Heartbreak Bay (Stillhouse Lake #5) - Rachel Caine Page 0,36

them, and to Sheryl.”

He nods. His whole body is shaking with the force of his grief. I stand up, finally, and put a hand lightly on his shoulder. I take my business card out and place it next to him on the bed.

Then I leave, shutting the door behind me on the hell that I’ve brought. Once I’m back in the car, I take a deep breath and reach for my phone. I text ACOM, which Prester will read as all clear old man. Prester’s recently discovered emojis, a fact that amuses me to no end, and I smile when he sends me back the cussing smiley face. It’s not much of a smile, but it’s something.

The smile fades fast, and the small comfort along with it. I’m almost sure that Tommy Jarrett is dead.

Which means in the morning, I need to get into Sheryl Lansdowne.

Hard.

9

GWEN

By the time I’m home, it’s pretty late in the afternoon, so I dive right into Sheryl Lansdowne research. Kez is going to be tied up on that grid search outside Norton until dark, so best I make some headway for her with basic stuff.

It doesn’t turn out to be basic at all, because it quickly becomes evident that Sheryl isn’t who she seems to be. In fact, records for Sheryl Lansdowne begin just three years back.

It’s a false identity, and not a very good one at that. Good enough to get her a real driver’s license, but the social security number she’s using is false. She’d be kicked out fast if she had a job, claimed benefits, or had an employer who’d ever paid in for her, but it doesn’t look like Sheryl worked in any official capacity at all. Didn’t even apply for assistance, as far as I can tell, which is rare around these parts. Maybe she had some kind of gig that paid her cash? It’s not really possible to tell yet.

I use our firm’s proprietary facial recognition software to try matching Sheryl to the driver’s license databases.

My first hit comes from Iowa.

Sheryl Lansdowne’s original name is Penny Carlson.

Penny is a missing person. Last seen driving off, but she never arrived at the university she was scheduled to attend. Extensive searches were conducted for her car, and she was considered endangered missing, but since she wasn’t a child—she was eighteen at the time—there wasn’t much more to be done. As a legal adult, she had the right to disappear if she wanted. She packed up her life, got in her car, and vanished like a bad memory. I find a website dedicated to finding her, probably put up by family or friends, but it doesn’t look like it’s been updated for a long time. Several years, at least. They’ve given up.

Maybe Penny had decided that college wasn’t for her, that she wanted to start over entirely differently. But my instincts catch fire when I realize the time gap between Penny Carlson and Sheryl.

Ten years from Penny’s disappearance to Sheryl’s arrival in Valerie. So where was she during that time? What had she been doing? My brain keeps trying to connect random dots, but I don’t have enough to go on, just a deep sense of unease. None of this makes sense.

Sometimes it just doesn’t, part of my brain says calmly. And while it’s right, I’m not about to admit defeat. Not yet.

I widen the search to more states. Results slow down, and I get too many false positives. I’ve lost track of time when I finally hear the kids come home. Lanny appears in the doorway to say, “School’s boring, Connor aced a test, nobody’s bleeding, in case you’re interested. Did you eat?”

I hold up the empty plate that once held pie, gaze still fixed on the computer screen. I see her shrug in soft peripheral focus, and then she turns to go.

I wrench myself away from the screen and say, “Honey? Thank you for asking.” It disconcerts me to realize that she’s trying to take care of me. “Is it your night to cook?”

“Yeah, and it’ll be pizza because I’m a basic bitch,” she says. “Calm down, with salad, so it’s healthy. I just have to watch out for Connor trying to sneak his habanero hot sauce all over it. What are you working on?”

“Stuff,” I say, and realize how dismissive it sounds. “Sorry. It’s for a case that Kezia’s working, actually. It’s a little urgent.”

“Can I help?”

I instantly reject that idea. I don’t want her anywhere close to this.