by Gregg Olsen
“You’re home.” I can feel my eyes tear up, but I don’t want to cry. It would be wrong. I’ll never cry in front of Hayden. I was the strong one. Regardless, I don’t trust myself to speak.
“Are you expecting someone else?”
He’s looking at my gun.
I put it in the shoulder holster but don’t take it off. “No,” I lie. I’m always lying to him. “I just had a tough couple of days. Still haven’t wound down, I guess.”
“I heard all about it on the news. You’re on paid leave?”
“I guess I am.”
“The case is over?”
“Yeah. It is.” Except for my stalker. “How long are you home?”
The look he gives me is indifferent. Not the Hayden I remember. But what did I expect? He’s been in Afghanistan. That he’s in one piece is amazing.
“I’m done. Out. Honorably discharged.”
He is so grown-up. So sure of himself. I missed all of that because I left him. It’s like the note on the back of the picture. I glance at the picture and so does he.
“I see you have my photos out.”
I nod.
“And Scotch. When did you start drinking Scotch?”
“It’s a police thing.” I don’t tell him it’s to numb the pain of losing him.
I forget the pain in my ribs. My heart hurts worse. “Hayden, I’m so sorry. I truly am.”
He looks up at the tall ceilings and sees the cobwebs, I’m sure. I’m not much of a housekeeper. I don’t want to tell him it’s because our mother treated me like a slave. I did everything while she coddled him. I held it against him when I was younger, but then I started to become his mother. I loved him more than she ever did.
As he turns his head I see a scar under his chin that runs to the back of his jaw. “You were hurt.”
He puts a finger on the scar. “Want to see?”
“Yes,” I say, but my voice is so weak, I’m not sure I actually said it. I can feel tears threaten to come.
He turns sideways and pulls his T-shirt collar down. Another scar, this one the size of a half dollar, mars the skin at the nape of his neck near his spine. I could cover the one in the front with the tip of my pinky.
“I love you, Hayden.”
He looks at the pictures on the desk again. “I guess that’s why you left me. Because you loved me so much.”
His words are angry, accusing, but his face is a mask. His eyes give away nothing.
“I wrote you. Dozens of times. You never answered. Not once.”
“I didn’t need your emails,” he says. “What I needed—what I need—is a family. I’ve found that in my foster parents. You have never been there for me. You promised me.”
I can feel a tear slide down my face. I can’t stop it. He’s right and I hate myself more than he could possibly hate me. I start to say I’m sorry again but hold it inside. It’s meaningless in the face of all his pain. I should be ecstatic with joy that he is here at all, but he really isn’t here. Not in any meaningful way. He is here to punish me, and I know I deserve it, but I gave everything to protect him. I was almost killed trying to protect him. I wanted so bad to tell him the truth, but I can see now it wouldn’t matter. His hurt runs too deep.
So does mine.
The tears are coming freely now, and I hate myself for letting it happen in front of him. I was his only family. And I abandoned him. He wasn’t old enough, didn’t know the truth, and I couldn’t tell him.
His stare is a hard one.
“Look,” I say, “I’ve thought of you every day.”
He doesn’t speak.
I go for broke. “Please stay and let me make this right. Please.”
“Did you ever think about me when you left?” he asks.
“You know that I did.”
“I don’t know that, Rylee. All I know is that you left me with Aunt Ginger, a perfect stranger.”
“She was our aunt.”
Was is the right word.
“Can we not discuss this right now?”
“What else are we going to talk about, Rylee? Mom?”
I will never talk about her. I stay mute and just stare at my long lost brother.
“Rylee, she misses you. She asks for you.”
My heart drops. It nearly makes a sound on the floor. A thud. I wonder if Hayden felt the vibration.
“Oh, God, are you telling me that you’ve seen her?”
He keeps his eyes riveted to mine. Testing me. “Once a week since I’ve been back.”
The room starts spinning and I steady myself. “She betrayed us, Hayden.”
“She’s our mom,” he tells me as though I need a lesson in biology. “You’ve never bothered to hear her side of what happened,” he says as though he’s her understanding lawyer.
I don’t say so. Not out loud, anyway. I’ve never needed to hear her side of any story. I knew who she was and what she did. Right then, however, my mind goes to Alex Rader. My serial killer father.
Hayden’s father.
A secret I’ve kept.
“Let’s table this for now,” I finally say. “I have a spare room. Will you stay?”
He doesn’t answer right away. He lets me twist in the wind for a beat.
“Yeah. I will.”
I hold my breath. Despite everything our parents did, I want nothing more than to make this right with Hayden. Suddenly it feels as though he’s no longer just a link to the past, but a pathway to what I need to do. And that gives me hope. Hope is a very good thing.
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Books by Gregg Olsen
Detective Megan Carpenter series
Snow Creek
Water’s Edge
Lying Next to Me
The Last Thing She Ever Did
The Sound of Rain (Nicola Foster Thriller Book 1)
The Weight of Silence (Nicola Foster Thriller Book 2)
Available in audio
Detective Megan Carpenter series
Snow Creek (Available in the UK and the US)
A Letter from Gregg
I want to say a huge thank you for choosing to read Water’s Edge, the second in the Detective Megan Carpenter series. If you enjoyed it and want to keep up to date with all my latest releases, just sign up at the following link. Your email address will never be shared and you can unsubscribe at any time.
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These are strange and scary times we’re living in. I hope this message finds you safe and making the best of the new normal. One thing, I’m sure, is that nothing passes the time and takes our minds off whatever we’re facing like a good book. When I finished this novel, I thought about all of you. My hope that Water’s Edge provides you a distraction, even if only for a little while. Reading can be a source of connection in a time when we really need it.
Of course, since I wrote it for you, I hope you loved Water’s Edge. If you did I would be very grateful if you could write a review. Reviews are your way of introducing other to books that have intrigued or maybe even scared you. : ) I’d love to hear what you think, and it makes such a difference helping new readers to discover one of my books for the first time.
It makes my day hearing from my readers—you can get in touch on my Facebook page, through Twitter, Goodreads or Instagram.
Take care and be well.
Thanks,
Gregg Olsen
Snow Creek
ORDER NOW!
Footprints were scattered about like fallen leaves. She looked down into the ravine, and once more her lungs filled with fear. A body, b
lackened and motionless lay splayed out in the bushes.
When Ruth Turner walks into the Sheriff’s office in Jefferson County’s Port Townsend claiming her sister Ida Watson has been missing for over a month, Detective Megan Carpenter’s instincts tell her that she needs to do more than just file a report.
Racing over to Ida’s secluded farmhouse in the hills above Snow Creek, Megan finds Ida’s teenage children alone and frightened. She can’t help but notice there’s no TV. No video games. Nothing of the outside world. Something about the Watson family doesn’t add up.
Then the body of a woman is discovered in an abandoned pickup truck close to the Watsons’ home and Megan’s convinced the cases are connected.
If she has any chance of catching the killer, Megan must first unravel the secrets of the isolated Snow Creek community.
But Megan has dark secrets of her own too. Hidden in the back of her closet is a box of tapes containing every single recording of her therapy sessions over thirteen years ago. Can she finally confront the past she’s spent years trying to block out? And will reliving her own painful story help her solve the complex case before another innocent life is lost?
From the Number One New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today and Amazon Charts bestselling author, comes an absolutely heart-stopping and completely unputdownable crime series, introducing Detective Megan Carpenter.
ORDER NOW!
Acknowledgments
I’m thrilled to bring readers (new and veteran) the second in the Detective Megan Carpenter series. And as tough and resourceful as Det. Carpenter is, she doesn’t get to the page without a lot of help. I am grateful to the awesome Bookouture, especially publisher Claire Bord, who saw the series’ potential and has been its guiding light ever since. Much appreciation also goes to each and every member of this amazing team: Leodora Darlington, Alexandra Holmes, Chris Lucraft, Alex Crow, Jules Macadam, Kim Nash, Noelle Holten and Caolinn Douglas. Much appreciation to my copyeditor Janette Currie, proofreader Tom Feltham, and, last but not least, cover designer Lisa Horton. And to David Chesanow, you always get the best out of me. Thank you!
I’d like to pay tribute to my agent Susan Raihofer of David Black Literary Agency, NY, and my personal assistant, Chris Renfro, for all that you do to keep things moving at a rapid-fire clip. I’d be lost without the two of you!
And to Tish Holmes, I hope you are enjoying that well-deserved glass of wine. Thank you so much.
We – both author and publisher – hope you enjoyed this book. We believe that you can become a reader at any time in your life, but we’d love your help to give the next generation a head start.
Did you know that 9% of children don’t have a book of their own in their home, rising to 13% in disadvantaged families*? We’d like to try to change that by asking you to consider the role you could play in helping to build readers of the future.
We’d love you to get involved by sharing, borrowing, reading, buying or talking about a book with a child in your life and spreading the love of reading. We want to make sure the next generation continues to have access to books, wherever they come from.
Click HERE for a list of brilliant books to share with a child – as voted by Goodreads readers.
Thank you.
*As reported by the National Literacy Trust
Published by Bookouture in 2020
An imprint of Storyfire Ltd.
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
www.bookouture.com
Copyright © Gregg Olsen, 2020
Gregg Olsen has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers.
eBook ISBN: 978-1-83888-744-5
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events other than those clearly in the public domain, are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.