by L. T. Vargus
GIRL UNDER WATER
AN ABSOLUTELY UNPUTDOWNABLE AND GRIPPING CRIME THRILLER
L.T. VARGUS AND TIM MCBAIN
BOOKS BY L.T. VARGUS AND TIM MCBAIN
DETECTIVE CHARLOTTE WINTERS SERIES
First Girl Gone
Girl Under Water
THE VIOLET DARGER SERIES
Dead End Girl
Image in a Cracked Mirror
Killing Season
The Last Victim
The Girl in the Sand
Bad Blood
Five Days Post Mortem
Into the Abyss
Night on Fire
THE VICTOR LOSHAK SERIES
Beyond Good & Evil
The Good Life Crisis
What Lies Beneath
Take Warning
Silent Night
Available in Audio
DETECTIVE CHARLOTTE WINTERS SERIES
First Girl Gone (Available in the UK and in the US)
CONTENTS
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Epilogue
Hear More from L.T. Vargus and Tim McBain
Books by L.T. Vargus and Tim McBain
A Note from L.T. and Tim
First Girl Gone
PROLOGUE
The old man felt the dampness on his cheeks. Confused, it took him a few seconds to remember what tears were like, what crying was like. Billionaires like Dutch Carmichael didn’t cry, did they?
“I know I have a tendency to be distant,” he said, his voice shaking slightly. “Maybe even a little cold. I know that.”
They walked through the upstairs hallway of the Carmichael mansion, the two of them striding over a rich Persian rug and past an original Tiffany lamp. The crystal chandelier hanging over the entryway glinted rainbow shards of light all around them.
“Looking back…” Dutch said, “maybe I could have been more open. More demonstrative with my affection. And not just with you. With everyone.”
The old man’s cane tapped out a beat on the inlaid wood floor. Pictures congregated in clusters along the wall. Photographs mixed in with paintings. Several blown-up magazine covers featured a younger Dutch—the rugged, self-made tycoon smiling the same wolfish smile in every shot.
He couldn’t say what he wanted to say. Couldn’t conjure the words to articulate what he felt inside. He’d kept a hard edge about himself for all of those years, fought his way to the top of the cutthroat business world, stayed lean and hard and hungry at the expense of nearly all of his personal relationships. He hadn’t known any other way, and whenever he tried to voice any of the softer feelings inside, his mind went strangely blank.
The voice that finally answered him was clear and strong.
“Well, I forgive you. I can’t speak for any of the others, of course. But I do. You’ve always done your best. I think we all know that.”
They hugged there at the top of the stairs, and Dutch was overcome with emotion. Joy. Sorrow. Nostalgia. Regret. Things he hadn’t felt in years. Things he hadn’t let himself feel.
Christ, how had he let his life go this way? Selfish. Alone. Separate from his lover. Separate from his family. Separate from everyone. Greed was a blackness, a corruption that invaded the mind and spread through the body like cancer. It chewed you up.
The family’s long history of conflict flickered through his head: fights, feuds, divorces, lawsuits. Dutch’s increasing wealth only seemed to make the familial squabbles worse. More heated. More vicious.
“It’s all long-forgotten now. Back in the past where no one can change it, where no one can touch it.”
The hug tightened. The body in his arms felt so light. Childlike.
Maybe he could make things right after all. There was still time. He was seventy-seven, yes. White-haired and stooped, yes. But he was in good health. The heart and lungs of a forty-year-old, the doctors told him.
He had time to fix it, to repair the broken relationships before the end.
He pulled gently away from the embrace.
“You know, the staff are off on Sundays, but Rosa leaves sandwiches,” the old man said. “More than enough for both of us. I’d love it if you’d stay and have lunch with me.”
“Well… I only came for a short visit, like I said.”
Dutch’s eyelids fluttered. He almost let it go at that. Almost.
“Ah, come on. Humor me. It’d mean the world.”
A sigh.
“OK. Let’s eat.”
Dutch smiled and turned to walk the last few paces to the stairway.
He picked his foot up. Wobbled down that first step.
There was a soft scraping sound, and then something bashed him on the back of the head.
Motes of white light flashed in his skull. Popping. Exploding.
The object burst on impact, spreading its shards around him.
Dutch planted his cane, wedged it into the oak floor, and for a second it seemed that would hold him.
Then the cane snapped. Cracked in half.
The old man launched off
the top of the stairs. Body cartwheeling into empty space.
His vision whirled. Flashed on the ceiling. The chandelier. The wood of the stairs. And back to the ceiling again.
His upper back crunched on impact, body folding up like an accordion, knees tucking into his chin. But he didn’t stop, didn’t slow. Gravity wasn’t through with him yet.
Tiny moments of his life flashed through his head. Blinking off and on.
Huddled in a tent outside of Da Nang. Drinking warm Coca-Cola and Tiger beer with his men. Laughing about something someone had said. Probably Fanelli. He’d always been the joker of the bunch.
His body rolled over itself. Somersaulting. Downward. Reality swung around and around.
Another flash took him to the birth of his eldest child. The press of the surgical mask against his face. The nurses handing over that tiny bundle. The small child, red and raw like an alien creature. A smile so big it made his cheeks sting.
The wood splintered. His bones snapped. One of his shoes came off and bumped alongside him.
Finally he landed on the polished floor at the bottom of the stairs and stopped moving.
Something popped in his spine. Severed. A tremor ran through him, tingling and throbbing and needling as his nerves began to die. All sensation fading out to nothing.
Numb. Paralyzed. A broken thing. Battered and bloody.
As the last glimmer of consciousness drained from him, he looked up. Saw the menacing silhouette standing at the top of the steps, feet planted shoulder-width apart.
And part of him had always known. Always feared. Always suspected that this might happen—someone close turning against him.
But I never thought it would be you.
ONE
Charlotte Winters thought she was the first one to the office that morning, but when she entered through the back door of A1 Investigations a few minutes before 9 a.m., she heard a voice coming from inside.
“Now you’ve done it.” The voice was barely above a whisper. “You’ve made a mess of this.”
Juggling her laptop, purse, a drink carrier, and a paper bag with two toasted bagels inside, Charlie hurried through to the main office. There she found her new assistant huddled on the floor behind the front desk, cheeks splotched red.
“Paige?” Charlie said.
The girl jumped at her name.
“Oh! Miss Winters!” Paige let out a nervous laugh. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
Charlie moved to the desk and set the coffee and bagels down.
“What are you doing here so early?”
“Well, you were so excited when your new chair came in yesterday, I thought it’d be a nice surprise if I came in early and had it all set up for you, but…” Paige’s eyes strayed to the lopsided configuration on the floor beside her, and her voice went up an octave. “But I’m no good at these assemble-it-yourself things. The directions are always a bunch of gobbledygook, and I wind up with extra pieces by the end.”
She lifted a plastic baggie filled with bolts and washers and shook it, jangling the parts together. She jabbed her finger at a piece of paper on the floor beside her.
“Everything is arrows and letters. It might as well be written in hieroglyphics.” She pointed at the parts strewn about on the carpet, voice wavering, tears threatening to spill over her eyelashes. “I have no idea what’s what.”
“She’s losing it, sis,” Allie’s voice chimed in Charlie’s head. “You better step in unless you want another meltdown like when she found that sparrow last week.”
The voice of her dead sister had a habit of cropping up when tensions were running high.
Charlie’s twin had gone missing nearly twenty years ago, and the only trace they’d ever found was her severed foot, which had washed ashore on one of the island’s beaches. It was at Allie’s funeral that her voice had first appeared, beamed into Charlie’s head as if by radio signal or satellite. It was disconcerting at first. Was it real? Evidence of the paranormal? Or was Charlie slightly insane, her twin’s death breaking her psyche in half to restore the balance of things, fabricating the voice to fill the void left by Allie’s absence?
Whatever the explanation, Allie was attracted to drama. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t also right. Charlie had only known Paige for a few weeks, but it was already clear she was an emotional creature. Last Friday, a bird had flown into the front office window hard enough to knock itself out and leave a smudge of tiny feathers on the glass. Paige had started sobbing, thinking it was dead. But it had only been stunned, flying away unharmed a few minutes later.
Charlie snatched up one of the cups from the drink carrier she’d set on the desk and held it out.
“Why don’t we take a break? Once we have some caffeine pumping through our veins, I bet we’ll be able to figure this out.”
“Yeah. OK.” Paige scooted closer to take the offered drink.
When she settled back on the floor, she sat cross-legged, gripping the cup with both hands and blowing into the opening in the lid. Paige was twenty-three, but sometimes Charlie had a hard time remembering she wasn’t a kid. There was something so wide-eyed and innocent about her.
It had been Frank’s idea to hire someone to help out at the office. The caseload at A1 Investigations had nearly doubled in the last few months, and with Frank’s health problems, it made sense to find someone to pick up some of the slack. Paige was great with paperwork and answering phones. She kept Charlie organized and free to focus on the real investigative work. Charlie was willing to overlook the fact that the girl panicked at the notion of assembling office furniture.
“Thanks, Miss Winters.”
Charlie was about to remind her that she’d asked to be called by her first name when the front door opened with a swoosh, letting in a gust of crisp May air.
Charlie turned, expecting the FedEx guy, Ralph. He almost always came this time of day. Instead, a woman stood on the mat just inside the door.
She was tall with red-blonde hair styled in a shoulder-length flip that reminded Charlie of Jackie Onassis. The woman studied the office as she carefully removed a pair of soft leather gloves, her lips puckering in a way Charlie interpreted as disapproving.
“Welcome to A1 Investigations. I’m Charlie Winters,” she said, walking over and extending a hand.
“Gloria Carmichael,” the woman replied.
She slid a pair of Gucci sunglasses from her eyes up onto her head. The crow’s feet around her green eyes suggested she was older than Charlie had first suspected. Late fifties, maybe early sixties.
“I smell money,” Allie whispered, and Charlie silently agreed.
Even if she hadn’t come in with designer sunglasses and supple-as-butter leather gloves, Charlie would have pegged her as being wealthy. It was something in her posture, her head held high atop her long, smooth neck. The confident note of command in her voice. This was a woman used to having things her way.
“What can I do for you, Mrs. Carmichael?”
“It’s Ms. Carmichael, but you might as well call me Gloria,” she said, still eyeballing the surroundings. “This is… I mean… you’re the one who found that missing girl, yes?”
The Kara Dawkins case had made all the headlines, the news outlets in the area painting Charlie as a hero. It had been good for business, but Charlie couldn’t get comfortable with all the hype.
“That’s right.”
Still studying the office, Gloria Carmichael frowned.
“I was expecting something… different.”
“Tell her you can go change into a pinstripe suit and fedora if that’ll make her feel better,” Allie suggested.
Charlie ignored her sister’s voice and gestured to the leather couch against the wall. Gloria hesitated a moment before taking a seat, and then Charlie realized she had nowhere to sit herself. Paige had moved her old chair out to make room for the new one.
The half-assembled thing jutted up from the floor, looking more like an abstract sculpture than someth
ing someone could sit on. She opted to lean against her desk, but a moment later, Paige hopped up with a wink, which Charlie took to mean she was going to fetch a chair from the back room.
“I’m here about my father. Randolph Carmichael.”
Charlie stood up straighter at that. Randolph “Dutch” Carmichael was big news on Salem Island. The founder of Carmichael Investments, a wildly successful hedge fund, had been found dead at the bottom of a stairway in his home a few weeks back. Initially presumed an accident, the police had eventually ruled the death a homicide. Ever since, the press had been going wild speculating the who and why of it all.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Charlie said.
Gloria flapped her gloves in the air in a dismissive gesture.
“I’m not here for sympathy. I want answers. The work of the local police… leaves something to be desired, you might say. I’d like another set of eyes on the case. An outsider. And I’ve discovered some inconsistencies in my father’s estate.”
Charlie was about to ask what she meant by “inconsistencies” but was interrupted by a high-pitched squeal. The sound of a harpooned sea creature screamed out from the hall—the awful squawk of Charlie’s old chair.
Everything stopped as Paige emerged from the hallway pushing the ancient wooden thing. The chair’s shriek was painfully shrill. Ice picks to the ear drums. It sent a wave of shivers up Charlie’s spine.
Realizing all eyes were now on her, Paige’s cheeks glowed red.
“Sorry,” Paige mouthed, wincing as she guided the chair over to Charlie with a final screech for good measure.
Charlie had found a comfortable position on the desk and had no interest in moving to the decrepit chair, but she felt obligated to take the seat now that Paige had gone to all the trouble. She lowered herself onto it, wincing as it wobbled slightly but held her weight.
Gloria frowned from her position on the couch. The look on her face might have been pity.
“You were saying there are inconsistencies with your father’s estate,” Charlie said. “Could you elaborate?”
“My father had his own way of doing things.” Gloria reached up and fiddled with her earring, a pearl set into a gold rose. “He was a maverick when it came to the stock market, as everyone knows, but he always advocated diversifying one’s assets, and since he retired from running the hedge fund, he’d become fascinated with the ‘unbanking’ movement.”