by Jeff Abbott
“Sharon told me specifically Bethany had no reason to go to Houston.” His voice went quiet.
“That’s a lie.”
Her phone buzzed with a text. From Sharon. I thought about what you said and I think I’ll go to that support group tonight. Maybe it will help me. Are you going?
She stared at the screen. What would happen if Sharon and Jake were face-to-face? What cracks might show?
“Anything important?” he asked.
“No,” she said, slipping the phone back into her purse. “I think Reveal’s meeting will be interesting, though.”
34
THE ROCK HAD blasted through the rear window. A second earlier and it would have crushed the roof and killed Craig. He was shaken but he was angry.
How? How did they know he was there? Somehow his location was traced. His phone. Or something in Beth’s red Mercedes.
Somehow someone knew and was ready to strike at him. No more idle threats. They wanted him dead or scared and running. He was scared now. For himself, for his daughter.
“Who knew that you were driving that route?” Broussard asked. They sat in an examination room at an ER center in Lakehaven, where the ambulance had taken Craig to be checked. He was uninjured except for a few cuts from flying glass along his scalp.
But he couldn’t stop shaking, trembling. He had nearly died. He couldn’t die now and leave Mariah alone to face whoever was threatening them.
And really, who had a motive? Broussard did. Broussard hated him, blamed him, tried to turn Craig’s own daughter against him. Broussard could have done this, with help. He kept his voice neutral.
“No one. I told no one. I didn’t even plan to drive that way. I got distracted talking to you and missed my turn and just kept going because it’s a pain to turn around when I could just loop back over to Old Travis.”
“So someone was tracking you.”
“Even if they were…how could they have gotten to the bridge so fast with a rock. This is crazy. It has to be random.” He stared down at his lap. Unless it was you, Dennis. Can’t the police track people on their phones? He had seen that on a television show. All you need, Dennis, is one person helping you. Just one.
“Well, there could have been two of them,” Broussard said. “One in communication with the other, who is on the bridge. Someone could have been following you.”
“On the off chance I drove that way? I don’t get out of the house often. You know that.”
“Maybe they thought you were Mariah.”
“She never drives her mother’s car. Neither do I.”
“Why didn’t you sell it?”
“Because it’s Beth’s car,” he said, as if that explained it all.
“If they’ve been watching you, Craig, then maybe they knew what you were driving.”
“And tracked me how?”
“Taped under the fender we found a very cheap phone. Someone could call the number and it would give off a signal that could be tracked with an app.”
Craig pressed his palms to his eyes.
“You said someone left rocks in your driveway. With messages.”
Craig lowered his hands from his face. “Yes.”
“Were the rocks similar? Is this the same kind of rock?” He showed Craig a picture on the phone of the rock, lying in the backseat, the shattered rear window framing it.
“It’s similar.”
“Listen to me, Craig,” Broussard said. “I am treating this as an attempted murder. You said you’d been threatened.”
“They want me to move. Whoever it is. They just want me gone.” He stared at Broussard. You know what that’s like, don’t you? To want me gone. To want me dead.
“We’re trying to reach Mariah, but she’s not answering her phone,” Broussard said. “Where is she?”
“Off chasing down leads, like she said she would. It’s delusional,” he said.
“Tell her I want to talk to her. Now I have to go find who did this to you and how they did it.”
Craig stood. “May I go?”
“Yes. I’ll have one of my officers drive you home.”
“No thanks. I’ll try Mariah again, or call a rideshare.” He had already decided he would call a car rental company. He wasn’t going to be stuck at home. If it wasn’t Broussard, then it was someone else, and he had to be able to find them.
“If this was not a random attack, then I want to be sure you’re safe,” Broussard said.
“Right. Of course.” Craig got up and left without another word.
* * *
Broussard watched, from his window, as Craig waited in the parking lot. Five minutes later a rideshare sedan pulled up and he got in. Not Mariah.
So where was she?
He could sense the suspicion coming off Craig. He wanted to say, If I wanted you dead, you would have been dead months ago. It wouldn’t have been helpful.
Carmen Ames, his department’s detective, peered into the office. “The press is asking for a conference on the rock incident.”
“Schedule it in an hour, please. I want to ask you something.”
She stepped in and shut the door.
“Was this really an attack?” Broussard asked.
“What?”
“Mariah Dunning could have been on the bridge. She could have dropped the rock.”
“It seems pretty unlikely they would stage this. He could have been killed. There was a phone taped under his fender.”
“That could be a red herring they put there. But the two of them…it’s very much them against the world. I can’t imagine the pressures they’re both under. So maybe they think it gets them sympathy. And misdirection, get us looking for someone out there who is targeting Craig rather than keeping our focus on him. If he draws Mariah into his cover-up, it binds her closer to him. He must be terrified that eventually she’ll talk. I’m not sure that this whole thing about her mounting her own investigation isn’t just a cover to protect her father. Or protect her image of him.”
Carmen said, “She could have killed him, though.”
“It’s equally challenging that someone is tracking him to this degree,” Broussard said. “Why? Let’s say, as a hypothetical, our rock dropper is Beth’s killer and Craig is innocent. Why even come back around for Craig? How is he a threat?”
“He knows something.”
“What could keep him silent about his wife’s case?” He shook his head. “If you’ll go arrange the press conference, please.”
She nodded and left.
Broussard sat down at his desk and opened up a window on his computer.
Two years ago, there had been a spate of rocks dropped from bridges onto Interstate 35 in the Austin area. A driver was killed, several terrible accidents resulted. The perpetrators—a group of kids—were finally caught, prosecuted, and convicted. Broussard had decided that this kind of random terrorizing wasn’t going to happen in Lakehaven. So, he’d had cameras installed on the bridges in the city limits, including the one over the loop. He could remotely access the footage. He watched it, backing up the video feed to five minutes before the rock had crashed through the back of Craig’s car.
The bridge was empty. Then movement. A tall figure, walking into view, with a coat on, and a hood pulled low over the face. He could see the shape of a mouth, not much more on the face. Carrying a rock in one hand, holding a phone in the other. Phone up so the screen could be watched. Glancing around. Arm extended from the bridge.
The rock dropped. The person ran off, eyes to the ground, avoiding the glance of the camera.
Mariah? He rewound and watched the recording again. He thought the person was about her height. But wouldn’t Mariah have waited a moment to ensure her father was OK, if this was a stunt? The person had dropped the rock and hurried immediately away.
But the phone screen, being watched, as the rock was dropped. This wasn’t random. This was someone tracking and targeting Craig.
And Craig wouldn’t talk. Why?
/> He watched it a third time. Saw something. On the wrist of the rock dropper. He zoomed in. He could see a watchband on the wrist. Unusual pattern in it—the links forming a pattern of silver diamonds.
Broussard tried Mariah again. Still, there was no answer.
35
REVEAL’S SUPPORT MEETING was at an Episcopal church in the oldest part of Lakehaven, which dated back before Lakehaven was incorporated as a city. The church itself was small, pretty, stone, as if it had been dropped from an English village among the oaks and the hills.
“What have your dealings with Reveal been like?” he asked as he parked the car.
“I knew him, slightly, at school,” she said. “Then he wrote about my mom’s case.” She glanced around the lot. She saw a few people walking into the church but didn’t see Sharon. She felt guilty about this, but she wasn’t going to warn them. She was going to lie and say the text hadn’t come through. She saw she had some texts and missed calls but she turned off the muted phone.
“I still have reservations about Reveal, but I think this group might be a good idea. People who get it.” He glanced at her.
“I hope it helps,” she said.
* * *
Chad stopped them as they entered the room. He was in his white generic football jersey with REVEAL in black, the logo of the website on his chest, wearing white-framed glasses that made him look slightly ridiculous.
“You’re here? Together?” He seemed weirdly pleased.
“Yes,” Mariah said. “We thought we’d compare notes.”
“Oh, this is fantastic. Because I want to highlight your cases on the show.” He actually rubbed his hands together in glee and she reached out and stopped him.
“It’s a done deal?” Mariah said at the same time Jake said, “Show?”
“We’re so close. Hollywood close, which means hands just need to be shaken and it’s done.” He cleared his throat. “Jake, hi. We’ve never met, but of course I know who you are.”
“Of course,” Jake said, glancing at Mariah.
Chad continued: “I would love to be able to interview you on the show. Will you please consider it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Think of how wide an audience it could reach. Someone who might know what happened to your Beth. And your Beth, too, Mariah.”
“I’ll think about it,” Jake said.
“Jake, will you go grab us seats,” Mariah said. “I need to talk to Reveal for a minute.”
Jake nodded and walked in.
“You got him to talk with you. That’s excellent,” Reveal said. He did a thumbs-up.
“Have you been followed again?” she asked.
“Maybe,” he said. He peered at her over the top of the glasses.
“It was a yes or no question.”
“I told the producers that I was hot on a couple of cases and that I’d been followed…as far as I know it’s true. They are so excited. So, what have you found out?” A touch of greed was in his voice.
His attitude had changed since their dinner. If he hadn’t talked about the TV show, she might have told him. But he would just take what she’d learned and turn it into part of his pitch. And this was her mother, and Sharon’s daughter, and Jake’s wife. It wasn’t fuel for his career. “Not very much.”
“Every detail matters to me, Mariah.”
“I…I’m just talking to people.” If she told him that the two Beths did know each other and one had asked a mysterious favor of the other before vanishing, he’d run with the story. Because he would have been the first to ask about a connection, even if for the wrong reason. He had been ahead of the police. This new desperation to land this TV show was coming off him like heat with a fever. She would wait.
“You know, the whole reason you’re talking to people is me,” he said, a bit of iron in his voice. “I put the idea in your head that these cases could be connected, and I think you’re holding back on me.”
“I know. And I thank you, but I really don’t have anything else to tell you. I promise I will.”
“All right,” he said. He put a smile on his face. “It’s just going so well, Mariah, I want this so badly.”
“I hope you get what you want, Chad.” She gave him an awkward hug and went in to find a seat, feeling a sense of relief that Sharon hadn’t shown up yet. There was enough drama as it was.
* * *
It was strange to think of a support group for people who had lost someone and never gotten an answer. It wasn’t that common, surely? Yet there were nearly twenty people gathered in a circle at the meeting room. Mariah scanned their faces: a mother and a daughter (the resemblance was unmistakable), an older man in sunglasses and a battered cowboy hat, a heavyset man who looked like an ex–football player, a woman who wore a shirt that read REMEMBER ANNIE, a pair of women who held hands in solidarity, an elderly couple who looked crushed under their grief.
A club no one wanted to join.
Mariah sat next to Jake. He gave her an encouraging, brief smile.
Reveal stood at the edge of the circle. “I want to thank you all for coming. We’re all here because you are dealing not only with a terrible loss but with the uncertainty of knowing what happened to your loved one. You are in the zone of the unsolved.”
The zone of the unsolved? Mariah glanced around at the others. They all watched Reveal, hanging on his words. She had never thought of her life in that way. Yes, it felt like a limbo, but you had to keep slogging through it. Who talked this way?
A guy pitching a TV show.
And that was when Sharon Blevins walked in. She was embarrassed to be late, Mariah could see, and she hurried to an empty chair on the circle, sitting as primly as in a pew, nearly directly across from Mariah. Her hair and her clothes were immaculately styled. She risked a quick smile at Mariah and then she saw Jake Curtis. The smile died.
Something came into her eyes that tightened the skin on Mariah’s face. She heard a sound from Jake, something more than a sigh, less than a groan. She glanced at him; he wasn’t looking at Sharon, but at the floor.
Mariah waited for Sharon to leave, to stand and point an accusing finger, anything. Instead she stayed in place, looking shaken, and her mouth trembled when she met Mariah’s gaze—which was somehow worse.
Reveal, watching this all, cleared his throat and kept going. “I’m not a counselor, I’m a connector. I can’t make you feel better, but I can make you feel less alone.” She glanced up and his gaze was on her.
Mariah decided right then and there she would not speak. Surely he wouldn’t call on people.
“Does anyone have any developments on their loved one’s case?” Reveal asked.
She tensed, lest Jake raise his hand and talk about the connection between the cases, or Sharon rise to speak, but Sharon kept staring at Jake and Jake kept staring at the floor. She stared at his hand, resting on his leg. His wedding ring in place. She thought Sharon must see it, too.
One of the men—the one who looked like an ex–football player and wore a name tag that read BUDDY—raised his hand. “I went to a psychic,” he said, sounding almost embarrassed. “I thought it would be dumb. I mean…if being psychic was true, wouldn’t they all be rich from the stock market?”
There was, to Mariah’s surprise, soft laughter. This didn’t seem like a laughing crowd. After her mother had vanished people always looked at her oddly if she laughed, even if she smiled. As though she’d lost the right. As though she’d done something unnatural in showing an emotion other than confusion or grief. She remembered a dinner out with her father and them sharing a memory of her mother over the appetizers at Chili’s, laughing because Mom would have laughed, retelling a story where Mom fell into the waters of the Florida keys trying to snag a fish, and people looking at them as if they had no freedom to smile. Like grief was a permafrost. She had started to raise a finger toward one table and Dad had caught her hand, closed it in his. They didn’t go out to eat again for months, and they never wen
t to that Chili’s again.
She pulled her gaze up from the floor, studied the others while the big burly guy described his visit to the psychic. Sharon wasn’t staring at Jake right now. She was dabbing tears from her eyes with a tissue.
“My name’s Buddy. Well, my daughter Kimberly vanished ten years ago. She was working the graveyard shift at a convenience store near Buda”—this was a small town south of Austin—“and she disappeared during her shift, and no one’s seen her since. And this psychic lady, she said that whoever took Kimberly was someone that she knew, at the least she’d met them. And I think maybe she’s right. The police looked at her boyfriend, her ex-husband, her coworkers, but someone could have gotten obsessed with her, maybe a customer. Maybe a regular. It’s a busy store. And Kim was friendly, that’s why she was good at retail, she saw the best in people”—his voice wavered—“and she would have been friendly to someone who might have read it wrong, misunderstood friendliness for interest in him…”
He stopped. “But it’s not like I can go back to the police with this. It’s not new; it’s not real. They still have her file open. Only because I keep calling.” He stopped. “I thought the psychic could tell me where…she might be found.” He was careful not to say remains or body. “She has to be somewhere. I need to know.”
“Why did you give yourself false hope?” Jake asked. “I mean, seriously, a psychic?”
Mariah glanced up quickly at Jake, thinking his words unkind.
Buddy met his gaze. “Why not? I’ve tried everything else.”
“Our hope lies in science and forensics, not charlatans,” Jake said.
“This is Jake,” Reveal said. “His wife went missing.”
“Science and forensics have done nothing to find my daughter,” Sharon said, staring at her son-in-law. “I could unload science on him and he’d still lie.” She turned to Buddy, sitting next to her. “My daughter’s missing, too, and that’s her husband sitting there, and I think he’s responsible.”
Mariah could feel the anger spike in the room.