Heartbreak Bay (Stillhouse Lake #5) - Rachel Caine Page 0,35

with a small, significant chill that one person Sheryl Lansdowne would have stopped her car for out there in the dark was her missing husband.

I keep a bland expression, but now I’m alert for any signs that Abraham is trying to cover up for Tommy. A prickle on the nape of my neck says I should check the house for any sign he’s been here, but I need to be careful; if he is here, I could be in a fatal situation, fast. Best I come back prepared, with backup.

But even as I decide that, Abraham gets up and says, “Come on with me. I’ll show you his room. Nothing in there but what he left when he got married, but maybe it’ll help y’all.”

There’s no clue in his body language that things could pop off, but I follow at a distance, hand close to the gun I’ve got concealed beneath my jacket. I’m fast and accurate, which is never a guarantee of surviving a gunfight, but it helps. My heart ticks up to a faster rhythm, and I breathe deep to slow it down. I’m hyperaware as we move through the small kitchen, down a dark, narrow hall, past a bathroom. There’s a single closed door at the end. Abraham swings it open and goes inside.

In or out, girl—decide.

I go in.

There’s no ambush. And no Tommy Jarrett waiting with a child-killing grin to finish me off. Abraham jams his hands in the pockets of his bathrobe and stands back after turning on the overhead light, and I’m looking at a teenage boy’s room. It even smells like one—that lingering scent of old socks, testosterone sweat, dirty sheets. The bed’s made, with a cheap Wal-Mart comforter over the sagging mattress. Posters of white country artists I barely recognize, and muscle cars. A miniature basketball hoop in the corner that’s probably seen a lot of use; the net looks ragged. I make a slow circuit of the room, then glance at his father. “Mind if I open the drawers?”

“Do as you please,” he says. “Ain’t got nothing to hide.”

He’s right. There’s not much in the small dresser except some extra sheets, a pair of old running shoes that stink of years of service, a pile of papers that, when I look through them, mostly seem like schoolwork. Tommy was a solid B student. Not exceptional, but he paid attention. “Your son do anything in school special? Like football, or—”

“Basketball,” he says, which I could have guessed. “Real good too. Could have gone off to university, he had some offers.”

He had indeed; I’ve already found the letters. But none of them offered a full ride, and I knew Tommy would have had to give up on that dream. No way Abraham could afford college for his son without a scholarship. Tommy, I guessed, was a solid player but not a star. Same as his schoolwork.

I check the closet. I half expect to find Tommy hidden in there like some nightmare, but it’s empty except for old wire hangers swinging gently on the rod, and a collection of abandoned high school tees. A letter jacket with his name on it. I understand the message of this room: when Tommy left, he put childhood things away. He left fully intending to become a man on his own terms.

And then he ran away when it got too real? Maybe. But instinct is starting to pull me in a different direction.

Abraham suddenly says, “You didn’t come about Tommy, you said. What brought you out here?”

He’s going to find out anyway; it’ll be all over the news soon, if it isn’t cooking already. So I say, “His wife, Sheryl, has gone missing.”

“Oh lord,” he says, and looks briefly taken aback. Then worried. “Did she leave them girls? Who’s got them?”

I break it to him very, very carefully, and there’s something especially grim and sad about seeing an old, proud man like this break down. He sinks down on his son’s bed and puts his head in his hands and cries—huge, heaving sobs. I sit next to him. Don’t touch him, but I wait for the storm to pass. He’s lost everything now . . . his son gone, and now his two grandchildren.

He finally whispers, “She never let me see them girls. Not even once.”

I swallow a painful lump in my throat and say, “They didn’t suffer, sir.” That’s a lie, but I can’t tell the man the truth. Not now. “I’m looking into what happened to