by Jen Blood
We continued for a while—long enough for the knots in my shoulders to loosen and that tight ache in my chest to ease, anyway. I kept returning to everything I’d been hearing about my father over the past few days: the abuse and the anger, the loss and the depravity. Yet again, I tried to connect all everyone had been telling me with the man I’d known on Payson Isle.
I named you after my sister, I remembered my father saying to me once. Because she was from heaven. She changed everything. God took her, but he gave me you.
The day he told me that, we’d found an orphaned fawn out behind the greenhouse on the island. We’d been debating about names. We settled on Ruby for reasons I couldn’t even remember anymore, and for the next month he tended to that deer like she was his own child. She lived in the boarding house with us, trailing baby deer turds in her wake until Isaac—the head of the Payson Church—had had enough and insisted she at least be relegated to the barn. When Ruby took sick that fall, Dad lived in the barn with her for a week before she finally passed one night with both my father and me by her side.
I couldn’t explain the horror stories people were telling me now, but at the end of the day it didn’t matter: The man I’d known may have been a bastard as a kid, but something huge had changed him by the time I came along. I’d stake my life on the fact that he’d never been a murderer, and he sure as hell hadn’t grown up to be a serial killer. There had to be another explanation.
I got Stein turned around and started back toward the hotel, feeling better than I had since Diggs had given me the news about Jeff Lincoln the night before. There were no cars on the road, Route 1 stretching as far as the eye could see in the deep blue of the moonlit night. Einstein growled just as we went ‘round a bend that brought the motel back in sight, his attention suddenly on the night behind us. I instinctively reached for my cell phone. Stein started back despite my clear intent on the road ahead, whining softly, his body tensed. I turned, prepared to confront a behemoth serial killer with red eyes and an axe.
Instead, across the road and well back from us, I spotted yellow eyes. No axe. A coyote, thin and mangy, loped into the road with its head down. It held something in its mouth—a rabbit, judging by the size. I ordered Einstein to settle his ass down; he whined one more time, then sat. The coyote got halfway across the road then paused, head up now, sniffing the wind. She must have caught our scent, because she froze. Her yellow eyes found mine. I tightened my hold on Stein’s leash and held my breath.
A tenth of a second might have passed while she stayed there, trying to make her decision: go back, or continue. Then, suddenly, a truck engine roared to life. The coyote perked her ears in the direction of the noise, then quickly turned and adjusted her course—back into the woods, her body moving with that grace and assurance wild things have when left to their own devices.
The owner of the monster truck, meanwhile, revved his engine in the distance. I gave Einstein a perfunctory head pat for being more alert than I was when it came to up-close-and-personal wildlife experiences in the making, and we got back on track to the motel. We were still maybe fifty yards from the Budget Inn parking lot when what I could now see was a very jacked-up pickup, revved its engine one more time, spun its wheels in the gravel, and shot out of the lot with no headlights on.
I spent more Saturdays than I can count back in Littlehope as a teenager watching the locals do donuts on every habitable surface in their 4x4’s, so I know a little about the peculiar driving habits of Men With Trucks. Rule number one? Stay the hell out of the way. I was preparing to do exactly that when the truck picked up speed and the headlights came on suddenly, blinding me. For one endless moment, I was frozen in a dream-state, watching the truck barrel toward me. The lights got brighter, the engine louder. I kept waiting for the driver to swerve.
When it dawned on me that the lunatic behind the wheel wasn’t planning on changing course before he mowed me down, I finally yanked Einstein’s leash and dove off the road. I took a digger in the gravel on my already-skinned knee, but managed to get both Stein and me out of the truck’s path just as the horn blared. The driver jerked the wheel to the right and sped away.
Afterward, I sat on the side of the road beside Einstein for a good five minutes, trying to pry my heart out of my throat. I was just getting my knees back under me when my phone rang. My hands were shaking as I pulled it out of my pocket.
“Where the hell are you?” Diggs demanded before I had the chance to say a word.
“I had to walk Einstein.”
He breathed an audible sigh of relief. Whatever de-stressing I might have managed in the past half-hour was officially undone.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Where are you right now?”
I started back toward the motel, now just a stone’s throw away. “I’m outside. I’ll be right in—why, where are you?”
“Just get back here. Please.”
When I got back to the room, Diggs was sitting on my bed surrounded by my files.
“How’d you get in here?” I asked.
“Door was open,” he said. “When I came in, that was here.” He nodded toward an old Polaroid snapshot on the dresser. I took a closer look, and regretted it immediately. I pushed it away and took a step back.
“What the hell is that?”
He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. In the picture, a red-haired girl lay nude on a dirt path, her eyes wide, her mouth open in a scream frozen in time.
“That’s not the only picture there,” he said grimly.
I pushed the Polaroid aside with my index finger, reluctant to touch it. There was a digital shot beneath it that had obviously come from a laser printer—and a lousy one at that. It didn’t make the content any less disturbing, though. In the photo, Diggs and I sat at a pine picnic table with Red Grivois. Someone had drawn a heart around my face with red marker.
I wet my lips, trying to find my voice. “The girl in the first picture—that’s Erin Lincoln. And that’s not a shot from the crime scene. She’s still alive there.”
“I know,” Diggs said.
“I know everyone else is saying my father did this,” I said. I kept my eyes on the ground. My stomach felt like I’d been on rough seas for days. “But they’re wrong. He wouldn’t do this, Diggs. I don’t care what anyone else says—whatever he did or didn’t do, he wouldn’t hurt me.”
He didn’t say anything. He hadn’t moved from his seat at the edge of the bed. For the first time, I noticed how pale he was. His hair was still wet, and he was wearing only boxers and a t-shirt.
“I’m okay, Diggs,” I said.
He shook his head. Diggs is usually a cool customer, but the way he looked at me just then, it was like he’d been stripped bare and run through.
“I thought he got you,” he said. “I heard something next door—I think he dropped something while he was here. So I came over to check… I just had this feeling. And then your door was open and I found those pictures…” He wouldn’t look at me. I sat down beside him and put my hand over his.
“Hey—I’m serious. I’m right here, Diggs. Nothing happened.”
He squeezed my fingers so tight the blood stopped flowing. A second passed, then another, before he took a deep breath and let it out nice and slow. He let go of my hand and shook his head again, running his fingers through his hair.
“Jesus Christ, Sol,” he said. He managed a strangled laugh. “Seriously—just call me before you walk the damn dog, huh? At least until we’re done with this thing.”
I would have made fun of him normally, but the Polaroid on the dresser had effectively killed my rapier wit. Diggs gave me a thorough once-over for the first time since I’d come in, just noticing my torn jeans and bloody knees.
“What the hell happened to you?”
The short version of the story seemed like a good bet at the moment. “I fell.”
“I’m getting you a helmet and kneepads for your next birthday,” he said. “Get into som
ething more comfortable—I’ll be back in a minute.”
I changed into pajama bottoms and a t-shirt while he was gone, and returned from the bathroom to find Diggs, now in jeans and a jersey, sitting on the floor with the first aid kit he’d been carrying with him for as long as I could remember. He nodded toward the edge of the bed. I sat. He knelt at my feet and used a damp washcloth to clean the gravel out of my knee for the second time in as many days. I’d had worse, but it still stung like hell. I flinched when he dabbed at it with peroxide.
“Sorry,” he said.
He curled one hand around my calf, holding me in place. I felt his touch on a cellular level, stoking something I was doing my damnedest to keep un-stoked. His thumb grazed the sensitive skin behind my knee. He was close enough that I could feel his breath, the tension still obvious in his shoulders. When he was finished, he moved back to give us both some much-needed space.
“That was a pretty good tumble you took out there. What happened?” he asked.
When I didn’t answer right away, he looked up. His eyes narrowed. “Sol?”
I’d promised after the last story that I wouldn’t keep things from him anymore—a reasonable request given that a slew of people hadn’t made it off Payson Isle alive. A more transparent research process seemed advisable. I took a long, slow breath, and scooted backward on the bed. Diggs got up and took a seat next to me.
“I think I saw the guy who broke into my room.”
His Adam’s apple moved when he swallowed hard, the fear I’d seen before back in his eyes.
“Say something,” I said.
“What? I don’t know what to say to you anymore. Or what to do. We’re chasing a serial killer—do you get that? A lunatic who gets his rocks off torturing and killing little girls.”
“Well, see—there you go. I’m not his type. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not a little girl anymore, Diggs.”
“Don’t,” he said shortly. I raised my eyebrows innocently, but he didn’t crack a smile. “Don’t turn this into a joke. Have you actually looked at these pictures?” He got up and took the one of Erin Lincoln off the dresser, then came over and held it in front of me. My stomach turned, but I didn’t look away.
“Trust me, I’ve seen them, Diggs,” I said.
“Then why the fuck aren’t you terrified? He was in this room. He tried to run you down. This woman—this Bonnie Saucier. What did she tell you?”
I pushed the picture away. “What, you suddenly believe in psychics? It’s a bunch of bullshit—you know that.”
“Sarah Saucier obviously doesn’t think so. How do you know Hank Gendreau didn’t set you up when he got in touch with you in the first place? Maybe he worked with an accomplice all those years ago, and this is… I don’t know, some grand scheme to lure you out here.”
“So this is a conspiracy? To do what, exactly? No offense, Diggs, but I think you’re overestimating my appeal here.”
He walked away and paced the room, his shoulders so tense that I figured it was only a matter of time before he burst something critical. I went to him and touched his arm, forcing him to stop and look at me.
“I feel like a goddamn broken record,” he said, his voice still tight with anger. “Do you really not see that you’re putting yourself in danger here? Or is it that you honestly don’t give a shit?”
“Of course I give a shit,” I said, my own anger on the rise. “But this is my father. Everything I thought I knew about my life got flushed down the toilet last spring, and apparently that was just the beginning. I need to know where he is. Who he was.” My voice rose. “And don’t talk to me about not giving a shit whether I live or die. Do you know how many times I scraped you off the bathroom floor of sleazy dives from Portland to LA and back? How many bar fights and eight balls and bimbos I watched you burn through before you finally pulled your head out of your ass?”
“That’s not the same thing—”
“Why not? Because you were working and this is just some personal crusade for me? Because I—”
“Because it’s you,” he said, suddenly quiet. All the fight had gone from his eyes. He looked terrified. And very, very tired. He shook his head. “I couldn’t lose you this way, Sol.” His eyes were swimming when he looked at me again. “I couldn’t lose you any way, but this… I can’t protect you from something like this.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
He took a step closer. I didn’t move. “It’s not like I’m some crack shot with a black belt and an arsenal in my trunk. I’m a reporter. I know shorthand and surfing and Guitar God. Other than that, I’m no help here.”
I met his eye. “That’s not true.”
I don’t know who stepped where next, but somehow a second later we were right there—not quite touching yet, but close enough that I could already feel his energy like an electrical current.
He brushed the hair back from my forehead. I closed my eyes. Fisted the front of his t-shirt in my hands, and remained there, suspended, not quite touching and not quite… Not. I could feel his heart beating; the soft warmth of his breath on my face when he leaned in and rested his forehead against mine. His hands were on my shoulders—I couldn’t tell whether it was to push me away or keep me close. Neither of us moved.
“We should get some sleep,” he whispered.
I nodded, our heads still touching. He palmed the back of my neck with one hand and pressed a long, lingering kiss to my forehead.
“I’m sorry I’m a pain in the ass,” I said, fighting an unwelcome surge of emotion of my own.
He laughed, his lips humming against my skin. “You should be. You’re gonna be the death of me, Solomon.” He stepped back and combed his fingers through his hair again with a long, slow exhale. “I’m staying here tonight—No way I’m leaving you in this room alone now.”
I wasn’t about to argue.
Chapter Eight
At 7:02 the next morning, there was a knock on my motel room door and Einstein completely lost his shit. I groaned and burrowed deeper into the blankets. Diggs came out of the bathroom in his shorts, his hair wet and a towel draped over his naked shoulders.
“Morning, sunshine,” he said.
I groaned again, louder this time. Diggs went to the door and looked through the peephole.
“Cavalry’s here, Sol—come on, get up.”
“Go away,” I said. “And tell whoever’s here to go with you.” I pulled the pillow over my head. In case there’s any question, I will never be mistaken for a morning person.
I heard the door open.
“You made good time,” Diggs said.
“I flew into Presque Isle last night. The case was already on our radar—it wasn’t hard to convince the director to send me out.” A male voice. Low, a little smoky, with a barely detectable touch of Cuban flavor in there.
Crap.
I was wide awake the instant I realized who it was. I prayed for invisibility.
“Is she hiding?” he asked.
“Mornings,” Diggs said. Like that explained everything. He plucked the pillow off my head. “Come on, Sol, up and at ‘em. The Feds wait for no one.”
I made a half-assed attempt to smooth my hair out and rub the sleep from my eyes before facing Jack Juarez, who stood at our door in a freshly pressed suit with three coffees in his hands. He didn’t even try to hide his amusement.
“How did you know we were here?” I asked.
“I called him,” Diggs said.
“You couldn’t have given me a heads up?”
“I thought it would be more fun this way,” Diggs said. He gave me a sexy little eyebrow pump. “I was right, too.”
“You’re such an ass.”
Juarez looked around the room. Diggs was still half naked, but both hotel beds in the room had clearly been slept in. Not that I was concerned my virtue might come into question—Juarez and I had tangled enough the last time he was in town that I’d never be mistaken for a virgin in his eyes.
My
favorite Fed set the coffees on the dresser. He looked tanned and surprisingly well rested considering he must have taken a red eye to make it to the ends of the earth so quickly, or so I assumed. His dark hair was a little longer than I remembered it, his body a little leaner. He looked good. I hadn’t known Juarez long, but based on my experience thus far, this wasn’t unusual. Juarez always looked good.
“You don’t have to look so appalled,” he said to me with a smile. “You’re going after a serial killer, aren’t you? That is kind of my area. I promise I’ll let you play, too.”
I thought of Diggs’ words the night before; how completely haunted he’d seemed by them. I can’t protect you.
So he’d called in someone who could. Since it didn’t seem I had much choice, I surrendered and got out of bed. My pj bottoms had hitched down and my tank top had twisted sideways, giving both boys an excellent view of my unmentionables before I managed to pull myself together.
“When did he call you?” I asked.
“Yesterday afternoon,” Juarez said.
I looked at Diggs in surprise, but he was suddenly very focused on his coffee. “When yesterday afternoon?”
Juarez shifted uncomfortably. Diggs set his coffee down and looked me in the eye. “While you were asleep on the drive up here. I had some time to think about it, and I decided then that our best-case scenario was still more than you and I could handle on our own.” He set his jaw. “You can be pissed if you want, but I’m not sorry. Especially after last night.”
“What happened last night?” Juarez asked immediately.
I suppressed a groan and excused myself to find something decent to wear—it wasn’t like I needed to be there while they rolled their eyes and moaned about what a lost cause I was.
When I returned to the fold, Juarez was sitting on the bed going through my files. Diggs and Einstein were nowhere to be found.
“He took the dog for a walk,” Juarez said before I could ask. “They shouldn’t be gone long.”
I’d put on shorts and a t-shirt. My hair was still wet, but I felt at least moderately prepared to face the world now. I sat on the bed beside him, inching closer to get a glimpse of the file he held.