by Rachel Caine
“Apparently.”
I sense rather than see her glance. “Helping Melvin kill those women?” I don’t answer that. The road noise grinds up the silence, and she finally says, “He seems to have a type.”
“I’m not like Sheryl.”
“You are somebody people think is a killer. He’s wrong, we both know that. But it makes sense in whatever passes for his mind.”
“I want to stop and buy a pay-as-you-go phone. We can’t use this one. I need to check on Sam and the kids.”
“No.”
“I need it.”
“You know he’ll be watching us.”
“We’re not trackable right now unless he’s the freaking NSA.”
“And maybe he is the freaking NSA, you thought of that? Hell, I don’t know what those people get up to in their spare time, and neither do you! You underestimate him, we lose.”
I want to argue, but she’s not wrong enough for me to be right. It feels like we’ve launched into space, in this tight little can of a car, driving through the dark. Far from home and shelter and safety.
“You’re worried about the kids,” she says, and her tone is gentler this time. “I know. But Sam is there, and he’s not going to leave them. You know that.”
“I know,” I say. “But I’m their mom.”
“And you’re doing the best thing you can. You’re taking the danger away.” Kezia reaches over and tries the radio. It’s tinny and full of static, but she finds a country station, and we silently let it play for a while.
I’m not sure when I fall asleep, but when I wake up, we’re in a different climate—warmer, more humid. The land’s flatter. And the sun’s coming up on our left. “Morning,” she says, and yawns. Stretches without letting go of the wheel. “I’m pulling off at the next truck stop for gas and coffee and bathroom. Want to take the wheel after?”
“I’ll drive,” I say. “Where are we?”
“North Carolina, just passed the border. Got another few hours to where we’re going,” she says.
I check the map on the phone, and we’re on target. The marked spot is called Salah Point, and it’s barely a dot on the map. Screw it, I think. He gave me a phone that has internet access, so I’ll use it. I search the area around Salah Point and come up with a little history. The area isn’t much . . . rural, depressed, same as a lot of the South, only with more humidity. Fishing failed in the mid-1990s for good. The main industry is—was—a cannery that’s been shut ever since, and a couple of glassmaking and pottery factories that are barely hanging on. Like most little downtowns, the snapshots the search function turns up feature antique stores heavy on southern nostalgia, light on actual valuables. A Sonic Drive-In and a Dairy Queen. A regional Wal-Mart. The usual.
The last page has a shot of a lonely-looking lighthouse sitting on the horseshoe-shaped bay, and a brief, dry history about it. Apparently it’s a historic site, and also a private residence. The harbor it once guarded—though there’s no evidence the beacon still works—is called Cully Bay, but the article notes it has another nickname, for the legend of ship wreckers who used to turn off the lighthouse beacon and let ships founder on the rocks to loot lost cargo.
Heartbreak Bay.
“Why does he want us there?” I ask her. She shrugs. “It can’t be his home turf. He’s not that stupid.”
The burner phone he gave us has a small, eye-straining screen, but I make do. I search for anything with Salah Point, any notable events. I strike gold, and my intake of breath makes Kez give me a quick, concerned look. “What?”
I take a swig of water to moisten my suddenly dry mouth. “The top search result for the place is about an abduction and murder,” I say. “About ten years ago. An eleven-year-old girl named Clara Watson was abducted, and her older brother, Jonathan, was badly hurt, almost killed. He suffered severe injuries. Her body was found months after out in the salt marsh.”
“Jesus,” she whispers. “Did they find him?”
“The killer?” I scroll through entries, then click a link and read results. “Not according to the last update. The brother struggled with the abductor, who hit him with some kind of pipe. All the kid could remember after he woke up was that the man drove a van. Case unsolved.”
“That has to mean something,” she says. “Is the brother still alive?”
“I think so. The parents aren’t. Mother died a year after the girl, and the father committed suicide a year after that. The boy was about seventeen when this happened. There’s a mention that he recovered. Nothing else.”
But I’m wrong, I realize. Putting in Jonathan Watson plus Salah Point gives me a later article. A profile piece. The mention of his sister’s murder is one line, described as a “tragedy.” The family owned a large cannery on Heartbreak Bay that shut down in the late 1990s. Losing a child and having another one seriously injured wasn’t enough for this family; death and suicide weren’t enough. They also lost everything in the fishing industry crash that took down a lot of businesses in this area.
The article, though, uses that as a setup for a miracle, because Jonathan Bruce Watson bought a lottery ticket in 2015, on the anniversary of his sister’s death.
“What?” Kez asks. I realize I’ve been silent too long. “What’s that look?”
“He won the Powerball multistate lottery,” I say. “He lost everything, Kez, and then he won the goddamn lottery. Seven hundred fifty million dollars.” I feel the hair raise on the back of my neck. What someone could do with that kind of money, if they were single-minded . . . I can’t imagine what Melvin would have done with it.
No, I actually can. He’d have become another Israel Keyes, burying murder kits in strategic locations all over the country, killing at his pleasure and disappearing without a trace. Israel Keyes called them vacations. It’s impossible to know the ghastly toll he really took; he traveled constantly, and admitted to only a few of the apparently unrelated deaths. A serial killer with massive funds, free time, focus . . . could do anything.
And then I blow up the photo that goes with the story as large as the small screen will handle. It’s not great. A man of medium height accepting an oversize check, looking not delighted but oddly unemotional. A baseball cap on his head.
I feel the knowledge go through me like a sudden, heart-stopping lightning strike.
Leonard Bay. That’s a photo of the man I tackled running from the mailing store. Bay, as in Heartbreak Bay.
The injury that flattened the side of his head.
I frantically google one more thing. Malus Navis.
A navigational beacon.
Leonard Bay had an address on Beacon Street, according to his license. Which had looked real enough, but $750 million will buy quality fakes.
Kez is asking me questions, but I’m not listening. I do another search, and I find another article about the abduction of little Clara Watson.
Jonathan Bruce Watson suffered severe head injuries. I remember the shocking sight of Len’s head as his hat rolled away. It isn’t visible in the Powerball photo, but there’s no mistake. Len is Jonathan Bruce Watson. Jonathan Bruce Watson is MalusNavis.
I had him. I had him. And I let him go. I hear a high, thin buzzing in my ears, and that dreadful weight on me again. Panic attack incoming.
No. I refuse. No.
I close my eyes, lean my head back, and breathe through it, ride the twisting waves of panic and sickness until the flood subsides, and when I finally am able to look again, the car is stopped. Kezia is staring at me. We’re in the breakdown lane of the freeway, cars and trucks whizzing past without a thought for the way the world has just changed.
I tell her the truth. All of it. MalusNavis’s targeted attacks on me. Jonathan Watson’s flattened skull. His unlimited resources to fuck with our lives.
She takes it in silently. I can read her expression by the dashboard lights. Then she says, “If he hadn’t wanted you to find out, he wouldn’t have given you a smartphone. He wants us to come prepared. Kn
ow what we’re getting into.”
I look up the number for the FBI and start to dial it. Kez takes the phone away.
“If you’re thinking about calling in the cavalry, I already thought of that,” she says. “Gwen . . . we don’t have anything. Prester died of a goddamn heart attack. Everything else we have can’t be traced to Jonathan Watson, not fast and not directly. We’ve got threats, sure. But every one of them is vague. He’s made sure of it.”
“We’ve got video of him at the gas station,” I say.
“Pumping gas. It’s not a smoking gun, even if he’s with Sheryl. He could claim she was a hitchhiker and he let her off ten miles down the road, and there’s no way to prove otherwise unless Sheryl’s alive to tell her side of the story.”
I feel sick now. “You don’t think she is?”
“This man’s got a purpose,” she says. “He saw his sister get taken. He failed her. You said Sam looked into other cases MalusNavis was into. What do those have in common with Sheryl?”
I don’t like where she’s going, but it feels right. “They were all suspected of murder at some point. At least on the Lost Angels boards.”
“Like I said, he’s got a type.”
“Like me,” I say. “Melvin’s little helper.”
She reaches over and takes my hand. “Not like you,” she says. “Not at all. We need to make a decision, now that we know this. Forward, or back? Your choice, Gwen. But this is higher stakes than we bargained for. If you want to call in the feds, the state police . . . we can do that. I just . . . I feel like he’s walled himself off for anything like fast action. He’ll have time to deal with us. Hurt us. And if he’s still got lottery money left, he can disappear without a trace, fast.”
“Nothing’s really changed,” I say. “The stakes are exactly the same. If I don’t go to him, he comes for my family. The only difference is that now we know he can actually destroy them without breaking a sweat.” I have to swallow bile to do it, but I say, “Forward. He says he wants to judge me. Let him do that.”
“I saw the photo,” she says. “His head. That man’s got brain damage. You can’t put your life in his hands, expecting him to be fair.”
My life is already in his hands, in all the ways that matter. I just shake my head. “I don’t trust him,” I say. “But I trust us. If we’ve got to fight on enemy ground, what do we need?”
“A goddamn army.”
“Knowledge,” I say. I hold up the phone. “And he’s given us the keys to the library.”
Kez glances at the clock in the dash. “If we’re going, we need to make time,” she says. “Miles to cover. A lot of them. And Gwen? If he’s as smart as you think he is, he’s cloned that phone. He’s watching everything you do. And tracking calls. If you do call anyone—TBI, FBI, anyone—he could know. And he could be a ghost before we get anybody to move on him for real.”
“So it’s just us, or nothing.”
“I think so,” she says. “Until we have proof. Unless you want to bet the lives of your kids that he won’t follow through on his threats.”
I don’t answer that. I just get to work.
When I’m done, I’ve filled pieces of notepaper with details. A paper version of the online map, just in case. A rough sketch of the map of Salah Point, including the bay.
I find more about the Watson family. The cannery’s abandoned and locked up, rusting away. The Watson house looks to be located nearby, and both sit on the bay—Cully Bay, according to the map.
The lighthouse still stands, but it’s a grim-looking place, regardless.
I buy a new burner phone from the racks and activate it before getting back on the road. We’re going to need something that Jonathan Watson can’t control. Some way of summoning help if we need it.
I hope it’ll be enough.
I don’t ask Kez. I just bury the phone Jonathan gave us in the industrial dumpster on the side of the gas station. He’ll know we’re headed that way. And I don’t intend to give him any more advantage than that.
The drive to Salah Point is relentless after the efficient transport of the freeway. The only signs tell me I’m on the right state road, but if you judged by condition, it’s long disused. The trees are thick for a while, gloomy, and once they give way to low, swampy growth, it looks even gloomier. Gators sun themselves in muddy ponds, and I watch out for any crossing the road.
It feels like we’re going nowhere, and then there’s a turnoff and a weathered, shotgun-pocked sign announcing SALAH POINT. I take the turn down a road that isn’t better than the state road, and is arguably worse. The landscape looks wild and dangerous. It’s probably a wildlife preserve area, or else developers just took one look and decided that swampy wetlands without a single industry to support it wouldn’t work out. The animals won. For once.
We’re here.
You need to get ahead of him, Gwen. You’re prepared. You have weapons and knowledge of the area now. Think like the hunter you are. If you play defense, you will lose. I expect the whisper in my head to be Melvin; it’s always Melvin. But that voice just called me Gwen.
The voice in my head, the warm and quiet and loving voice . . . that’s Sam. My eyes fill with tears . . . not pain this time. Gratitude that it’s Sam who’s with me now.
Gratitude that Melvin’s gone quiet at last.
Kez wakes up as I slow down. She hasn’t slept long, or well, but when she swipes at her eyes and says, “Are we close?” she sounds fully alert. And tense.
“A couple of miles until we get to town.”
“Damn. Should have ditched the phone once we got everything we could.”
“I did,” I tell her. “Gas station about a hundred and fifty miles back. But there’s only one way into town. And he’ll have eyes on it.”
The little town comes up on us suddenly, like a stalker from the shadows. We round a curve on the bumpy, crumbling road, and suddenly there are buildings. Not many of them, though—maybe a dozen clustered around the main road. Two or three intersections with no lights, just rusted stop signs. The first block we cruise through, driving slowly, is deserted; there’s an old gas station, long since shuttered, the islands where pumps once stood completely bare. A useless FOR RENT sign hangs crookedly in the window. A couple of anonymous square stone buildings look like they could date back to American-style antiquity—1800s, at least. Empty shells, no windows or doors. Waiting to fall.
And then, suddenly, there’s a shockingly bright red building, neon, drive-in slots. The Sonic serving tater tots, burgers, shakes . . . but it’s deserted too. Closed. I check my watch; it’s coming up on nine in the morning, so I suppose they’ll open up soon.
The next block has an open diner that looks as if it’s been there for generations, and it’s—for Salah Point, at least—doing good business, with three tables filled that I can see, and a couple of old pickups parked outside on the street. The antique shop that I saw in website pictures is empty, though the painted name survives on the window with a PERMANENTLY CLOSED sign on it.
There’s something else, I realize—a fluorescent orange poster taped to the door of that empty store, and there’s something printed on it in huge, heavy block letters.
WELCOME GINA
I hit the brakes hard enough to jerk us both, and Kez casts me a look before she spots the sign. “Shit,” she says. “Gwen . . . there’s something else on it. I think it’s an envelope.”
I back up and park the Honda at the curb. There’s not a soul on these streets. The only life is across the street at the diner, and I don’t look that way. I feel very exposed. It would be so easy to hit us right here. Rifle shots from a low rooftop, and our brains are on the walls. I have a powerful urge to jam the car in reverse, pull a U-turn, and get the hell out. Because whatever is waiting for us here . . . it’s going to be hard.
I take a deep breath and get out of the car.
The rank smell of the place hits me hard. There’s something rotten here, sulfurous; maybe it’s the dista
nt reek from the old cannery, blowing in from the sea. Humidity clings like wet wool on my skin. I hear Kez open her door, but I don’t look back. I walk steadily across to the orange poster and the white envelope taped on there. I rip it off the sign and open it. Bold cursive writing. No mistakes.
It was your choice to come here. Everything that happens from this point on will be your decision, not mine.
You can leave if you want. Just get in your car and drive home. That’s a choice too. But all choices will have consequences.
This is your first decision to make. I’ll know when you’ve picked up this message. The clock is running, and you have ten minutes to get to me before I think you’re not playing fair. There will be a cost if you delay.
Good luck.
He hasn’t signed it, but he didn’t need to. There’s an underlying strangeness to it that is more of a signature than just a name. It gives me shivers. The writing on the paper is precise, but deeply indented. Written with conviction and force. He’s been careful about the words he chose too; there’s nothing overtly threatening, though the threat overall is there. He could just as easily play it off as a game, a prank. In a town this small, with a man this rich . . . I can’t trust the local police. I’m not sure I can even trust the state police; there’s absolutely nothing I can give them to really make them believe me. It’s all puzzle pieces, and how you put them together.
The other page in the envelope is a printed map of Heartbreak Bay. All the way out on the far end of the horseshoe shore, the lighthouse. He’s put a red X over it.
I hand the note to Kez, and the map. She looks at it in silence, and says, “We’re not going there first, if that’s where he wants us.”
“I don’t think it really matters where we go,” I say. “I think Jonathan’s had a lot of time to think about what we’ll do, and he’ll have planned for it.”
Everything but what I’m about to do, because by this time he must believe that we’re caught. Trapped in his spiderweb of a town. Out of good options.
I take the burner phone I bought out of my pocket and dial home.