Beneath the Surface

by Lynn H. Blackburn

  He’d run Keri out of here twice in the past forty-five minutes with a solemn promise that he would text her as soon as Leigh woke and wanted company. She’d been on the verge of a panic attack when they brought Leigh in, and nothing he’d said had been able to convince her that Leigh’s abduction wasn’t somehow her fault.

  He knew Leigh would appreciate the outpouring of affection when he told her about it. But he was counting the minutes until they were back at her house, cozy on the sofa, feet propped up on the coffee table, view of the lake in the distance.

  Alone.

  Another tap on the door. He bit back a growl as he pulled the silver handle toward him.

  “Ryan!”

  “Kirk!”

  Kirk marched into the room like he belonged there. Which, of course, he did. He stood by Leigh’s side, and a shudder rippled through him. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you for keeping her alive. I don’t know what I would do without her.”

  What was the appropriate response to a comment like that? He couldn’t say, “No big deal, man,” because of course it had been a big deal. But “You’re welcome” didn’t seem right either. He went with a shrug.

  They pulled two chairs close and caught up in whispers as Leigh slept on.

  “Tell me everything,” Kirk said.

  Kirk already knew about the big events. Ryan understood what he really wanted to know was why Janine Liddle had targeted Leigh.

  “Janine Liddle saw Leigh on the news when we found Harold Claussen in the lake near the house,” Ryan said. “She somehow got it in her head that Leigh had enough information to connect her to the murder.”

  “Did she?” Kirk asked.

  “Theoretically, yes. But if Janine hadn’t targeted her, Leigh wouldn’t have ever put it together. If Janine had left town and started over, we never would have solved the case.”

  Kirk shook his head in disbelief. “What are the odds?”

  “I know you don’t want to hear this right now, but I know God used this to help us stop Janine. And she needed to be stopped. We have a computer forensics and cybersecurity professor from the university, Dr. Sabrina Fleming, who has already connected Janine to eight missing persons in three different states.”

  “Eight?” Kirk’s eyes widened.

  “And that’s eight more than the five here in North Carolina that we know of. Janine was rambling a bunch of nonsense when she captured Leigh, and Sabrina is using it to try to follow her path from childhood to here. I have no idea how she’s doing it. She starts talking about finding common IP addresses and then I can’t follow it anymore. What I do know is that they’re operating under the theory that there could be more murders in every city she’s ever lived in.”

  Kirk ran his hands over his face. “How will you ever find all the bodies?”

  “Honestly? We probably won’t. But the information we pull together may be enough to help us narrow down some searches, maybe even give some closure to families whose loved ones disappeared one day.”

  They sat in silence for a while. The whir of the ventilation system provided the background music to their thoughts. Ryan watched Leigh sleep. Her chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm. Every now and then her hand twitched on the blanket. Was she dreaming?

  Was it a nightmare?

  How long would it be before she recovered? Not just physically, but mentally and emotionally?

  He looked away and found Kirk staring at him.

  “What aren’t you telling me?” The way Kirk asked the question left no room for doubt. Ryan could tell Kirk was certain he was being kept in the dark about something.

  “Did she do something horrible to Leigh? I mean more than you’ve already told me? You’re keeping something from me, Ryan, and you’ve never done that before.”

  Well . . . that wasn’t exactly true.

  “She’s fine,” Ryan said in a hushed voice. “I mean, as fine as can be expected. I didn’t leave anything out. The doctor said her wrists will have some scars, but they’ll heal. She had some mild hypothermia, but she’s warming up. The only reason she’s asleep now is because they had to sedate her to clean her wrists. She was in a lot of pain.”

  Kirk didn’t relax.

  “Then what is it?”

  “You know, you should have gone into law enforcement,” Ryan said. “You’d have been great during interrogations.”

  Kirk leaned closer and crowded Ryan’s personal space.

  “I’m in no mood, Parker.”

  Ryan leaned away, arms raised in surrender. “Sorry.”

  Kirk quirked one eyebrow. “I’m waiting.”

  Here goes nothing. “I’m in love with Leigh.”

  Kirk pulled away so fast his back slammed into the chair. His eyes blinked a few times.

  So Leigh hadn’t told him.

  “You’re in love with my sister?” There was more than a hint of threat in the words.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you going to try to explain yourself?”

  “No. Love isn’t something you explain, Kirk. When it’s real, it’s real. You of all people should know that.”

  Kirk ran his thumb across his wedding band. “I don’t like it. She’s off-limits. Always has been.”

  “She isn’t a fifteen-year-old girl who needs protection from your friends,” Ryan said. “In fact, maybe you need to quit seeing her as your little sister and start seeing her as who she is. A mature, intelligent, gifted woman who used everything in her arsenal to escape a serial killer this afternoon. I’m confident she will be more than capable of telling you off when she wakes up.”

  Kirk looked at Leigh, then back to him. “She knows?”

  Heat crept up Ryan’s neck. “I certainly hope so.”

  Kirk stood. “I should have known this would happen.”

  Ryan didn’t respond as Kirk paced to the small window and stared outside.

  “You haven’t asked me for my approval,” Kirk said.

  “No, I haven’t,” Ryan said.

  Kirk turned away from the window.

  “Of course I want you to be happy for us, but the only approval I’m interested in is hers. And when you quit whining about your best friend falling in love with your sister, you’ll realize you don’t want her with a guy who cares more about your opinion than hers.”

  Kirk huffed.

  “I realize this isn’t what you were expecting to hear, but I have to be honest with you. I’ve cared about Leigh since before you told all of us to stay away from her.”

  Kirk rolled his eyes.

  “Since she moved home, I’ve seen her at church and in the ED and around town, and every single time I’ve thought about what it would be like to get to know her better. To take her out for dinner or a twilight cruise on the boat.”

  “I do not want to hear about your dates with my sister.” Kirk’s lips twitched.

  Ryan took advantage of Kirk’s softened tone and grinned. “That won’t be hard to manage since I still haven’t taken her out on a real date, but now that we’ve put the danger behind us, I have a long list of things I cannot wait to share with her.”

  Kirk’s face crinkled in disgust. “I guess I’ll get used to it.”

  They both laughed, then Kirk grew serious again. “You do realize if you hurt her, it will destroy our friendship. I’ll never forgive you.”

  Ryan felt the weight of Kirk’s words. He understood the deep love Kirk held for both him and Leigh.

  “I know. But I also know you don’t have to worry about that. This is no casual fling, Kirk. I love her. With everything I am.”

  Leigh floated in and out of consciousness. Words filtered through the fog of pain medicine and fatigue.

  Was that Kirk? Had he flown home?

  Of course. They would have called him when she’d been abducted. And he would have jumped on a plane.

  Was he talking to Ryan?

  Ryan. Even in her fuzzy mental state, his voice sent tremors up her spine. She would never get over the fact tha
t he loved her. Her muscles wouldn’t cooperate right now with her desire to get lost in his eyes, to run her hand over his scruffy face, to pull his lips toward hers.

  All she could manage was to listen.

  The conversation was enlightening, infuriating, and ultimately exhilarating. She would strangle her big brother as soon as she finished hugging him. And then she would kick him out of her room so she could tell Ryan Parker exactly how she felt about him.

  She had no idea how long it was before she managed to pry her eyes open. When she did, Ryan’s face was the first thing she saw.

  “Hey, beautiful.” His smile could light up a room, but right now it was hers and hers alone.

  “Hey.” Her voice was still raspy, but her enforced silence had probably helped her vocal chords heal faster than they would have if she’d been her usual chatty self.

  She reached for Ryan’s shirt and pulled him toward her. His eyes registered surprise, then delight, then something else that sent shock waves through her. When his lips pressed against hers, she forgot where she was or why she was there. For this blissful moment, she was in heaven.

  “Please don’t make me watch this. I’m gonna be sick,” Kirk said from somewhere behind Ryan.

  They laughed and Ryan pulled back but didn’t go far.

  In his eyes she saw everything she had to live for.

  The promise of a future where she loved and was loved well.

  Where life was busy with hard, beautiful, meaningful work.

  Where the days and nights would tumble after one another into a life that would make a difference, both in this world and the next.

  “Oh, good grief. I can’t take this,” Kirk said. She heard the door open and then close seconds later.

  “I didn’t think he would ever leave,” she said.

  “He’ll get used to it.” Ryan brushed her cheek with his thumb. “He’ll have to.”

  “You think?”

  He pressed his lips to her forehead. Then her nose.

  “I love you, Leigh.”

  “I love y—”

  His lips claimed hers. Maybe someday she’d actually get the words all the way out.

  Then again, maybe not . . .

  1

  The shrill ping of his cell phone earned white-collar crimes investigator Adam Campbell a vicious glare from his aunt Margaret. His cousins all dropped their gazes to their plates, several of them failing to suppress snickers, as Adam stood. He glanced around the table at the assembled family members, before focusing on the matriarch of the family. “Excuse me, Grandmother. Everyone. I’m on call.”

  Grandmother sniffed. “Very well.”

  Conversation resumed as Adam made his way around the perimeter of the oval dining room. He refused to look down or run like a frightened schoolboy. He maintained a measured pace and made eye contact with anyone who bothered to look in his direction. He had nothing to be ashamed of.

  His parents were in Italy for the month, or his mother would have given him an encouraging smile. Oh well.

  No one glared at his brother when he was on call. Grandmother never batted an eye when Alexander needed to miss Sunday lunch because he was in surgery. But heaven forbid Adam miss the monthly meal. Keeping the citizens of Carrington, North Carolina, safe was a perfectly good job as far as Grandmother was concerned. But not for a Campbell.

  Grandfather Campbell caught his eye.

  And winked.

  Adam didn’t bother trying to hide his smile as he left the room. His grandfather was a rock. They met for breakfast at least once a week at the Pancake Hut and Adam regaled him with stories from the sheriff’s office.

  The restaurant was a favorite with the law enforcement and medical communities in Carrington, and Adam’s standing breakfast date with his grandfather had gotten a lot of attention when he’d first joined the force.

  The Pancake Hut wasn’t the kind of place the Campbell family frequented.

  As Charles Campbell made it a point to get to know Adam’s coworkers by name, Adam’s fellow officers soon realized that he might be worth several billion dollars, but he was no snob.

  It was a poorly kept secret that Charles Campbell was in the habit of picking up the tab for every officer in the Pancake Hut whenever he was there—whether he was with Adam or not.

  Grandmother wasn’t exactly aware of that arrangement.

  Before long, the other officers would come by Adam’s desk and say, “Yo, Campbell. I’ve got one for your grandfather. He’ll get a kick out of this.” Or they’d stop by their booth and share something that had happened while they were on patrol.

  Grandfather ate it up.

  Over the last few years, Grandfather had managed to fund several scholarships for law enforcement officers, and he’d fallen completely under the spell of homicide investigator Anissa Bell, captain of the Carrington County Sheriff’s Office dive team. All Anissa had to do was hint that she’d been eyeing some new piece of equipment for the team and Grandfather made it happen.

  Grandmother wasn’t exactly aware of that arrangement either.

  Adam paused in the hallway and looked again at the text that had saved him from another hour of family politics.

  Uh-oh. He walked briskly as he maneuvered his way through the library and music room, and then hit the marbled floor of the large foyer.

  “Everything okay, Mr. Adam?” The concerned words from their longtime butler slowed his steps.

  “Not really, Marcel. A car ran off the highway and over the embankment at the double bridges. Probably last night. A boater found the car this morning.”

  The double bridges spanned Lake Porter and connected the tourist side of the lake to the city of Carrington. The car would have gone several hundred yards over bumpy terrain before plunging into the water.

  Failed brakes?

  Road rage?

  Suicide?

  It had happened before.

  “Oh no.” Marcel shook his head in dismay as he handed Adam his coat. “You going to have to get in? It’s cold.”

  “We have dry suits,” Adam said. “We’ll be okay.”

  “Be careful, sir.” Marcel opened the door and Adam broke into a jog. “Thanks, Marcel. Hold the fort.”

  Marcel’s low chuckle reached his ears as he slid behind the wheel and took the turns of the lengthy driveway at a speed that would have gotten him on Grandmother’s bad list, if he hadn’t already been there.

  It took fifteen minutes to reach the double bridges. They had a formal name—after a local politician from the thirties—but no one used it.

  He slowed as he approached the roadblock, then pulled in behind fellow dive team member and homicide investigator Gabe Chavez. Gabe climbed out first and met him at the door, giving a low whistle as he looked the Audi over. “When you gonna let me drive this baby?”

  This was why he tried not to drive his personal vehicle to crime scenes, but sometimes he didn’t have a choice. Grandmother had given him the car for his college graduation—even though he had told her he didn’t need it—and she didn’t approve of him arriving for Sunday lunch in the unmarked sedan he drove for work.

  He held the keys out to Gabe. “Anytime.”

  Gabe eyed the keys, longing evident on his face. “One of these days I’m going to take you up on it.”

  Adam pulled his bag out of the back, locked the car, and pocketed the keys. He glanced at the line of cars on the side of the road. “Who else is here?”

  “Ryan is hiking in the mountains with Leigh,” Gabe said. Homicide investigator Ryan Parker was the second-in-command on the dive team. His girlfriend, Leigh Weston, had survived an attack by a serial killer last spring.

  “Hiking? Or proposing?”

  Gabe grinned. “I guess we’ll find out when they get back. He got the text, but Anissa told him to disregard.”

  “You’ve talked to Anissa?” Gabe and Anissa hadn’t gotten along well since she’d kicked him off the dive team a few years ago when his undercover work kept h
im from making it to training dives. But since he’d come back to homicide, and since two of their divers had left the team—one for medical reasons and another had retired—she’d been encouraged to allow him back. Their relationship remained strained, but since the serial killer case involving Leigh last spring, the tension between them had eased.

  Slightly.

  “Yeah. I talked to her. She bit my head off for being on the wrong side of town and told me to hurry up because she and Lane were already on scene.”

  “She didn’t call me,” Adam said.

  Gabe smirked. “Man, it’s the second Sunday of the month. We all knew where you were.”

  Adam bit back a retort. He loved his family. He really did. Some of them were awesome. Some of them weren’t. Same as most families, he imagined. And a sight better than a lot of the families he’d seen while working in the uniformed division. Even Grandmother’s disapproval, which irked him to no end, was part of her way of showing love.

  At least Grandfather said it was. He said she worried about her grandson far more than her frosty demeanor indicated.

  Gabe punched his arm. “Don’t worry about it, man. This is an evidence recovery situation. Nothing we could have done for the victim even if we’d been sitting in the water waiting on the car.”

  “How do you know?”

  “The guy who found her said she was dead in her seat belt. He was out here around lunchtime and saw the car. Dove in and pulled the body out. Probably destroyed a ton of evidence. His take on it was that her neck was broken.”

  Adam fought the image Gabe’s words created. He was sorry for the victim. Horrified at the manner of death, regardless of whether it had been a dreadful accident or a successful suicide attempt. But he wasn’t sorry he wouldn’t have to be the one to pull her body from the water.

  He scrambled down the incline to the waterline. There would be no need for any of their fancy sonar equipment on this case. He could see the car from the edge of the lake. Dive team captain and homicide investigator Anissa Bell and Officer Lane Edwards were in dry suits, checking tanks and gauges.

  “’Bout time,” Anissa said. “We’re shorthanded. Chavez, sketch the scene. Campbell, get suited up for backup, but you’re on topside evidence. Get the path of the car, etc. I want all of it documented before we pull the car out and contaminate the scene.” Anissa pointed to a makeshift changing area—a couple of tarps tied up between a few trees. “And be quick. We’re running out of daylight.”