Heartbreak Bay (Stillhouse Lake)

by Rachel Caine

Center mass shot.

  I pull the trigger. Nothing happens. The slide is locked back.

  Empty.

  And then I realize that the voice lost in the gunshots and the ringing isn’t Jonathan’s.

  It’s Kezia’s. “Gwen, stop! Stop!” She’s leaning over the railing, face stark with shock.

  “Oh God,” I say. I nearly did it. I nearly killed her.

  Your choice, I can hear Jonathan whisper.

  I drop the gun. I’m all wrong and I feel like I’m dying and I just want . . . I just want . . .

  The white walls blur. Spin.

  Kezia hurtles down the spiral toward me. She grabs me as I start to fall, and then we’re both on the floor, and she picks up the gun.

  “I’ll be back,” she says, and I see the intensity, the blind focus in her eyes. “I need to make sure he’s—”

  There’s a noise. A loud, rumbling noise. Mechanical. Kez stands up. I’m trying to get my breath. There’s something I need to remember, something I need to tell Kez. It’s important. But I feel like everything is watery now. Slippery. I can’t hold on to the thought.

  “It’s the elevator,” she says. “Try to stand up.”

  She tries to help me, but I can’t make it. I collapse, concrete cool against my face. She’s still talking, but I can’t make sense of it. Then I’m moving. She rolls me on my back, and drags me across the concrete floor toward the double doors. They’re still open, and with weird clarity, I hear the restless rush of the sea beating against the hard rock of the cliff this lighthouse stands upon.

  Kez stops. She’s breathless, and she’s in pain too. I see it flash in her face, along with the sudden despair she feels. She eases me up and braces me against the wall. “No,” I try to tell her. “Don’t.” I can’t remember why I say that, but it’s important.

  But she turns away from me, stands up, and faces the man who limps out of the elevator. Jonathan looks as damaged as I do.

  He’s got a shotgun. He raises it toward us. “You should have checked,” he says. “I always keep a spare handcuff key in my pocket, Kezia.”

  Kez steps forward, gun in hand.

  Oh God. I remember now. I was trying to tell her the gun was empty. I drag the backup magazine from my pocket, but when I try to slide it to her, I miss. It skids into the shadows. Too far for her to reach.

  She drops the gun and pulls the knife from her belt.

  I can’t let her die for me.

  “Just go, Kez,” I hear myself say. “Please. Go and live for your baby.”

  The noise in my head is quieting. Everything is quieting except the steady promise of my pulsebeat. I’m still hurting, but something gives me strength.

  In that silence, I hear my children whispering, You can do this, Mom. You can.

  I stand up. I balance myself on one leg, drag the other. I move to stand with Kezia.

  Shoulder to shoulder.

  Jonathan stands there staring at me. He doesn’t scare me anymore. I’m not frightened of anything. I don’t even feel the pain so much.

  “Do you know who I am now?” I ask. “And do you know who you are?” I sound steady. I am steady.

  He tilts his head. Shadows fill the hollow on the side of his head.

  “I do,” he says. “I finally do.”

  He reverses the shotgun in one smooth motion, sticks the barrel in his mouth, and pulls the trigger. The explosion fills the lighthouse. Echoes up as the blood sprays, and what’s left of Jonathan Bruce Watson slides boneless to the floor.

  Kez grabs me when I start to topple, and eases me down. She puts her arms around me and holds my back to her chest, and then we’re both sitting down. Nothing but the sound of the sea, and a faint, distant whine.

  Sirens. Those are sirens.

  I say, “I tried to kill you.”

  “You’re a bad shot,” she says. “Thank God. Help’s coming, Gwen. Sam did it.”

  I can’t take my eyes off the pitiful ruin of a man. A shell. A monster animated by hate. Love is selfishness. Greed, he said. Maybe he really believed that. Maybe he wasn’t sane enough to believe anything at all.

  “He made his choice,” I whisper.

  We’ve made ours.

  We’re going to live.

  EPILOGUE

  The cavalry, when it finally arrives, seems a hundred strong. State and federal agents, paramedics, swarming like a kicked colony of fire ants. I’m taken away in an ambulance, while Kezia stays to answer questions; it doesn’t escape my notice that I’m handcuffed to the gurney, but I don’t care about that. I just want to sleep, especially once they shoot me up for the pain.

  It takes days to unwind the story to absolutely no one’s satisfaction except the cold case departments across the country who are finally able to put their open cases to bed with a firm, final SOLVED stamped on the front. There are twenty-three bodies in the cannery. Every one of them has a file neatly labeled in a cabinet at the top level of the lighthouse, where Jonathan kept meticulous records. He wasn’t lying about any of it . . . not about the fact that his victims were guilty, at least. Penny Carlson had killed at least ten people. She’d killed her children, the man and woman at the remote house, and arguably Detective Prester, plus left five more in her wake of destruction over the years.

  She was one of the least guilty of those he’d forced to play his game.

  When the news breaks, some clever duck at the Wilmington Star-News labels him The Fisherman, and it sticks. I don’t know if Jonathan would be happy he has a serial killer nickname, or appalled. I’d rather not try to work it out.

  Jonathan left a video accounting of every single one of his cases; I’m sure it’ll be fodder for psychologists and profilers for years to come. In my case, he’d applied his usual methods. The Lost Angels had been hideously easy to leverage against us. Dr. Dave, the man Sam turned to for information, had been the one to provide Melvin’s letter to Jonathan, as well as the posters. MalusNavis’s posts had never asked anyone to put up those posters. Had never asked people to stalk Vee or threaten my children. But hate has a life of its own. He didn’t need to do much to kindle the fire and let it smoke us out.

  Sheryl had been easy to manipulate too. She could have turned away. Said no. Loved her children more than the millions of dollars he dangled as bait. Everything after that one crucial night was collateral damage, her making the same choice again and again to chase her reward.

  But Jonathan chose first.

  What haunts me now isn’t Penny’s horrific, pathetic death. Or the innocent eleven-year-old whose death—accidental or deliberate—started this deadly avalanche.

  It’s the shots I fired in a blind panic, in pain. The shots that I only barely missed. In a way I think that, too, was Jonathan’s plan, to make me blindly kill my friend, and it’s only luck that saved me.

  But I’m alive. Kez is alive. Her baby is a new and beautiful future for her and Javier. And in the end . . . Jonathan chose how to lose his own game.

  I have to try to be content with that.

  Coming home on crutches feels strange. Like I’ve left something important behind. I tell Sam I love him, and I mean it; there’s nothing but joy in my heart when I see him, and joy when I greet my children again. I should feel better.

  I will feel better. Therapy isn’t fast. But it does work. Step by step, I’m coming back. Step by limping step, I will walk out of this darkness and back into the light, where love is waiting for me.

  Because Jonathan was absolutely wrong. Love isn’t greed. Greed always wants more. Love is rich enough in itself, by itself. It doesn’t need more.

  I have enough, with Sam and my children. Enough of everything.

  Jonathan would never understand that at all.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My first readers (always), Sarah Weiss-Simpson and Lucienne Diver.

  My amazing editors Tiffany Yates Martin and Liz Pearsons.

  So grateful for the assistance from Candria Slamin, Corlyn Key, Erica Johnson (a girl fr
om Saint Louis who loves to read), and Todd Caldwell!

  PLAYLIST

  If you’ve read my stories before, you know that music is a huge inspiration for me during the creation of a story . . . and Heartbreak Bay has some tremendous songs that helped fuel my process this time out. Musicians struggle like all artists, so if you can afford it, please buy the music!

  “God’s Country,” Blake Shelton

  “Rearview Town,” Jason Aldean

  “Give Me One Reason,” Tracy Chapman

  “Miss Me More,” Kelsea Ballerini

  “Mother’s Daughter,” Miley Cyrus

  “Nightmare,” Halsey

  “Still Feel,” Half-Alive

  “99,” Elliot Moss

  “The Tarantella,” Honeyblood

  “Hunter,” RIAYA (feat. John Mark McMillan)

  “July,” Noah Cyrus

  “Smokin the Boys,” Audra Mae & The Almighty Sound

  “Bruises,” Lewis Capaldi

  “Hurt,” Oliver Tree

  “Lo/Hi,” The Black Keys

  “Ilomilo,” Billie Eilish

  “Boom,” X Ambassadors

  “Take the Wheel,” Honeyblood

  “Blue on Blue,” Just Loud

  “Tell Me,” Diamond Thug

  “Stay,” The Score

  “Face the Sky,” Diamond Thug

  “Maria,” Grandson

  “They Own This Town,” Flora Cash

  “Saw Lightning,” Beck

  “Dancing with Your Ghost,” Sasha Sloan

  “Tell Me When It’s Over,” Sheryl Crow (feat. Chris Stapleton)

  “Crowbar,” Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes

  “Way Down We Go,” Kaleo

  “Cringe,” Mark Maeson

  “The Daughters,” Little Big Town

  “The Chain,” The Highwomen

  “Change,” The Revivalists

  “Love Crimes,” Hayden Thorpe

  “It Doesn’t Matter Why,” Silversun Pickups

  “The One I Need,” Amber Benson and James Saez

  “Paper Gown,” Caroline Herring

  “O Death,” Gangstagrass (feat. Brandi Hart, R-Son, and Liquid)

  “Country Girl,” Carolina Chocolate Drops

  “Long Hard Times to Come,” Gangstagrass

  “Throw It Back,” Missy Elliott

  “Killing Strangers,” Marilyn Manson

  “Joke’s On You,” Charlotte Lawrence

  “Bad Memory,” K. Flay

  “Haunted Heart,” Tyminski

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  It’s a strange place, 2020, when I’m writing this book. We’re in the grip of a pandemic. Death tolls are rising. People are frightened, and wanting answers and hope and an end to fear.

  I’m in a strange place too. My own personal tunnel is very long, and I’m walking toward the light. I have soft tissue sarcoma, a rare, aggressive, and fast-moving cancer. I’m starting clinical trials with a research center in hopes of finding a way through.

  I don’t know if this is my last book. I don’t know if I’ll make it to the light.

  But like Gwen, I am on the path. I am walking.

  Like Gwen, I have enough love because of people like you, who’ve made it possible for me to be here to tell this story.

  If this is the last of Gwen’s story, then I hope you feel it was worthwhile. I do.

  I wish you well with all my heart.

  Choose kindness.

  Rachel Caine

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Photo © 2014 Robert Hart

  Rachel Caine is the New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and Amazon Charts bestselling author of more than fifty novels, including Bitter Falls, Wolfhunter River, Killman Creek, and Stillhouse Lake in the Stillhouse Lake series; the New York Times bestselling Morganville Vampires series; the Weather Warden novels; and the Great Library young adult series. She has written suspense, mystery, urban fantasy, science fiction, and paranormal fiction for adults and young adults alike. Rachel lives and works in Fort Worth, Texas, with her husband, artist/actor/comic historian R. Cat Conrad, in a gently creepy house full of books. For more information, visit www.rachelcaine.com.