Alex gazed with apprehension at the modest wooden cabin. It was so small. And dark. The dread that had been nipping away at her for hours took another bite.
Alex scanned the nearby cabins and trailers. Some had been boarded up, others simply abandoned. Most lake-front property in Austin was expensive, but this scrap of land looked to be the exception. She glanced at the rusty spires rising over the tree line. The nearby power plant probably wasn’t doing much for property values.
Alex parked in front of the house and unfolded herself from the car. She shook out her stiff legs and studied the overgrown yard. No cars, no sounds. The place seemed deserted. Maybe it was, and Melanie was merely using it as a dummy address.
And maybe Alex was giving her too much credit.
Six months. Six months and she’d come right back to Austin. What was she thinking? All that time, all that wasted effort… Alex nursed her anger. It was easier than dealing with the steadily creeping fear.
A breeze stirred the cypress limbs overhanging the house. Goose bumps sprang up on her arms, and she rubbed them away as she trekked across the weedy lawn to the front stoop. The screen squeaked as she pulled it open. No bell, so she rapped on the wooden door.
Alex let the screen slam shut and walked around back, where she found a sagging wooden porch. She mounted the back steps and tried the doorknob. Unlocked.
“Hello?”
She listened intently, but heard only the faint buzz of motorboats in the distance. With a growing sense of foreboding, she stepped over the threshold.
The kitchen was tiny, with a 1950s fridge, a gas stove, and a Formica table in the center. Alex walked through the room. She picked up a Budweiser can from the table and shook it. Half empty. Warm. In the living room, a tired tweed sofa took up the wall beside the front door, opposite a surprisingly new flat-screen TV. Magazines littered the coffee table: People, Cosmopolitan, TV Guide. Alex put down the beer can and shuffled through them all. The issues were current, but no mailing labels.
She peeked her head into the bedroom. A queen-size bed with a plaid green bedspread dominated the space, hardly leaving room to walk. On the nightstand sat an empty water bottle. Alex stepped into the cramped bathroom and pulled back the shower curtain. Pert shampoo on the side of the tub and a pink razor. Nothing on the sink.
She returned to the kitchen and spied a bit of white plastic on the floor. An earbud. Just one. She picked it up. It looked like it belonged to an iPod.
A blinking red light on the kitchen counter caught her eye. Two messages on the answering machine. Alex tapped Play. A long beep, and then a woman’s voice—not Melanie’s—filled the room.
Hey, it’s me. Gimme a call. Another long beep, and then a dial tone.
Alex went to the back door and peered out. Almost dusk. The bushes and trees formed a shadowy purple backdrop, allowing only fleeting glimpses of the lake beyond. She caught a flutter of movement by the water and stepped out onto the porch. Nothing. Just her eyes playing tricks on her in the twilight.
She pulled the door shut behind her with a thud and tugged her phone from her pocket. She dialed Melanie, yet again, as she made her way down the steps. For the fifth time today, she waited through the computer-generated greeting.
“It’s me,” she said. “I really need to hear from you. I—”
Alex halted and stared at the shoe print on the step. Not mud. Was it… blood? She squatted down and illuminated the print with the light from her phone.
Blood. Dried. Old. But definitely blood. Her gaze traveled up the steps, to the door. More droplets, a smear.
She stood up suddenly and felt dizzy as her gaze followed the trail from the door out to the yard. Feet heavy with dread, Alex followed the narrow dirt path through the grass. She batted her way through the mesquite bushes until she stood on the spongy shore of the lake. She gazed out at the water, at the distant twinkle of houses on the opposite side. Guilt, thick and bitter, clogged her throat.
Alex jumped, startled, as her phone beeped. The call had ended.
She should call the police. Or 911. But she couldn’t do it. She had to think of another way.
The photo flashed into her mind—a teenage Melanie with curls and dimples. Alex gripped her phone and cursed.
Something snapped, like a twig, and she glanced over her shoulder. Behind the windows, an orange flicker.
Fire.
The earsplitting blast knocked her off her feet.
CHAPTER TWO
Heads turned when Nathan Devereaux entered the Smokin’ Pig. Ignoring the looks, he went straight to the bar and pulled out his wallet.
Janelle whistled. “What happened to you?”
“Long story.”
She lifted an eyebrow.
“Trust me,” he said, mustering a smile for her, “it’d bore you to tears. My order ready?”
She pursed her lips and studied him. Then she poured two fingers of Dewar’s, slid the glass across the counter, and sauntered into the kitchen.
Nathan’s attention drifted to the basketball game playing on a TV above the bar as he waited for the Scotch to kick in. But when Janelle came back, he felt just as lousy as he had when he’d walked in.
She put an aromatic bag of barbecued ribs on the bar beside him. “Witch hazel,” she said. “On a warm washcloth, right on that eye. If that doesn’t work, try alfalfa tablets.”
“Alfalfa tablets.”
“Or arnica cream.”
She was speaking Greek, but he nodded anyway and slid her a twenty. “Thanks,” he said. “Keep the change.”
And then he was back in his car, finally headed home after a never-ending shitstorm of a day. It had started at 7:40 A.M. when he’d watched the ME’s crew pull a waterlogged body out of Lake Austin. It had ended thirty-five minutes ago when he’d finished booking a pair of sixteen-year-olds for murder.
Nathan eased into his garage—more carefully than usual because his vision was still wacked—and entered his house through the back door. He dropped the food on the counter but realized he couldn’t eat yet. He was too pissed. The Scotch hadn’t helped, and he knew the only real cure was waiting for him outside. He stashed his dinner in the fridge and went into the bedroom to change.
Two hundred reps later, he lay on his weight bench, soaked and winded, but in a better mood. He could have clocked the kid. He’d had the chance. He’d had the provocation. But his partner had jumped in and, with one look, stopped Nathan from taking a career-threatening swing at a cranked-up gangbanger not half his age. Instead of returning the right hook, Nathan had settled for slapping some cuffs on him and hauling him downtown.
Now Nathan’s gut clenched right along with his biceps. The scene on that street corner had been a bloodbath. Three victims—all still in high school. One of the kids’ mothers had seen it, and her shrieks still rang in his ears.
What a waste. Nathan sucked in a breath and pushed the bar up. One more time. And again. And again. What a goddamn waste.
“Pretty impressive.”
His elbows buckled, and he dropped the bar onto the bench frame. A woman stood in the doorway of the garage. He sat up and wiped sweat from his eyes.
Nope, he wasn’t seeing things. Alex Lovell stood right in his garage against a backdrop of pouring rain. Her dark hair was plastered to her head.
She walked over and plunked a hand on her hip. “On second thought, you look like hell.”
He hadn’t been this close to Alex in months. He noted the fresh scrape on her chin, the dirty arms, the grass-stained jeans.
He glanced up into those whiskey brown eyes. “You seen a mirror lately?”
“No.” She crossed her arms. “But it can’t be worse than you. You been beating confessions out of people again?”
Her sarcasm hit a little too close to home. He grabbed a towel from the floor and mopped up his face.
“How’d you find me?” he asked.
She tipped her head to the side, obviously insulted by the question.
He’d forgotten how short she was. The bench put him at eye level with her breasts. He hadn’t really noticed them before, but in that wet shirt—
“Quit ogling. I have to talk you.” Her gaze wandered the room for the first time, skimming over his black ‘66 Mustang. It was the other half of his garage that captured her attention. Not a car person, apparently.
He stood and draped the towel around his neck, recovering some of his cool. Alex Lovell was at his house. His pulse thrummed, but that was probably from the weights.
She met his gaze briefly, then stepped away. “What’s with all the shelves?”
“Ask my ex-wife.”
She turned her back on him and paced the length of the wall. Some men had power drills and a tool bench in their garage. For years, Nathan had had Santas. And wreaths. And boxes and boxes of designer glass ornaments.
Alex surveyed the empty plywood shelves. “Your ex a big reader?”
“She’s a Christmas fiend. She needed half the garage just for her stuff. Took it with her when she left, though.”
“You sound heartbroken.”
“Come inside. I’ll get you a beer.” And clean up that face, too. The more he looked at her, the more he got a sour feeling in the pit of his stomach. Alex was up to her neck in something, and if she needed to talk to him about it, that couldn’t be good.
He held the door for her and continued to ogle as she stepped inside. He should have called her months ago. He should have done a lot of things.
She stood in the middle of his kitchen and glanced around.
“Smells like hamburgers.”
“Barbecue,” he corrected. “You hungry?”
“No.” She pulled out a chair and sank into it with a sigh. She rubbed her grimy arms and shivered.
Nathan dragged open a drawer and tossed her a dish towel.
“Thanks.”
She blotted her face, then her neck. And that’s when he saw it. The tiny, crescent-shaped scar above her top lip. That scar would be seven months old now.
“I need your help.”
He tore his gaze away from her mouth and looked at her eyes. “With what?”
She stared down at her mud-caked Nikes. “This is harder than I thought.” She glanced up at him. “Could I have a drink first? A Coke or something?”
He pulled open his fridge and retrieved two Bud longnecks, even though she’d told him once that she hated beer. He twisted off the tops and handed her one.
“Thanks.” She took a long sip and rested the bottle on the table with another shudder.
Nathan’s stomach tensed. The Alex he knew from before didn’t scare easily. And it was fear, not cold, that had her shivering in his kitchen. She took another swig, and his gaze slid over her slender neck, her mud-spattered T-shirt. It stopped at the hole in her jeans.
“You’re bleeding.” He whipped the towel off his shoulder and dampened it under the faucet. Then he crouched down in front of her.
“It’s nothing.”
But he was already tugging up her jeans to reveal an ankle holster, which held a SIG P228. The pistol shouldn’t have surprised him, but it did. Her pale calf was streaked with blood, and she flinched as he pushed the denim up farther to uncover a deep gash in her knee.
“What’d you do?” He dabbed at the blood.
“I tripped. Earlier. It’s nothing—ouch!”
He pulled a giant splinter of wood from the wound and glared up at her. Blood gushed from the cut, and he pressed the towel against it.
“Hold that.” He replaced his hand with hers and went to get some first-aid stuff. His supply was limited, but he rummaged through the bathroom cabinet until he came up with some gauze and hydrogen peroxide.
He knelt in front of her again. “Sit tight.”
“Damn, that hurts!” She clutched his shoulder as the cut bubbled and foamed. He poured more antiseptic and grabbed her foot as it shot out to kick him in the stomach.
“Easy, now.”
Her grip tightened, and she let out a string of curses.
The bleeding slowed. She drank and looked away. By the time she’d emptied the beer, he had her knee wrapped in gauze and taped securely.
He sat back on his heels and looked up at her. “You were saying? You need my help?”
“I’m not sure I want it now.” She scooted her chair back. “You’re a sadist!”
He watched her steadily, relieved to see the fire back in her eyes.
“Spit it out, Alex.”
She jerked the leg of her pants down. Then she looked at him and took a deep breath.
“I need to report a murder.”
He crouched there, staring up at her, but she couldn’t read his expression. Probably because of all that nasty purple swelling around his eye. He rubbed the bridge of his nose and winced.
“Alex…”
He stood up and leaned back against the counter. Then he plowed his hands through his scruffy dark hair and gazed down at her until she wanted to squirm.
“You need to call a lawyer,” he finally said.
A lawyer? What…? “I didn’t kill anyone!” she sputtered.
But she could tell he didn’t believe her.
“I think someone killed a woman I know.” The words made her queasy. “She was a client.”
“You think someone killed her.”
“No, I know. At least, I think—”
“Where is she?”
“Huh?”
“Your client. Where’s the body?”
“I don’t know. That’s the thing. I was looking for her—”
“If you don’t know where she is, how do you know she’s dead?”
“Because I can’t find her. Anywhere. She won’t answer my calls or my text messages.”
He uncrossed his arms and seemed to relax again. “So maybe she left town.”
“She did. But then she came back.” Alex shot a glance at the ceiling, straining for the last bit of patience she needed for this conversation.
“She did leave town,” she explained. “Months ago. I helped her disappear. You know, drop off the radar.”
She watched his reaction. Some of her techniques weren’t exactly legal, which he probably knew because he was frowning at her.
“You do this a lot?”
“What?”
“Make people disappear.”
She shrugged. “It’s kind of a niche business. Sometimes people want to start over. For a lot of reasons. I show them how. I’m pretty good at it, actually.”
Not good enough. Not this time. Alex gazed down at her slimy shoes. God, she was a mess. Maybe she shouldn’t have come here.
“So if you showed her how to disappear, how do you know she’s really gone?”
Alex got up and walked to the sink. She pumped soap into her hand and lathered up her arms, then nudged him aside and pulled open a drawer.
“I met Melanie back in October.” She dried off with a fresh towel and finger-combed her hair. “She came to see me after a fight with her husband. He’d beaten her to a pulp.”
“You should have called the police.”
“I wanted to, but she refused.” Alex tossed the towel on the counter. “I started making arrangements for her. It took a few days. She gave me a little money, and I told her we’d settle up later, after she got a job. I told her to try waitressing.”
“Why?”
“You get paid in tips, mostly. If you can find someone to pay your wages off the books, it works out. She got moved, got on her feet. We were in touch for a little while at first, but then I stopped hearing from her. I did some searching today and found out she’d blown her own cover.”
“How?”
Alex huffed out a breath. “Every way possible. She ditched the waitressing job and went to work at some clinic, doing almost exactly what she’d been doing here.”
“Makes it easier to track her down,” Nathan commented.
“Exactly. And then I found out she’d been flying to Austin. Lon
g weekends here and there, over the last two months. And then I found out she moved right back here. Right back to her asshole husband.”
“She move in with him?”
“No.” Alex scoffed. “But she may as well have. It took me ten minutes to find her, once I knew she was back in town. Her husband probably found her quicker than that. I went looking for her—”
“Don’t tell me you confronted this guy.”
“I didn’t,” she said. “But I checked out the house—”
“You broke in.”
“And then it caught fire.”
“It caught fire? What the hell did you do?”
“Nothing! Someone burned it! On purpose. It had to be. I think it’s a crime scene. I saw traces of blood on the back porch.”
“What did the fire investigators say?”
She glanced down.
“Alex? You gave a statement, right? Don’t tell me you just peeled out of there.”
She closed her eyes, ashamed of what she’d done. She’d taken off like a teenager afraid of getting caught. She’d messed up, but it was too late to go back and change it.
She opened her eyes and looked at Nathan, wanting to make him understand, but also wanting to protect his opinion of her. After last fall, she knew he thought of her as smart, maybe even brave. Tonight she’d been neither of those things.
“I was scared,” she said simply. “Something about the place felt creepy. Like someone was lurking around. And when I saw the fire, I panicked. I couldn’t think of what to do, so I came here.”
His expression softened. Maybe he’d just realized that she’d known where he lived, that she’d had an interest in him long before tonight’s catastrophe.
Well, so be it. She’d never been good at coy.
“I need to go back to that house,” she told him. “I think Melanie might have died there, and I need you to come see. I want your take on it.”
He sighed heavily, as though he sensed this was going to be much more complicated than she’d led him to believe.
He was right. And he didn’t even know the half of it.
“You’d better stop,” Alex said, glancing through the windshield. A foot of water streamed over the bridge, according to the metal depth marker, but Nathan didn’t slow.
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