by Rachel Caine
Our home alarm’s been triggered.
“Shit,” I whisper.
I put the truck in gear and leave rubber as I head home, fast as an arrow from a bow.
13
GWEN
I’m sitting tense, watching my phone and waiting for Sam to get home. Long minutes tick by. Half an hour. I tell myself to be patient; he was pretty far out when he texted me from the diner, and maybe he’s hit traffic, a road closure, something like that.
But I’m really starting to worry when it closes in on an hour, and there’s no word. I text him, but I don’t get a response.
It’s well after midnight when the home alarm goes off.
The siren is so loud it’s almost like being punched in the head with sound waves, shocking and nauseating in its intensity. I roll off the couch, fall on my knees, and press my thumb to the sensor on the lockbox. My gun’s in my hand in less than five seconds, and I’m on my feet and heading down the hall, no thought left but for my children. I glance at the alarm panel as I move past it.
The alarm was triggered in Lanny’s bedroom. My whole body is shaking, but I know how to control it, how to use it. Fear is a sharp, metallic taste in my suddenly dry mouth.
I open the door to Connor’s room, and Connor’s right there, bracing himself with the baseball bat in his hand. He’s put himself between danger and his sister, who he’s shoved into the corner, I realize, but she’s backing him right up, and holding her laptop like she intends to smash it into the first skull she sees. Recognition makes them both relax. I mouth, Lock the door, and Connor nods. I shut it, and go across the hall.
I take a breath, a second to get my gun in position, brace, and I ease Lanny’s door open.
Moonlight catches on curtains blowing in the breeze. Her window is up. I see a shadow moving, and for a hot chemical second I feel the twitch go through me, and I almost, almost pull the trigger. But something stops me for just long enough that the lamp next to Lanny’s bed switches on, and spills its light over Vera Crockett, who sees me with the gun and staggers back, holding up both hands. Her face has gone milky pale, a few freckles standing in stark relief. Her eyes are wide and scared, and I quickly lower the gun. I stalk past her, slam the window, and give her a glare that would probably melt steel; she looks appropriately chastened.
Then I go the nearest alarm panel and turn the siren off.
The silence flows over me like cool water, but my ears are still ringing, my nerves still burning from the stress. And I turn that right on Vee as she comes out of Lanny’s room. “Jesus Christ, Vee, what the hell did you think you were doing? I nearly shot you! I could have killed you!”
Before she can answer, I hear the home phone ringing. It’s the alarm company. I get to it and tell them, in clipped tones, that there’s not an emergency, and to call off the police response. They’re likely halfway here already. I don’t like showing up as a false report, especially now.
As I hang up, Vee says, “Ms. P, I am so sorry, I thought—I texted Lanta to ask her to turn off the alarm, I thought for sure she’d do it . . .” She trails off because now my attention is on her again, and it’s not kind. She swallows hard.
“Tell me she didn’t leave her window unlocked.”
“Uh . . . she didn’t? I kind of know how to slide those locks?” She looks ashamed to say it, but I’m actually relieved a little bit; at least this time it isn’t my daughter’s doing. Not completely, anyway. Though Lanny should have warned me that Vee was planning this. “It really wasn’t Lanta’s fault. It was all mine.”
“You’re damn right it was. Vee, why didn’t you just come to the front door like a normal person?” But I think I know, from the way her cheeks turn a bit pink. She was hoping for a little make-out session with my daughter, I think. I have no idea if Lanny’s agreed to it or not, but either way, it’s just throwing fuel on the fire. Both of them should know better. “Sit. Down. I need to tell my kids they’re not about to be murdered, thanks to you.”
“Sorry,” she mutters. “Bright side is, you didn’t even shoot anybody.”
She’s getting her equilibrium back. Far too quickly for my taste.
I knock on Connor’s door, the usual signal pattern to let him know it’s me and I’m not under duress; he unlocks it and peers out, still wary, until he sees me. Then the door flings wide. “What was that?”
I look past him at my daughter. She seems completely clueless. “What? What did I do?”
I sigh. “Check your phone.”
She does, whipping it out of her pocket, and I see her expression go from guarded to shocked to utterly horrified. “Oh no.”
“Oh yes.”
“Vee? She broke my window?”
“Not broke,” Vee says quietly from behind me. “Kinda jimmied. Didn’t know you’d ignored my message.”
“Dumbass, I didn’t even know about it! You can’t just . . .” She’s actually angry. Lanny, for the first time I can remember, is holding her friend—maybe even her crush—to account. “Do you know what kind of trouble you could have caused? Oh my God, you’re lucky Mom didn’t shoot you!”
Mom almost did, a fact that makes me shiver. The gun feels heavy in my hand, and very, very lethal. “Go lock your window,” I tell my daughter. “Vee. Couch. Now.”
I trail her on the way back, and stoop to put my gun away. When I straighten up, she’s trying so hard to look inoffensive that it’s nearly comic. “I just wanted to make sure she was okay,” Vee tells me. “She texted me about the boys who put up that flyer on your door. There’s one over ’round my place on the telephone pole too.”
“Did you take it down?”
“’Course I did, what do you think I am?” She seems offended I’d even ask, but with Vee, honestly, I kind of had to. “I expect that guy who sent me the letter put it up. Right?”
Her instincts are good, but I just say, “I don’t know for certain. I guess since you’re here, you might as well stay the night. I don’t want you walking around in the dark.” The fact she was foolish enough to do that makes me itch, but that’s Vee: smart and stupid at the same time. That’s also being a teenager. Lanny’s growing out of it. I hope that Vee will too.
“Where’s Sam?” she asks. I notice that Vee’s usually Ms. P when it comes to me, but she treats Sam differently. Not sure what I make of it, or if I should make anything of it at all . . . and then it hits me, and I suck in a startled breath.
Sam.
I grab for my phone. There’s a notification from the alarm company on the screen; I swipe past it and see a missed call from Sam. He must have seen that the alarm triggered.
He’s okay.
I shut my eyes for a second in real relief, and then hit dial. He picks up on the first ring, and I hear the roar of road noise immediately. “Gwen?”
“Slow down,” I tell him. “We’re okay. It’s okay. Vee set off the alarm. Everything’s fine. Are you all right?”
“Oh, thank God. Yeah. I’m fine. I’ll be there in five minutes.”
“Take your time. The crisis is canceled.”
“In our house, it’s always just postponed,” he says, but he sounds better. More relaxed. And I can tell he’s slowing his speed to something reasonable. “I love you, Gwen.”
“I love you too. Please get home safe.”
“Oh,” Vee says as I hang up the call. “He ain’t here? Wow. Guess I really did put my foot in it. Y’all didn’t have a fight, did you?”
“No, Vee, we didn’t have a fight.” In her world, violent breakups seem far more likely than happy relationships. “You didn’t just come here to make out with my daughter, did you?”
“What? That’s ridiculous.” She lies pretty well, now that she’s settled. “I wanted to tell you about the flyer in my neighborhood. And make sure everything was okay here.”
“And you wanted to tell me something you found out,” Lanny says from the hallway. How long she’s been there, I don’t know. She’s looking at Vee with very adult eyes right now. “That wa
s really, really dumb, Vee.”
“I know. Sorry.” Lanny sinks down on the couch near Vee, but not next to her. I notice the space. So does Vee. “You’re mad.”
“Disappointed. What did you find out?”
I shift my weight as the meaning of that hits me. “Wait, what? What is Vee doing looking into anything?”
“Vee,” Vee says primly, “is helping. I told you I had a part-time job, didn’t I? Well. I work for Mailboxes For You, the one with all the storefronts all over town, which Lanta says is where you got mailed something you wanted to trace—”
“Wait, what? How do you know about that, Lanny?”
“I’m not blind,” she says. Cool as spring water. “I know the look you get when something to do with Melvin shows up. So I looked at the footage on the security system. You got a package. I saw the mailing envelope on your desk. Mailboxes For You, return address in Knoxville. It isn’t the place that Vee’s working. I just asked if she could find out who paid to send it. Just looking up a receipt, Mom. Nothing dangerous.”
She doesn’t know that. I don’t know that. But we’re well past that now. I look at Vee. “And?”
She pulls a piece of paper out of the pocket of her tight-fitting skinny jeans and hands it to me. It’s folded small, and clammy with sweat. I open it carefully. It’s a printout of a receipt, a courier package addressed to me here on Monday.
The return address is the Mailboxes For You on the other side of the city. But the credit card charge has a name on it.
The name is Penny Maguire.
It takes me a second to link the last name back to Sheryl Lansdowne, but once I do, I stare at that name hard until my eyes burn. Then I fold the paper up and put it on the coffee table. “Thank you,” I say. “And if I could ground you, you’d be grounded for a month, Vee. Best I can do is tell you that you do nothing else. No poking around. No asking questions. Nothing. Is that clear?” I don’t even wait for her answer. I turn to my daughter. “And you’re damn lucky that I don’t have time to ground you, either, because that was not a safe thing to do, Lanny. Not for Vee, not for you, not for this family. Do you understand me? No going off on your own. We communicate, and we stay together.”
I see a muscle tense in her jaw, but she nods. “Sorry,” she says. I’m not sure she’s sorry enough, but there’s nothing I can do to make her understand how much of a risk both of them took.
Lanny, after a beat, says, “Was I right? Was it from him?” She knows I’ve gotten other letters. I’ve tried to be open about it, to the extent I thought was wise.
“It’s the last one,” I say. And that’s not a lie. I’m going to make damn sure it is.
“Can I read it?”
“No, honey.” I hear my voice soften, because I understand this impulse. All too well. My feelings about Melvin Royal are both clear and complicated; my kids are struggling with reconciling a dad they still feel they should love and a monster who doesn’t deserve it. Reading his letters is like touching a hot stove for them. Sometimes they feel they have to hurt themselves to prove they can take it. “I shredded it. It was meant for me. It wasn’t about you or Connor.”
“You shredded it?” She seems surprised. I guess she ought to be. “I thought you . . . kept them.”
“Not anymore,” I tell her, and put my arm around her. “I don’t need them. And neither do you.”
Connor, I realize, is in the kitchen pouring himself a glass of water. When I look over at him, he just nods. “I’m okay with that,” he says. “I said goodbye to Dad already. I try not to think about him at all.”
That hurts and soothes at the same time. We sit quietly for a few seconds, and I hear the purr of the truck’s engine as it comes closer. Garage door opening. The second Sam’s inside, I reset the alarm, and I’m in his arms two moments later. He holds me tight.
“I was so worried about you,” I whisper right in his ear, so close my lips brush skin.
He hugs me tight and doesn’t say anything. I don’t need him to. He moves on to embrace the kids. “Did the alarm scare you?” he asks them.
Lanny snorts. “I’m Supergirl. I don’t get scared.”
“More like Squirrel Girl,” Connor says.
“Who’s even more awesome, so thanks.” She shoots that back without hesitation, and that’s when I know they’re okay. Finally. Sam lets them go and turns to Vee, who’s on her feet, hands on her hips.
“What?” she demands. Cocky as ever.
Sam shakes his head. “You’re staying, I assume? You know where everything is. Don’t throw wet towels on the floor this time. And no hair dye in the shower.”
She gives him a mock salute and goes right to the hall closet, where she takes out a pillow and blanket that she throws in the general direction of the couch.
Everything seems normal, but I can see from the look Sam gives me that it’s anything but. We head back to the office, and he closes the door.
“I need to tell you about a guy named Dr. Dave, and a guy named Tyler,” he says. “And you’re not going to like any of it.”
He’s absolutely right. I hate it. I hate that he knows someone as slimy as Dr. David Merit, Dentist Troll. I really hate that he met him alone, in such a terribly vulnerable place, and narrowly avoided worse things happening.
And having to talk a young man down from suicide . . . that is a hell of a night. I can tell that Sam feels an affinity for the kid, a bond that I can’t really understand. And though he doesn’t say it, I can tell he’s uneasy about that too. Anything that touches on that pain, that loss . . . it’s deeply uncomfortable for him.
But Sam’s okay, and at least the evil dentist has given us something to work with. Sam tells me his theories about MalusNavis, and they make a dreadful kind of sense. Even to the avenging-angel part . . . especially alarming if this person now has his sights fixed on me. On us.
Why does he have a credit card that sounds like it probably belongs to Sheryl Lansdowne / Penny Carlson / Tammy Maguire? Is she with him? Does he have her prisoner? What the hell is happening here?
It’s too late—or, by this time, far too early—to solve any of those questions. I carry them with me to bed, into an exhausted sleep that seems to drag me down like a weighted net.
I wake up later than I intended—almost seven, sunlight streaming in through the blinds. Wednesday morning, and I try to think through the day for a second. Nothing urgent comes to mind. That leaves me a window to do something about Melvin’s letter.
Sam’s side of the bed is empty; I usually wake when he moves, but not today. I put my hand in the hollow of his pillow. Cool. He’s been up for a while.
I find there’s a pot of coffee already made, so I pour and head for the office, still in my sleep-time T-shirt and flannel pants. Vee’s sound asleep on the couch, curled like a fall leaf under a snowy white blanket. She looks relaxed and very young, and I’m careful not to wake her.
Sam’s in the office. Fully dressed. I shut the door behind me as I enter. “Well, I feel like a slacker.”
“The kids sent you an email,” he says. “Copied to me. Isn’t Douglas Adam Prinker the guy in Valerie?”
“It’s for Kez’s case.”
“Are you still sure that’s . . .” He searches for the right words for a second. “Good for them?”
There’s no good way to answer it except to say, “They can handle a little more responsibility. Besides, you saw what happened when I didn’t give permission. All of a sudden Lanny’s asking Vee to go look up records from a place where she’s already well known. Vee cannot keep a low profile. And it’s about Melvin. I need to keep them out of that. Completely.”
“I’m thinking it’s not separate, though. Aren’t you?”
I hate that I am, actually. Kez’s case started early Monday morning. I was at the pond before dawn. And just a few hours later, I have Melvin’s letter served on me like a subpoena. That doesn’t feel random. And now Vee’s provided a link—at least a strange and tenuous one—with a cre
dit card that looks like something Sheryl Lansdowne might have had as a new identity. How would MalusNavis—if it’s him—get his hands on Melvin’s letter? From what Sam’s uncovered, he’s hardly likely to be someone Melvin would have attracted as a fan.
Between that, the word from the loathsome Dr. Dave that Monday was when MalusNavis asked for the template, the fake obituary, the letter Vee received on her door, and the posting of flyers at the gun range . . . it all looks very, very bad. Like I’m now in the crosshairs of someone who’s very serious.
But it also looks like a patchwork of coincidence that could fall apart like mist under the spotlight of a real investigation. So I can’t tell. I have a confirmation bias, a thumb on the scale.
We need some real proof, like getting a picture of the person who sent that package. If it’s Sheryl Lansdowne, then there’s something real to chase. If it’s someone else, there’s still a lead to follow, a face, something. But as I well know, Knoxville PD is not going to be helpful. They tolerate me just fine, but they’re certainly not bending any rules on my behalf. Posting Melvin’s letters isn’t a crime. And if the credit card is valid, using it might not have been a crime either. And they’ll just shake their heads at the Lansdowne connection until I have real proof.
No way to get a warrant, or official action. And I can’t put Kez into that position either. No help for it, I think. I’m going to have to be creative.
“Hey, Sam?” I say, and he looks up. “How do you feel about staying here with the kids for a while?”
“Fine, they’re sleeping until noon anyway, at this rate. I’ll take care of whatever needs doing. Why? You going to see Kez?”
“I . . . don’t think I should tell you. That way, if you’re asked, you can truthfully say you have no idea.” I hit print on the document I’ve pulled up. It looks official, but it isn’t. Good fake, though. I don’t intend to leave it behind, just flash it and a fake badge I keep for real emergencies and hope the store clerk isn’t very savvy. I pause in the act of folding it up and look at Sam. “Shit. What’s today?”
“Wednesday,” he says.