Heartbreak Bay (Stillhouse Lake #5) - Rachel Caine Page 0,129

ornaments. Presents scattered like stones, all still wrapped but misshapen from water and time.

The octagonal pit in the middle of the room is full of sludge. Pillows float on top, bleached pale like dead fish.

I move past it, past the dull, dirty white piano in the corner. Something rustles in the strings, and I flinch, but whatever it is, it stays hidden.

The next room is a kitchen. It’s weirdly neat, like the cannery: counters clean and empty, floor shining. Off-green appliances have been polished. I open the refrigerator, afraid that I’ll find another body, and gag at the stench of rotten food. I will my heartbeat to slow down, my ears to stop the incessant ringing that hasn’t faded yet from that stunning sonic assault at the cannery. I can hear. Just not as clearly as I should.

At least my pulse obeys, coming down to a slightly less painful pace.

The kitchen is wrong, but it isn’t dangerous. I move on.

The hall is filthy, streaked with mold. Drywall bulges and leaks. There are still framed photos on the wall, but rot has obscured what used to be a loving family, cute children. This house, I think, is a map of Jonathan’s destroyed brain. Pieces partly there. Pieces rotting. Some weirdly perfect.

His room is destroyed. Not by the elements, though the window’s broken out and the carpet has wrinkled and molded. This seems . . . deliberate. Someone’s taken what looks like an ax to the furniture, left it in silently screaming pieces. Books ripped apart. Bedsheets and clothing shredded.

He hates himself. Or someone else hates him this much. I could weep for the boy he used to be, the one who lost his little sister, but the monster that he is now has to be treated differently.

You held a mother who killed her children, I tell myself. But it’s different. Somehow . . . somehow, it’s different. I can’t define why; unlike Jonathan, I don’t really want to understand.

I just want it to stop.

The next room is his sister’s, and it’s heartbreakingly perfect, a shrine, clean and neat and waiting for a dead child to walk in the door, sleep in the frilly pink bed, wear the neat white nightgown that’s laid out on the covers. I look at the boy band posters on the wall, at the stuffed animals, the games. My heart aches for her, not just because she’ll never see this but because so much harm has been done in her name.

He isn’t here. Kez isn’t here. I check every place she could be kept, but there’s no trace of her, or Jonathan.

That just leaves the lighthouse.

I go.

26

SAM

Gwen’s right about the lack of real, solid evidence, but I try anyway; I call the TBI and get the investigator Javier saw at the hospital, Heidt. I lay it all out for him. I tell him that the man he’s looking for is in Salah Point, North Carolina. That he’s a serial killer, a predator who took Sheryl Lansdowne and now has Gwen and Kezia too. I make it as urgent as I can, and . . . he says he’ll look into it.

He thinks I’m bullshitting him. And I am, but only a little. The facts are there. He’s just not looking. Or, at least, not moving fast enough if he is.

I call my friend at the FBI, but I’m told he’s on a case and unavailable. Can’t be reached. I leave him a long message, and then I ask to talk to someone else.

I know what I have to do. Exactly what I have to do. And there will be consequences.

So I tell them that there’s a terrorist cell in Salah Point, that I have personal knowledge of a plot involving multiple individuals, and the threat is imminent. I know the language to use; military training embeds that deep. And the agent I’m talking to pays attention. Close attention. I give him Tyler Pharos’s description, tell him the alias of Leonard Bay. I link Tyler to all kinds of things, including the abduction of Sheryl Lansdowne and the disappearance of my wife and Kezia Claremont. I throw everything that might stick at the wall, true or not. I know I’ll be in the shit for it. I don’t care. By the end of it, I’m practically begging them to get there, just get there.

I have no idea if it will work.

I call the North Carolina state police and try the same thing. I can tell they write me