Wolfhunter River

by Caine, Rachel

  The bullet goes straight up under her jaw and out the top of her skull. Her mouth falls open, and suddenly she’s deadweight shuddering in my arms. I’m looking into her eyes, and for just a second, I see utter confusion in them. And fear.

  I see a child.

  “I’m sorry,” I tell her. Not for this. For everything that brought her here.

  And then I can’t hold her, and she’s falling, and I’m falling too. I know I should get up. I feel that urgently. But there’s a thick, warm pool of blood forming under me and sinking into the expensive Oriental carpet, and I don’t know if it’s from Celeste or from me, and maybe it doesn’t matter anymore.

  “Mom?”

  Someone’s holding me down. There’s pain, sharp enough to make me open my eyes. “Ow.”

  “Tie it tighter!” That’s my son’s voice.

  “I’ve got it.” Lanny. The pain gets worse. “Sorry, Mom, but we have to stop the bleeding.” It really hurts, and I struggle to make them stop. “Hold her down!”

  More hands on me. I look up.

  I see Sam, looking stark and calm. Connor’s next to him. Both of them are holding on to me as my daughter pulls a leather belt taut over a thick, bulky piece of cloth. She’s used her own shirt for the bandage, I realize. She’s just wearing a sports bra. Put something on, I try to tell her, because I don’t like anyone being vulnerable right now, not here, not in this place.

  There’s a man in a police uniform and a big hat pacing around behind them. He’s talking on the phone.

  “Quiet,” Sam tells me, and puts his hand on my face. “Gwen, help’s on the way. The kids are okay. We’re all okay.”

  I think he’s lying, but I don’t care.

  I let it go.

  EPILOGUE

  GWEN

  Four months later

  I’m shifting uneasily in a stiff chair and facing an unblinking glass eye. It’s not the Howie Hamlin Show this time.

  It’s a video camera, but it isn’t on. It’s sitting on a shelf along with a bunch of other equipment. Tools of the trade. A trade I hope I’ll be joining, if I make it through this interview.

  “I usually start by saying, ‘Tell me about yourself,’” the round-faced woman sitting across from me says. She’s a tanned sort; outdoorsy is the word that comes to mind, and she hasn’t bothered to dye her graying, practical hair. “That’s really not necessary for you, because Lordy, I have never seen so many Google results come up on anyone who’s not an actor in my life. But still: tell me about yourself, Gwen. I want to know your view.”

  “That’s the last thing I want to talk about,” I tell J. B. Hall. The J, she’s informed me, doesn’t stand for anything at all. The B is for Barbara, which she loathes. “I’m not that complicated. I just want to keep my family together, and safe from harm.”

  “The most basic of things,” she says. “Leads to all sorts of nonsense, doesn’t it?”

  “In my case? Yes.”

  “I admire what you’ve managed to do,” J. B. says. “Not just surviving, though that’s admirable, but the things you’ve uncovered in the process. Not everyone has these instincts. Or the drive. It’s impressive.”

  “I don’t do it alone,” I tell her.

  “I know that. Family affair, is it?”

  “More or less.” It hurts to say it, because I’d like to say yes. I want Sam as family. I need that. And maybe that will happen. But there are wounds between us that are going to take time and love to heal before either of us wants to make it legal. We’re together. I can’t say we’re fine. Not yet.

  “Instincts and dedication are everything in this business,” she tells me. “Everything else can be learned. You’ve already taken most of the coursework, is that right?” She’s talking about the associate’s degree necessary to secure a private investigator’s license.

  “I’m seventy-five percent finished,” I tell her. “I’ll be done by the end of the quarter. At that point, I can either start as an independent company, or join another one.”

  “And why did you choose mine?”

  “Because the Whites recommended you,” I tell her. Ellie’s parents have been extraordinarily grateful for her safe rescue, even though I had little enough to do with that. This woman was with them in the greenroom that terrible day on the show, the day everything started to come apart. Smart, calm, competent. I like her. I want her to like me, and that’s a relatively new sensation.

  “That’s odd they’d recommend me,” she says, “seeing as I got next to nowhere on that case, and you and your friend Mr. Cade got everywhere.”

  “They like you,” I say. “And you have a lot of positive Google results, so . . .”

  She laughs. I like her laugh. Low and raspy. It reminds me a bit of Miranda Tidewell, but I never heard that woman laugh, not with any kind of humor. There is something similar about J. B. Hall, but a cleaner version. A healthier one. Maybe that’s why I’m here, trying to make amends to a ghost who—I’m sure—would still be happy to drag me to hell.

  Jesus. I need more therapy.

  We’re in a high-rise office in Knoxville—as high-rise as Knoxville gets, about twenty-seven stories. The J. B. Hall Agency is busy as hell outside of the glass cube we’re sitting inside; there are at least a dozen people talking, walking, working on computers, and I know there are twice as many already out and working outside. It’s a good place. It has good energy.

  “Tell me about the cult in Wolfhunter,” she says. “What you know of it, anyway.”

  “It started in the sixties,” I tell her. “Carr’s grandfather opened some kind of fringe church. A lot of people joined initially, some left. Those who stayed became a cult, and Carr’s grandfather claimed to be the voice of God on earth. He started the practice of . . . training.”

  “Training women,” J. B. says. “To be a man’s perfect servants. His goal was to purge them of original sin.” She looks disgusted. “I’m just quoting the text they found on the property.”

  “Some of the women ran. Some died. But enough stayed. The children were brought up in the—I don’t want to call it faith. Cult.” I feel the camera on me again, even though I know rationally it’s not watching. “Hector Sparks’s father was one of them. And he trained his son and daughter, though they broke from the cult after his death.”

  “Hector started abducting women, with the aid of his sister. Pretending he was somehow saving them, at least to himself.” J. B. nods. “Horrible.”

  “Yes,” I say. “It was. All of it.”

  “You kept your name out of the papers.”

  “I tried. I had help.” Nobody, it turned out, really wanted to credit the infamous ex-wife of a serial killer with solving a case, so it was an easy answer for the FBI, TBI, and county sheriff’s office to give the praise to the dead Detective Fairweather. I was fine with that. So was Sam.

  “And . . . Mr. Cade’s charges?”

  “Chief Weldon confessed to trying to have Sam and my son killed in exchange for his plea deal,” I tell her, and even now, that makes my blood boil and my hands shake. “The charges were dismissed. Thank God.”

  “Good. And I understand the documentary about Melvin Royal is stalled.”

  I relax, just a little. “Miranda’s obsession died with her. It’s going to take years to settle her estate, so they have no funding to continue.”

  J. B. Hall sits back and studies me. It’s warm, but somehow analytical at the same time.

  “I really want this job, J. B.” I blurt it out, and though it’s true, I wish I hadn’t tipped my hand that far.

  “And you’d be good at it,” she agrees. “Are you sure you want to stay there, at Stillhouse Lake? I can make a place for you here in the office. You can find a home in town.” She’s offering me the job. My God. I somehow didn’t prepare for this moment. I wanted it so badly that I forgot to think what to do if I actually got it.

  Sam didn’t leave for his dream job. I can’t either. Not if I’m really committed to making things
work between us. “I thought the point was for me to work remotely.”

  “If you’d prefer. Most of my investigators work from their homes, or out of suitcases on the road. The ones you see in here are locals who enjoy structure. To each their own, I say.” She pauses for a second. “You come with baggage. I’m well aware that you could bring us some . . . notoriety, both good and bad. You’ve got people on your trail who want you hurt, or dead, and that can be a complication we don’t need. But fact is, most of my people have never faced down a dangerous situation. Even most who came out of law enforcement never found themselves in a real gunfight. But you have. And that’s valuable. There are cases—like Ellie’s kidnapping, or the women in Hector’s basement—that aren’t about the routine work. They need insight and creativity. I think you have it. I just worry you’re inviting trouble by staying back at Stillhouse Lake. I read the police reports. You’ve got some local trouble with some hill folk from around there.”

  “We do,” I tell her. “But I promised my kids that we won’t run. They have a stable life, friends, a real home. I can’t take that away from them now.”

  “You know you may have to fight to protect it.”

  I manage a smile. “I think you know that’s not new.”

  If she’s trying to mother me, she gives it up. “How’s your right hand these days?”

  I hold it out. It’s steady, no tremors. I make a fist. It’s fast, fluid, and convincing. The fact that it hurts doesn’t mean I can’t fake it well.

  “Excellent,” she says. “We’ll get to the important bits like health care and benefits in a second, but I have to ask: How would you recommend we handle the press that comes from hiring you?”

  There it is. She means it. She’s really offering me a job. And now I feel a golden burst of excitement. It’s so . . . strange. Is this happiness, the kind of happiness regular people feel? I’m not used to it. Not for anything outside my family.

  But this is mine. Something for me. And it’s precious, like a breath of air I didn’t know I needed.

  “Use my controversy,” I tell her. “Look, there will always be people who hate me. I can’t help that. The Lost Angels—the group founded by families of Melvin’s victims . . .” By Sam. That still hurts, but it’s a distant, familiar pain. “The Lost Angels will always believe I had something to do with his crimes. Conspiracy theorists are everywhere. But I’ve learned recently that we all make our own hells out of our pasts; I want to use mine to help people. And I hope you’ll help me do that.”

  She smiles slowly and nods. I think she likes that answer.

  I think I do too.

  SOUNDTRACK

  Music gets me through. It sets a mood. It helps define characters and drive emotion through my books. So if you’re musically adventurous and mad eclectic, try out these songs . . . and please, buy the music if you can. Artists don’t just need exposure, they need real patronage!

  “Year of the Tiger,” Myles Kennedy

  “I Get It My Way,” Paul Otten

  “The Angry River,” The Hat

  “Wicked Rain,” Los Lobos

  “How Do You Love,” Shinedown

  “You Want It Darker,” Leonard Cohen

  “Save Yourself,” Breaking Benjamin

  “Violet City,” Mansionair

  “I Feel Like I’m Drowning,” Two Feet

  “Devil,” Shinedown

  “Zombie,” Bad Wolves

  “Traveling Light,” Leonard Cohen

  “Miracle,” CHVRCHES

  “Glitter & Gold,” Barns Courtney

  “White Flag,” Bishop Briggs

  “Dark Country,” Dominic Marsh & Paul Miro

  “Copycat,” Billie Eilish

  “Blue on Black,” Five Finger Death Punch

  “Blood//Water,” grandson

  “Dangerous,” Royal Deluxe

  “Unstoppable,” The Score

  “Rise Up,” Extreme Music

  “Hit and Run,” LOLO

  “Dangerous” (Left Boy remix), Big Data

  “Crossfire,” Stephen

  “Crossfire, Pt. II” (feat. Talib Kweli & KillaGraham), Stephen

  “Crossfire, Pt. III” (feat. Saba, Ravyn Lenae, The O’Mys, & J.P. Floyd), Stephen

  “Self-Inflicted Wound,” Joe Bonamassa

  “Closure,” Dommin

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Photo © 2014 Robert Hart

  Rachel Caine is the author of the New York Times, USA Today, Amazon Charts, and #1 Wall Street Journal bestselling Stillhouse Lake series. With more than fifty novels to her credit, Caine is also the author of the Morganville Vampires series and the Great Library series. She’s written suspense, mystery, paranormal suspense, urban fantasy, science fiction, and paranormal young-adult fiction. 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 Rachel at www.rachelcaine.com.