Nate’s hand trembles as he tries to hold the cell phone steady. They watch in silence.
Grant looks directly into the lens. His eyes are bloodshot, exhausted. “By the time anyone finds this, I’ll be dead.” He waves a gun at the camera.
Morgan is shaking his head as he runs his hands through his hair. Nate glances over at him and realizes he looks like a desperate man. But why? What is he hiding? He checks on Brody, who’s not letting the cop out of his sight.
He feels his phone buzz in his pocket and slowly pulls it out while Morgan is transfixed on Grant and what he’ll reveal. He glances down and reads a text from Madison.
Brody had already attacked Anna earlier. She killed the girl. She’s fled the hospital. Ted must be in on it. BE CAREFUL!
Shocked, he looks at Morgan, trying not to let his thoughts show on his face. Brody tried to protect Jenny from Anna. That’s why he had such a strong reaction to her at the camp when he saw her again. And if it was Anna who killed Jenny, Morgan must’ve known about it. He must’ve helped her in some way. She said in the hospital that they hadn’t spoken to each other since college, but Rex had told him about the class reunion photos on Facebook. They stayed in touch. They were closer than they wanted Nate to know.
Nate finds himself wishing he’d taken Madison’s gun. He concentrates on the video while he thinks how best to react.
“I came here to find my daughter,” says Grant. “But all I could find was this!” He holds up the red sweater.
Nate can see he’s distraught. It’s not easy to watch this.
“I just need the world to know that I loved Jenny as if she were my own blood. I didn’t see the side of her that Anna talked about. I didn’t believe her until she showed me the footage. I was devastated. That wasn’t my experience of her at all.” He pauses. “I didn’t kill my daughter, but I went along with Anna’s plan.”
Nate takes a sideways glance at Morgan, but he’s turned his flashlight off so his face is in darkness. Brody’s still got eyes on him, though.
“Once I heard what Jenny had done to our beautiful children, I couldn’t bear to look at her. She was a smart kid, and I think she knew what we were planning. She had something wrong with her that she couldn’t control. It wasn’t her fault; it was her biological mother who screwed her up. We should’ve tried harder to get help, but Anna convinced me that no one would believe us, and even if they did, we’d still be expected to live with Jenny because she was our responsibility until she was an adult.” He pauses, rubbing his eyes. “And then I found Anna’s journal and realized that Jenny hadn’t killed our babies after all. She had only pretended to in order to get under Anna’s skin. It really was just an accident. We made a devastating mistake.”
“Wait. What?” Morgan takes a step back.
Nate is just as shocked as him. Anna told them the girl had killed the children and that was why they had felt it necessary to protect their unborn baby from her.
Grant sobs for a long time and Nate can feel his pain.
“Just know that I’m sorry. I’m sorry for not being a good enough dad to make Jenny better, for not being able to make her feel secure enough. That’s why she pretended to kill her brother and sister, right? She thought we loved them more than her. It’s all my fault. I should’ve spent more time with her. I should’ve helped her bond with Anna. Our family is broken.” He looks into the lens. “Anna? You were wrong, honey. We’re not cursed, we’re just not good enough parents. If you love our baby, you’ll give her up for adoption. Please don’t make her grow up in prison.” He wipes away the tears. “I wanted to tell Jenny I’m sorry, but I can’t even do that because I can’t find her. I am sorry, though. I’m sorry for every child out there who grows up unloved. Everyone who’s had a shit parent who put themselves before their children. I put Jenny first until it was impossible to continue, but now that I know the truth, I just hope she can forgive me.”
Grant disappears from view as he lowers the phone, and they both hear a loud gunshot. It makes Nate jump, and even Brody reacts by looking around for danger.
“Shit!” says Morgan with his hands behind his head.
The phone is dropped to the ground and Nate has to swallow the lump in his throat.
Morgan walks away.
Nate can barely see him now the sun has set. He pockets Grant’s cell phone, and when he lifts his flashlight, he sees the gun in Morgan’s hand.
Eighty-Seven
Madison wakes up in a hospital bed. A doctor and several nurses are working on her shoulder.
“Please stay still. I’m stitching you up,” says the doctor.
“What happened?” asks a nurse.
She tries to clear the fog in her head, but she feels like she’s going to vomit. “Anna.” She suddenly remembers. When she woke in the stairwell, Anna was gone and Madison had managed to crawl to safety before blacking out again. She tries to sit up but the doctor pushes her back down.
“Not yet. I’m almost finished.”
“I was stabbed by Anna Lucas. She’s a patient here. She’s pregnant. She can’t get away. Her baby is at risk.”
The doctor looks at the nurse and they don’t appear to be convinced, so Madison retrieves her phone from her jeans pocket and calls Nate whilst still flat on her back.
It goes straight to voicemail. “Nate, call me when you get this. I need to know you’re safe. I’m calling for backup.”
Realizing there’s only one thing she can do now to help Nate, she makes a call to the police.
“Nine one one, what’s your emergency?”
As she tries to think how best to explain the whole sorry mess, she realizes she’s going to sound like a wacko. “The body of missing school girl Jennifer Lucas is in the Wildwood National Forest, and Detective Ted Morgan from Trinity Creek PD might have helped put her there as he’s a former lover of the girl’s mother.”
The hospital staff take a step back from her and listen, horrified.
“Ma’am, I’m going to need you to back up a little. What’s your name?”
Madison is frustrated. “Listen to me! I’m a former cop and I have reason to believe Detective Ted Morgan is about to kill my colleague, Nate Monroe. I need you to get some backup out there asap. I have a rough location for the girl’s body; are you ready to write it down?”
With no reaction, the dispatcher says flatly, “Go ahead, ma’am.”
After Madison tells her the location, the dispatcher says, “Stay on the line while I radio all units. I’m going to need the whole story in just a minute.”
Madison doesn’t know if it’s too late to save Nate. Before she can explain to the doctor, she passes out from the pain in her shoulder.
Eighty-Eight
Nate can see that Morgan is agitated and struggling to know what to do.
“Ted, you don’t have to do this,” he says. “Grant didn’t implicate you, just Anna.”
Morgan tries to control his breathing. He looks at Brody, who’s clearly wound up, ready to pounce. If he does, Nate knows Morgan will have no qualms about shooting him.
The detective looks up. “He didn’t implicate me because I didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“Okay, then tell me what happened. I’m assuming you wouldn’t have actually helped her kill a child, because I’d like to believe you became a cop for a good reason.”
“Of course I didn’t help her kill anyone! How could you even think that?” He shakes his head. “I’m going back to the car. You need to walk ahead of me with your hands in the air. If that dog makes one wrong move, I’m shooting it.”
Brody growls aggressively.
“I’m not turning my back on a bent cop and I’m not going anywhere until we find Jenny’s body and you tell me what happened,” says Nate. “If you weren’t involved, you don’t have anything to worry about. So why point a gun at me?”
Morgan thinks about it. Eventually he lowers his gun slightly.
“She called me. After it had already
been done. I got a call completely out of the blue to say she needed a ride. I was shocked. I mean, I knew she lived in Santa Barbara so I couldn’t understand why she was all the way up here in the middle of the night.”
“So you went to her.”
“Of course. She’s a friend. I didn’t know then what she’d done. It all came flooding out once I’d picked her up. She was sweaty and covered in dirt from the woods. She had all this stuff with her: shovel, flashlight… and a knife.”
“What happened to all that?”
“Once she’d told me what she’d done, I was in shock. I actually arrested her.” He looks down at the ground. “I drove her to a remote spot and told her to dump everything there. I didn’t touch anything.” He looks up. “But I was already in too deep by then. I had no choice but to keep her secret.”
Nate shakes his head.
It angers Morgan. “You’re judging me, Monroe, but what if someone you loved asked for your help? Wouldn’t you be there?”
“Not if I was a cop. Not if it was my job to protect and serve.”
He scoffs. “Yeah, right. Not even if it was your beloved Stacey who was asking?”
Nate takes a step forward in anger and Morgan raises his gun. “Stay back. I mean it, Monroe.”
Brody drops his ball and barks viciously. Morgan backs away slightly. “I should have shot him the first time I laid eyes on him.”
“So what now?” asks Nate. “How do we get out of this without killing each other?”
Morgan shakes his head. “I need time to think.”
“Listen, the worst you’ll be charged with is aiding and abetting. Unless you kill me. Then you’ll get death row, if you’re lucky.”
Morgan’s confused. “Why is that lucky?”
“Because life without parole is worse. You’ll be in general population, and as a former cop, you’ll be tortured in there. Death row’s no vacation, but it has certain benefits over general pop. Want me to tell you about them?”
Morgan turns and vomits on the ground. The reality of his situation is clearly beginning to sink in.
Nate sees an opportunity to pounce. But a sound to his left stops him. The detective must have heard it too, as he looks up in the same direction as the noise.
Shivers run down Nate’s body. There’s someone in the woods.
Eighty-Nine
The sharp, cramping pains in her stomach have been getting worse with each day that passes. For the hundredth time, Jenny wishes she had rationed her candy better, but she couldn’t possibly have known she would be lost for this long. Her backpack is completely empty of any food now, so she’s using it as a pillow, with her swimming towel rolled up inside. At night, she has to use her towel as a blanket to keep warm, but not tonight. She doesn’t have the energy to even retrieve it from her backpack.
She tries moving her right foot in a circle. As her stomach and energy levels have deteriorated, the pain in her ankle has improved. It twisted as her leg bashed a rock when she hit the water in the pool below. The impact, mixed with the water filling her lungs, momentarily dazed her, but somehow she didn’t pass out. She eventually crawled out of the water, cold and shivering, and found a bush to hide behind. With her backpack getting soaked in the water, it loosened the rope around her arms, but she didn’t untie it that first night. She was too stunned by what had happened. Upset that her mom hated her enough to try to kill her, she was paralyzed with fear and didn’t sleep at all. It wasn’t until the next day that she wriggled free.
She licks her dry lips and tries to ignore the hunger pains. Her death is being dragged out, and just when she thinks she won’t wake up again, she always does. The fresh water from the waterfall has been invaluable in keeping her alive, but she panics every time she needs to hobble over to drink, convinced her mom will return to make sure she’s dead. The survival skills Donna taught them at camp quickly became useful. She stayed out of the intense sunshine, finding shelter under the thick canopy of trees around her, and she’s tried to stay put as much as possible.
The bugs mostly kept their distance on the first day, but when she started smelling sweaty, the mosquitoes buzzed around her day and night, sucking her blood and causing nasty, itchy bumps on her skin. That was when she started making sure to have a wash under the waterfall every day. But even worse were the creepy-crawlies, which would get into her ears and nose while she slept, and she’s pretty sure she’s seen snakes slithering under the fallen leaves around her. Staying alive was exhausting.
After the first week, the days and nights blurred into one, with nothing to distinguish between them. When she ran out of candy, she realized she would have to be brave and try to find a way out of here. She thought if she could find a highway, she could flag someone down and they could call the police for her. She could tell them what her mom had done in the hope that someone would believe her story. But when she tried to leave, she kept going around in circles, not just because her ankle was painful, but because the forest was so dense in places that she was unable to get through the thick underbrush. She had to turn back, exhausted.
After a whole day of walking, she ended back at the waterfall. With hunger kicking in after so much exertion, she desperately tried tasting a handful of small berries she couldn’t identify. They immediately made her violently sick, stopping her from trying anything else as a potential food source. She was so ill she would have happily let death take her right then. There were a lot of tears that day, which made her thirsty, so she stayed close to the water while she thought about her mom and dad.
She misses her dad so much. Just thinking about him makes her cry again, but no tears fall because there’s no fluid left in her. For days now she’s been too weak to drink.
As she lies flat on her back, looking up at the stars through the small breaks in the lush canopy, she wonders again why her dad didn’t come to save her. He must have wondered where she’d gone. She realizes it’s time to accept the unbearable truth: he wanted her dead too. That means no one has ever really loved her. Not her first mom, her foster parents or her current parents. She knows it’s her own fault. She tries to control her anger, but it springs up out of nowhere, and once she’s angry, she has to release it on someone. After so many failed attempts at controlling herself, one day she took one of her foster mom’s kitchen knives and sliced her arm badly. Everyone shouted at her. No one asked why she did it. No one ever helps her with her anger.
Her dad never makes her angry; she’s always been able to relax around him. He’s so patient with her, taking her fishing, helping her with school work. Grandma is nice, but she tries too hard, probably wishing Jenny were Susie. Jenny knows she misses Susie and Thomas and that she’s just the replacement. But at least Grandma tries, unlike Mom.
From the minute she met her new mom, she knew she was mean like all the foster moms. She knew she wouldn’t be patient enough. She was always too busy with the little kids. Her real children. So Jenny couldn’t control her anger around her, despite trying hard. She wants a normal life so bad, but it never lasts. She feels like there’s something wrong with her that means she’s not supposed to be loved. She acts up to speed up the rejection, to get it over with.
She suddenly coughs, and it causes a searing pain in her chest. She’s weakening. She knows she needs water, but she can’t move today. She has no energy left. A strange feeling of calm has settled over her. It’s like she doesn’t care anymore what happens. Part of her knows she’s going to die soon. She thinks of her biology books and knows her body will slowly disintegrate back into the earth.
“Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” she whispers.
Maybe the animals she hears at night will come and claim her bones.
She opens her eyes and realizes she’s starting to fade. She doesn’t have long left. Did she imagine the voices, or were they real? She listens. It’s a man’s voice, she’s sure of it. She tries calling out, using all her remaining strength.
“Daddy?”
Her voice isn’t loud enough. It’s too late for her. She closes her eyes and drifts away.
Ninety
Nate hears the whisper of a voice and can see that Brody heard it too.
“Get her, boy!”
Brody zooms off ahead of him, running easily through the thick brush. When he starts barking, Nate’s nerves jump. He doesn’t want to get his hopes up, but he pushes through the foliage and shines his flashlight at the dog.
Brody is sitting alert, looking over his shoulder. Nate glances down as he reaches him.
“Oh my God.”
He falls to his knees next to Jennifer Lucas. Somehow she survived her mother’s attempted murder.
Morgan gasps behind him.
“Bring some water!” yells Nate. He leans his ear to her mouth and can feel her warm breath on his face. His hands are trembling as he shakes her gently by the shoulder. “Jenny?”
She doesn’t react. They don’t have much time.
“Jenny? Can you hear me? You’re going to be okay, sweetie. You need to keep breathing, okay?”
Her eyes flutter open. It takes a minute for them to focus on him. “Where’s my dad?”
Nate has to swallow the lump in his throat. He’s overwhelmed to find Jenny alive, but he knows she’ll be devastated when she finds out her father killed himself thinking she was dead. And he was so close to finding her. Then he thinks of Esme, who stopped at nothing to try and bring her granddaughter home. He can’t be the one to break the news. “We’re going to get you home, okay?”
She shakes her head and looks afraid. “Not home.”
He understands her fear. “Not home. I meant somewhere safe.”
She smiles slowly and closes her eyes again.
He hears multiple voices approaching and sees flashlights shining through the trees. He slowly stands as he realizes what’s happening, and raises his hands above his head in surrender mode.
Shadow Falls Page 30