Heartbreak Bay (Stillhouse Lake) by Rachel Caine (red white royal blue TXT) 📗

clearly hadn’t cared anything about the worry she’d cause the people she left behind. Maybe because she knew that while people professed to love her and like her, they’d move on pretty quickly.

I find myself doodling a note to myself. Some people are hard to love.

Interesting. Not that I’d put it in the file, but I wonder if her folks sensed something about Penny/Tammy/Sheryl that wasn’t that obvious to most. I’m on the fence about calling the family to find out; on the one hand, if they have moved on—and the file kind of indicates they have, since they stopped pestering the police after just a few months—then I don’t want to open up healed wounds. But if they haven’t, if they’re existing in a hell of not knowing, maybe I can help them grab a breath of free air.

And what if Sheryl’s really dead this time? Or a child murderer?

That’s what stops me. Until I know more, I can’t pull that string. I don’t know what it would unravel, and I don’t want to be responsible.

Prester would tell me that I’m being stupid, that maybe the reason her family stopped asking about Penny was that she got in touch. Maybe so. But I have other things to do before I have to take that road.

Gwen still hasn’t gotten anything in the way of video yet from the woman we talked to out in the sticks, and though I know it might not be smart, I’m too restless to stay still. I tell the sergeant where I’m going and head out.

It’s a long, cool drive out into the budding green hills, and I have to stop and check my directions twice along the way. It’s easy to get turned around out here. I don’t pass many cars on that tight little back road, just one rusted pickup that looks like it’s mostly held together with Bondo, and a shiny SUV that makes me briefly curious before I recognize the tags. It takes up most of the road, and I have to drive right on the precarious edge to avoid getting my mirror taken off as it whizzes past.

The SUV belongs to the Belldenes, our local Dixie Mafia hill folk with a compound not too far from here . . . and a pretty substantial drug business. We play tag with them pretty often, but I don’t bother to pull them over today. One thing about the Belldenes: they aren’t going anywhere. They succeeded in driving Gwen Proctor out of Stillhouse Lake through threats and leverage, and I’m not giving up that grudge anytime soon, but I got other fish on the line right now.

To the Belldenes, drugs are just business, and business is good. I can’t imagine them drowning two little girls in a car, no matter what other crimes they’d condone. Deep down, they’ve got some kind of morality, and this is so far over that line you can’t spot it from space.

Which, it occurs to me, is why it’s possible that they did see something; they’d be out all hours in rural areas. Maybe they made that 911 call. But chasing down that lead will be dangerous, and I’ll need a hell of a lot more than just a hunch.

I pull into the driveway that Gwen and I visited. The McMansion looks quiet, no cars visible. I step out and walk up to the door, careful to stay in range of the cameras. I ring the bell and step way back, holding my badge.

Apart from the chirps and songs of birds in the trees, I don’t hear anything from inside the house. I wait for a solid two minutes, then step back up and knock. Forcefully. “Norton Police Department,” I say, and I know it carries. “Hello?”

Not a damn thing. I feel a cool breath move across my neck, and hair stiffens. I listen to my instincts and tuck my badge onto my belt, draw my sidearm, and try the front door. Locked, which I expected. I go to the big picture window in front, but the blinds are shut.

It’s a risk heading around the side, but I do it, driven by something I can’t really define. That’s where I see the curtain blowing in the breeze behind an open window. The mesh screen is five feet away, discarded on the grass.

Shit.

I don’t touch the window, just lean in to look. I don’t see anything in the room, which seems like a spare, crowded with boxes and filing cabinets. “Hello! Norton police, call out!”

Still nothing.

I debate going through the window—it’s plenty big enough—but I could destroy valuable evidence doing that, if there is something amiss inside this house. I pause and call the station, and tell Sergeant Porter that I may have a situation. He snaps from laconic to professional in an instant, and dispatches a patrol car toward me.

It’ll take a while, so I continue around the side and to the back of the property.

The blood shows up thick and dark red in the sunlight. It’s smeared over the grass of the backyard in a long streak. Been there long enough to turn dark and clotted, and the cloud of insects buzzing over it is delighted with the bounty. I hold my breath for a second, then deliberately let it out in a slow hiss.

There’s no body visible, but that’s clearly either a drag mark, or someone crawling. It heads into the trees. I follow it in parallel. It goes from a thick trail to a thin one, then to drops and smears here and there.

I see the soles of her feet first, shimmering in the gloom under the trees. Ghostly white, those bare feet. Her body’s an eerie, cold shade, and I know before I put my fingers to her pulse that she’s long bled dry. There are ants on her, and some trundling beetles. Flies swarming. I swallow hard and move back, careful of my steps, and call it in.

I don’t touch her again. And I don’t