I don’t know what I’d be if I lost Connor and Lanny.

I’m looking things up using a bespoke app that J. B. Hall commissioned—like Google on steroids, built solely for finding traces of people by their names or other significant identifiers—when Connor and Lanny pile into the car. Instantly, they’re both talking.

“Mom, that was great, you should have come in with us, the lines weren’t bad at all—”

“Did you find out where he went? What happened to him?” Connor’s voice overrides his sister’s.

Lanny glares at him. “How the hell is she supposed to solve a case in, like, two hours?”

“It’s Mom.”

I laugh as they strap themselves in. “Nice vote of confidence,” I tell him. “But your sister’s right. This is going to take a while, I’m afraid.”

“Oh. So, are we going somewhere else?” My son seems entirely too intrigued by that possibility. “We can help you.”

“Nope,” I tell him. “I’ll make some calls once we’re home. A lot of this is just making appointments and convincing people to talk to me. Honestly, it’s boring.”

He doesn’t believe me, and neither does Lanny, but they devolve into squabbling in a few short minutes. Apparently he thinks Lanny admired another girl on a zip line, and teasing is required. I don’t shut it down too hard. He isn’t harassing her because she’s gay; he’d have razzed her if it were a hot boy too.

Lanny insists it never happened anyway. They lapse into a mutinous silence after I finally order the two of them to drop the feud, and that rumbles between them the whole rest of the way home.

“Right,” I tell them as we pull into the driveway. “I want you two to make up and get to your lessons. I’m going to check your work tonight—” My voice stops hard when I see that there’s an unfamiliar vehicle parked by our house. A big, muddy truck plastered with NRA decals and a bunch of cling-film American flags. The paint job is dull jungle camouflage.

I stop the SUV halfway up the hill and wait to see what’s going on. Lanny and Connor fall silent as they, too, register the presence of an intruder. I feel Lanny leaning closer, but I don’t look back. “Who is that?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” I say. I put the SUV in park and leave the engine running. A million things flash through my mind, including the stalkers and trolls who regularly email in death threats. “I’m going to find out. Lanny, you get behind the wheel. Get ready to reverse down the driveway if anything goes wrong and drive straight for the Norton police station. Connor, you call 911 the second Lanny puts it in reverse. You do not wait for me, no matter what you see. All right? Everybody know their jobs?”

My kids nod, but I can see the look in Connor’s eyes. He’s scared again. This is yet another traumatic event . . . like yesterday’s active shooter drill.

“Connor,” I say, and he blinks. “Everything is okay. Breathe and count. Do what Lanny tells you. You can do this. I believe in you.” It’s not enough, not nearly, but I don’t have time for more. I just have to hope he can keep it together.

I step out of the SUV, and Lanny moves to the front seat. She locks the doors without me telling her. And then I have to focus on what’s ahead of me, not what’s behind.

I walk up the driveway, gravel crunching underfoot, and two doors on the pickup truck open with rusty squeals. One disgorges an old white man in faded, distressed overalls and a flannel shirt underneath; he’s not visibly armed, unless you count the giant bristling beard.

The person coming out of the truck on the other side is a woman—tall, lumpy, wearing an American flag T-shirt and jeans worn so much the color’s almost gone.

She’s got thin gray hair, a soft, wrinkled, pale face, and she’s . . . carrying a casserole dish.

I take my hand off the gun under my jacket.

“Ma’am,” the man says, and touches the brim of his trucker hat; if it has a logo, it’s buried deep under decades of oily grime. “Sorry to disturb you, but we thought we needed to make some amends.”

“Amends?” I echo. I’m trying to work out who they are. “I’m sorry, I don’t know you. Maybe you have the wrong address . . .”

“You’re Gwen Proctor,” the woman says. She’s smiling, and it looks disturbingly friendly. “Our boy accidentally shot out your truck window. Such a fuss, he was out potshotting squirrels and put one right through that glass, and he is just so sorry about that. We’re so happy to pay for that repair.”

“Your boy.” It all seems deeply strange. Yes, it’s the South; yes, people show up to be neighborly. But not to me. I’m the pariah of the entire county.

“Well, we’re just being rude, haven’t even introduced our damn selves,” the man says, and steps forward with his big hand outstretched. “I’m Jasper Belldene.”

Jasper Belldene. Uncrowned king of the drug business in this county. Head of a twisted family tree that includes several militant relatives who aren’t above killing to make a point. I’ve never met the man, or even seen a picture. Sam’s met one of his sons, unfortunately. That little confrontation kicked off this whole strange feud. It’s odd to think that for once, it isn’t my past that’s driving all this. Just a fistfight between Sam and a drunk man acting the fool at our local gun range.