Table of Contents
Synopsis
By the Author
Acknowledgments
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Epilogue
About the Author
Books Available from Bold Strokes Books
Forsaken Trust
Wallace Lake, Ohio, takes care of their own. Unwelcoming of outsiders, the community closes ranks when four women are found murdered along the water’s edge. Agent Luce Hansen of the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation must find a way in before another woman loses her life to the ruthless serial killer.
With the help of her new team—a hot rookie and a smart, beautiful medical examiner—Luce uncovers a ring of devotion surrounding the prime suspect. As Luce works to unearth the dark secrets of this close-knit town, she learns to what extraordinary lengths people will go to protect the ones they love. And when Luce feels forsaken, both professionally and personally, she must regain trust in her most valuable investigative tool: herself.
Forsaken Trust
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Forsaken Trust
© 2017 By Meredith Doench. All Rights Reserved.
ISBN 13: 978-1-62639-738-5
This Electronic book is published by
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P.O. Box 249
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First Edition: May 2017
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Credits
Editor: Ruth Sternglantz
Production Design: Susan Ramundo
Cover Design By Jeanine Henning
By the Author
Crossed
Forsaken Trust
Acknowledgments
Thank you to my family, both immediate and extended, for their continued support and encouragement. A special thanks to Uncle Dave who has claimed me as his favorite thriller writer. I hope this novel doesn’t let you down!
A very big thank you to Xiamara Hohman and Lindsey Light for slugging through the early drafts of this book. I appreciate your willingness to offer editorial guidance and keep a sense of humor at the same time.
Thank you to the members of the English department at the University of Dayton for their support. Special thanks to Andy for providing Writing with Friends; Patrick, Kara, and Liz for writing alongside me in various locations around Dayton; Rachel and Dan for discussions of whether “this could really happen;” Laura and Bryan for their encouragement and advocacy of my work.
Thank you, BWR, for our discussions of loyalty and justice while also showing me these two don’t always go hand in hand.
Thanks to Nancy Zafris for her continued support.
Many thanks to Bold Strokes Books and to Ruth Sternglantz for all the writing advice and a close eye with the final edits.
Last, but certainly not least, a big thank you to the readers of Crossed who regularly nudged me along to find out what happens next to Special Agent Luce Hansen. I appreciate your support!
Dedication
This book is dedicated to my mom who has never forsaken me.
And for my furry companions, Joey and Tayo, who have taught me the meaning of loyalty.
Prologue
Ava Washington loved nothing more than kayaking down the Powell River, eventually landing in the vast waters of Wallace Lake. Every Saturday at six a.m., rain or shine, Ava loaded her truck while her mother and younger brother slumbered on. She made her way down to the water’s stony edge where she paddled until the Ohio winter months stopped her. It wasn’t just the promise of a solid upper-arm workout that kept Ava coming back every week. It was the silence and the way she could hear the sounds of her own breath, the pound of her heart inside her ears, and the slice of the paddle through the current. It was how she felt when the water rushed about the bobbing kayak bringing with it the smell of the surrounding river and woods. Unlike the other kayakers she encountered on the waterway, Ava used no music. She despised those tiny earbuds that drowned out the sounds of nature, particularly in late October when the river and all its inhabitants were preparing for a long winter. Ava’s life during the week was so noisy; she wanted nothing but quiet. Despite the thick fog that coated the land and wafted off the river today, Ava hoped the sun would burn the fog away, allowing her to stay on the water until sundown.
Ava was a sophomore at Wallace Lake High School and had never enjoyed school. She wasn’t an athlete or the cheerleader type; she fell somewhere on the spectrum between the smart kid with no social skills and the talented but low-achieving student. Then, a few months ago, everything changed.
Ava went to her first bodybuilding practice with her best friend, Sadie Reid, mostly because Sadie had begged her to. Bodybuilding wasn’t something Ava would have ever thought of trying on her own, but everyone had a crush on the new coach, Mr. Allard. She wanted a chance to check him out, and now that Sadie had a job helping out the team, Ava could do so with her friend at her side. Joining the team also meant Ava could be around Sadie even more, and truth be told, this was the real motivation for her joining the team. Ava knew that Sadie had it rough. She had been taken from her mother, a heroin addict and rumored prostitute, and had lived with her grandmother ever since Ava met her in second grade. Since then, there were two rules that Ava’s mother regularly pestered her with. One, stay away from heroin, that insidious drug which had sucked the life from their town ever since the factory jobs left. And two, stay away from Sadie Reid.
The oaks, elms, and pines were losing their summer greens and exploding with oranges, yellows, and reds. Ava wound the paddle in the figure-eight motion. When she hit a patch of rushing water, she let the paddle rest on the rim of the kayak and took a deep breath while the water around her burbled and tumbled on itself. The thick morning fog allowed her to see only a few feet ahead, and she let the crests of the river waves and the swelling movement of the water pull her along.
Eventually, the water slowed to a crawl as Ava neared the bend in the Powell River. Beyond was the junction, the place where the river met Wallace Lake. The locals called the point of the river’s connection to the lake Dead Man’s Point, mostly because of the road that ran along the waterway. The site of many auto and motorcycle accidents, the road had a hairpin turn that froze easily in the winter and covered with water in the summer, sending cars hydro
planing to crash through the guardrails and into the river. Many had lost their lives on that turn, and it was a popular spot for ghost stories around Halloween.
The water level was low, and when Ava rounded the corner, she saw the twin land bars, one mass in front of the other. She’d heard a teacher describe them once as the broad, mossy-brown backs of two hippos cresting the water, and she now understood that image. Most days, Ava couldn’t see so much of those higher patches of silt, rock, and sand; today, they took her by surprise. Something white caught her eye, something so white it nearly glowed. She looked hard. Then again. There, spread-eagle on top of one of the bars, was what looked like a person lying facedown.
Ava shook her head. She told herself it was only the fog playing tricks on her eyes. I’ve been watching too many of those crime shows. No matter how many times she shut her eyes and reopened them, though, the figure was still there. Maybe, she reasoned, it was a mannequin or some sort of sick joke meant to scare people on the river and carry on the haunted name. But it certainly looked real. Ava pulled the paddle back hard to stop the forward motion of the kayak. She fought to cross the current over to the exposed bar of land.
“Hello?” Ava called. “Do you need help?”
The body was naked—a white woman with her heavy breasts shoved into the earth of the sandbar. Dark shoulder-length hair was strewn across her face. Ava docked the kayak and climbed out, but the boat’s rocking motion left her balance unstable. When Ava took a step, her knee gave out. She fell forward, her hands breaking the fall not far from the woman’s leg.
The woman didn’t move. Slowly, Ava reached out her hand. Just a quick touch, she told herself, just to make sure it’s real. The woman’s skin looked so pale and hard. Ava’s fingertips grazed the cold calf before her. The breath seized in her throat, and she felt the heavy pulse of blood thumping in her head. A strange voice echoed in her mind and it took a minute before Ava realized it was her own: Take a deep breath, stand up, and call for help.
Ava pushed herself up to her feet and rushed back to the kayak. Her cell was strapped to the waterproof compartment on the side of the boat. As Ava’s foot sank into the sand next to the kayak, she saw it—a gray, lifeless hand floating just under the water’s surface. Ava’s eyes followed the hand to the bend of the wrist and forearm. She saw the tattoo, that wavering image dulled by the river’s water. Her eyes followed the arm to the shoulder of the submerged body below.
Ava screamed, and her heart felt like it could rocket out of her chest.
Was it her? My God, Ava thought, could it really be her?
Chapter One
Day One: 8:30 a.m.
I held the pillow over my head and tried to will the incessant banging on my front door to go away. It was a cop’s knock, that loud fist bang we all learned in the academy. Dammit, I wasn’t in the mood to be around cops so early in the morning. I’d fallen asleep in my clothes and on the couch again. Judging from the sunlight seeping through the only window in the apartment, it had to be before nine a.m. Much too early for me to be up and about during my weeklong vacation.
“Come on, Hansen.” That familiar fist pounded against my door again. “I know you’re in there!”
“Vacation,” I shouted. “Come back next week!”
“No such thing as vacation. Open up!”
I tossed the pillow on the floor. Colby Sanders was not only one of the most stubborn men I knew, he was also my boss: Director of the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation. He’d also been a close friend of my father’s before my dad passed on. My dad always told me Sanders was a good man, someone I could trust.
“This better be good,” I mumbled, one socked foot stumbling over an empty cardboard case of beer. I twisted the two dead bolts and swung the door open.
Sanders grunted hello as he pushed past me into the apartment. He’d just taken a shower; the scent of aftershave and shampoo trailed after him. He wore his standard work uniform: black suit pants, a short-sleeved white button-up, and a black tie. This wasn’t just a friendly house call.
“Come on in.” I shut the door, my sarcasm lost on him.
Sanders stood inside my TV room/ dining room/ den, only about five steps from the front door, and reached for his cigarettes. “You mind?”
“Go ahead.” I knew Sanders couldn’t go more than an hour without a cigarette. There were no ashtrays in the apartment, so I grabbed an empty beer bottle from the floor.
“Jesus, Hansen.” He lit the cigarette. “I heard your new place was a dump, but come on. You can do better than this.”
“It’s not the best area in Columbus,” I agreed, “but it works.” In truth, I hated the apartment and the undergraduate neighbors that came with it. It was nothing like the home I’d left, a place that felt comfortable and safe.
“Huh.” Sanders turned to me, his thick white eyebrows squinting together the way he does when he’s putting a crime scene together in his head. His eyes gave me a good solid look up and down. I definitely didn’t look my best: I’d been wearing the same worn and wrinkled Fleetwood Mac T-shirt for a few days, complete with remnants of a recent meal dribbled down the front. My cutoff jean shorts were so desperately in need of a laundry cycle, they could probably have stood on their own. In my bare feet, I suddenly felt exposed like I was naked; I crossed one leg over the other and my arms over my chest.
“What’s going on here, Luce?”
I couldn’t look Sanders in the eye. He was seeing me at my worst, and I didn’t like it. “You could have called.” I pushed a thatch of greasy hair away from my eyes. God, when had I last taken a shower? I’d lost track of time.
“Goes straight to voicemail. Where’s your phone?”
I picked up a towel on the couch along with a few stray socks and located the cell that was stuck between two cushions. Dead battery.
Sanders asked again, “What’s going on here, Hansen?”
“I’m fine,” I tried to recover. I pulled my mass of hair up into a knot at the top of my head in an attempt to hide its rattiness. “I wasn’t expecting anyone.”
“You’re in a bad way,” Sanders shook his head. “You should have told me.”
I almost laughed. Me call him for help? Maybe in some other lifetime. I tried to explain. “When your girl leaves you and takes everything, there aren’t too many options.”
Sanders blew a stream of smoke through his nostrils. “It’s been months since you split with Rowan.”
“Only seven,” I said, more defensively than I meant to. Then, as if it could make the sorry fact that I was still devastated any better, I added, “She kept the dogs.”
“I’m sorry,” Sanders said in a soft voice.
His sudden stroke of kindness brought on the sting of tears collecting in the corners of my eyes. I willed them not to fall.
“You haven’t been eating,” Sanders said. He nodded at the empty cases of beer scattered around the room. “And you’ve been drinking too much.”
“A regular Sherlock.”
Sanders reached out to me then, his warm, solid hand surprising me. He gave my shoulder a quick squeeze. Although Sanders was never a man who was good at expressing his emotions, concern laced his touch. I waited for him to pull away; his touch felt strange, foreign. Other than running into the random person on the street or nudging up against someone on the public bus, his touch was the first I’d felt in weeks. I almost forgot that I was mad at him.
Almost.
“Why are you here, Sanders?”
He took a drag on his cigarette. “We might have something.”
I perked up. “A serial killer?”
He nodded. “Two bodies were found this morning along the Powell River. Two more were found a few months ago in the same location, where the river meets with Wallace Lake.”
“Let me see the file.”
Sanders shook his head. “We need to get to Wallace Lake. Shower, and we’ll talk over breakfast.”
“Tell me about the case first.”
Sanders held firm. “Shower. Make it fast.” He reached for the TV remote and flipped the channel to the morning news. “And pack a bag. You’ll be there a few days.”
The morning news anchors squawked as I closed the bedroom door behind me. I knew what Sanders was doing—scanning the stations for any breaking reports on the murders. Once the media caught hold of a possible serial killer, an investigation could descend into chaos in a matter of hours. Sanders’s actions told me one thing. This case at Wallace Lake was going to be a big one.
Inside the bathroom, I peeled off my well-worn clothes, ignoring my image in the bathroom mirror. It alarmed me to see myself; I looked a whole lot like a woman who had nothing left to lose.
The shower stream of cool water felt good—the smack of it against my bare skin—and I let it run over my face until it warmed up. I reached for the gold Irish cross that was always around my neck to make sure it was still there, and then let the water pound against my breastbone. The collection of rowdy undergrads next door took about fifteen showers a day and sucked up the majority of the building’s hot water. Every day, I missed the house that I’d been in the process of renovating with my ex, Rowan. Every day, I missed the land that surrounded our house, the quiet of suburbia that bordered on country. And every day, my heart ached for the dogs I’d left with Rowan, Toto and Daisy. Leaving them with her was the right thing to do; the Labs wouldn’t be happy without their yard, and they had bonded more with Rowan, who stayed home most days to do her artwork. After all, I’d bought the dogs for her when we first moved in to the house. An added layer of safety, I told Rowan. Criminals stay away from homes with dogs. She’d reached for me then and smiled. I have a strong detective to protect me, but I love the dogs. Nothing made the pain in my chest go away when I thought of the dogs and the home I’d left behind. And Rowan.
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