Heartbreak Bay (Stillhouse Lake #5) - Rachel Caine Page 0,130

down as a crank. There’s going to be no help coming from that direction. The FBI, maybe. But they’ll call North Carolina, and North Carolina will take their sweet time checking anything out. I’m just some nut from out of state.

The only thing that holds me back from just going is the knowledge that I need to stay here for the kids. That Gwen trusted me with that, and I have to treat that as what it is: a sacred responsibility. A level of letting go that I never imagined she could manage.

I have to be worthy of that trust, even if it hurts. Even if it’s agony sitting here and waiting.

I’ve told the kids everything. Vee’s here, too, huddled on the couch with Lanny and Connor. Nobody’s saying much. Every once in a while, Vee tries to lighten the mood, but none of us are having it. Javier’s stormed out; I’m sure he’s going to be burning rubber to North Carolina, and I don’t try to stop him. He won’t get there in time, but at least he’ll get there to pick up the pieces. Man, that hurts.

I wait with the kids, and it’s sheer torture.

It’s two long, tense hours later when my cell phone rings. “Mr. Cade? I’d like you to go to your computer, please. I need you to be a witness.”

I feel like I recognize the voice, but at the same time I don’t. Something’s familiar and different at the same time. “Who is this?”

“My name is Jonathan Bruce Watson,” he says. “Go to your computer. Do it now. I sent you a link. Please click it.”

I go to the office, and as I come around my desk, I see that my laptop’s awake, and there’s a text message alert. I click it, and the link appears.

“Don’t do it,” Connor says. He’s come out of nowhere, and he looks angry. Anxious. Afraid. “Dad, don’t.”

The voice on the phone says, “You know who I am, Sam. You know you need to click that link.”

It hits, then. The voice. Tyler. MalusNavis. The puppet master. He sounds different, though. Maybe this is the real voice at last.

“Where’s Gwen?” I ask him. “I know you’re behind all this, Tyler.”

“You can see her if you click the link,” he says. “We’re going to play a game. It’s called Would You Rather. Do you know it?”

“I’m not playing.” I cover the speaker on the phone and whisper to Connor, “Go. Now. Get Lanny. Go.”

He doesn’t want to, but he obeys. I’m alone with the voice on the phone, the link steady and waiting on the laptop screen.

“You don’t have to play,” Tyler agrees. “That’s a choice. Everybody makes choices.”

“So tell me what happens if I don’t click the link. I can’t play if I don’t understand the stakes.”

“If you don’t, Gwen won’t come home alive to her children.”

I knew that was coming. My muscles tense until my pulse throbs in my temples. “And what if I click it? What then?”

“Then you’re participating in the game, Sam,” he says. “Everything has consequences. Gwen’s guilty of killing people, after all. She killed her ex-husband.”

“She had to.”

“She helped him kill others.”

“She didn’t.”

“I’ve seen that she can do terrible things, Sam. When I gave her the option of killing someone kindly, or leaving them dying in pain, can you guess which one she chose?”

I can’t answer. My skin crawls. My right hand clenches the mouse, and the cursor is hanging right over the link. All I have to do is click.

“She’d rather think of herself as a hero,” the voice says. “So let’s find out if she really is. Are you playing, Sam? For her life?”

Lanny and Connor are at the door, breathless and scared. I put the cell phone on mute and say, “Lanny, go call TBI Detective Randall Heidt and tell him that I have a man on the phone who says he has your mother, and he’s threatening her life. Tell him to trace the call. I’m going to keep him talking. Go.”

She gapes at me for a second, then spins and runs down the hall. Connor is left standing alone, paler than ever. “Connor. Go call J. B. Hall. Tell her the same thing.” I unmute the phone when I feel like I’m ready to keep going. “Tyler, we talked. I believe we really, really talked. I helped you. I believed you. Come on, man, I thought we connected. When you were on that bridge . . . I know you really