Bitter Falls (Stillhouse Lake)(60)

It’s an hour and a half to Stillhouse Lake, and we arrive after dark. I can feel weariness pulling me apart, fraying my edges, and I yawn as J. B. pulls up in the drive of the house. The lights are on, and the warmth of it makes me feel a wave of relief. Everybody’s okay. The SUV’s parked in front, so they made it back safely.

All will be well.

I thank J. B. again, and she heads back for her home in Knoxville—or the office, maybe; J. B. has a boundless amount of energy. I don’t right now. The emotional demand of enduring jail and court again sapped me dry.

When Sam opens the door, I sink into his arms and drag in a deep, shuddering breath. “Hey,” he whispers against my hair. “Hey, it’s okay. Come inside.”

I need to get it together, and I do because Lanny and Connor are there, anxiously waiting too. I hug them both. I have to swallow tears, and it tastes like blood; my throat is so raw and tight it hurts. But I smile through that and kiss them on their foreheads and tell them I love them, and I mean it with every cell in my body.

That’s when the stories start to tumble out.

“Mom, Vee ran off, and there was a man out there with a gun in the trees,” Lanny says, “and Sam went after him, and—”

It’s the casual drop of Vee that makes me hold up a hand. “Hang on,” I say. “Vee? Vera Crockett?”

“Uh . . . yeah.” Lanny’s taken aback, and I realize that Sam already knows this part. Lanny just forgot that I didn’t. I look to him, and he takes up the story.

“Turns out Vera’s been coming around and talking to Lanny,” he says. “She skated on her foster family.”

I don’t know whether to be more alarmed by Vee’s appearance here or Lanny not telling me about it. Neither one is a good sign. “Vee’s supposed to be with her aunt.”

“Well, she’s not,” Lanny says. She folds her arms and sits back, chin thrust forward. Aggressive and defensive at the same time. “Her aunt didn’t take her. And she got put in foster care, and that was awful. So she came here because—because she just wanted to be close to people she knows.” Not the real story, I know that. But I don’t have time to mine for information. I look at Sam.

“She wanted someone she trusted to front some information to the FBI,” he says. “For the reward money. I said no.”

Lanny’s mouth drops open, and her head swivels around toward him. She looks like someone just sucker-punched her—shock, pain, and betrayal. Her crossed arms drop. She didn’t know this. Vee never told her.

Vee probably told her that she’d just come for her. And that makes me want to shake that girl hard for hurting my daughter like that.

“What information?” I ask him.

“She claims that she knows where Vernon Carr is hiding.” He shrugs. “I don’t know. Maybe she’s being honest.”

Vernon Carr. I remember him vividly: a bitter, lean old man who wasn’t above kidnapping, abusing, and murdering women. He’d had his own little cult out there. Creepy.

Then Sam says, “She thinks he’s gotten shelter with a bigger offshoot of the same cult he was running out of Wolfhunter. She says it’s called the Assembly of Saints.”

He says more, but I don’t hear it; there’s a high-pitched buzzing in my ears, and I feel my heartbeat accelerate hard. Saints. We were hired to find Remy Landry by All Saints International. And Carol, with her marked-up Bible, all those passages marked with stars that referred to saints. I hear her voice whisper, Remy’s with the saints.

I lick my lips and focus back on Sam. “How does she know?”

He frowns at me and cocks his head. “You mean how does Vee know where Carr is?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t think she does; she talked around it, but didn’t tell me a place. She said Father Tom started the cult in Wolfhunter, then took most of his followers and formed his own, bigger compound. So maybe she just assumed that’s where Carr would go. If I had to bet, I’d say she doesn’t know exactly where it is. But she’s not lying about this Father Tom.”

Father Tom. F.T.

“I think someone in Wolfhunter told her where Carr is,” I say, and stand up. “Sam. Somebody told her. And they knew she’d come to us. Maybe they even suggested it.”

“Whoa, whoa, Gwen, calm down. What are you talking about?”

“Something is very wrong about all this. We have to go,” I say. “Right now. Now. Lanny, Connor: get your bugout bags.” I fall back on old terminology; from the time I got reunited with my children to when we landed at Stillhouse Lake, I’d insisted they pack emergency bags with everything they’d need to take in the event we had to evacuate quickly. Bugout bags. We’d even decorated Lanny’s with painted ladybugs. Connor had decorated his with rhinoceros beetles, which he thought were really cool.

My kids just sit there. They exchange looks, and Connor says, “Uh . . . we don’t have any? I mean, we’ve been here awhile, and we didn’t . . . we didn’t think we needed those anymore?”

Oh God dammit. I jam the heels of my hands against my burning eyes and take a deep breath. I can’t freak out right now. I need to stay calm. But we are exposed. “Okay,” I say, and I can hear the false normality in my voice. “We’re going to get packed and leave. Now. Tonight.”