Suddenly, her foot caught the edge of something large and warm, and she went down hard. Her wrist made a sickening snapping sound as she braced her fall against it. A jolt of pain shot up her arm, and she bit her cheek to keep from howling. If not for the child’s plaintive wails, she would’ve laid there. Instead, she hauled herself up and gaped at Officer Bullock’s body, the unnatural angle of his neck. Suppressing a scream, she held her arm like a broken wing against her as she ran.
When she reached the redwoods, Olivia froze. Hiccuping sobs of terror, Thomas stood near the bank of the river, dangerously close to its deep waters. As she started toward him, Olivia heard sirens in the distance, and for a moment, she felt relieved. Judging by the sound, they’d already made the turn off Pine Grove Road toward the house.
“It’s going to be okay,” she called to him. “You’re safe now.”
When Thomas pointed, unspeaking, into the shadows, Olivia stared in horror. Because she knew then who had killed the Foxes. She also knew she’d lied. Thomas wasn’t safe at all, and neither was she.
Fifty-Eight
JB made a hard left from Pine Grove Road onto Seawood Lane, spitting out gravel as he revved through the turn. At least five patrol cars trailed them down the dark road, lights and sirens blaring.
“Can’t you go any faster?” Will gritted his teeth, clenched his fists. Anything to keep himself from throwing open the door and running the rest of the way. He desperately needed to lay eyes on Olivia.
“Maybe if I had a hovercraft.” The car jolted forward as JB punched the accelerator, the seat belt tightening across Will’s chest. “Did you try her cell again?”
Will dialed for a third time and listened to the incessant ringing, hanging up before the call went to voicemail. He tossed his cell into the center console in disgust. “Still not answering. Something’s wrong, man. I know it.”
JB pushed the Crown Vic to its limits, the forest whipping by in a blur out the window until Olivia’s driveway came into view. Her Buick parked in front of Bullock’s patrol car. Emily’s rental, gone.
Will cracked the door before the vehicle came to a complete stop. His feet hit the ground running, hurtling him in the direction of the frantic shrieking at the back of the house.
“Olivia!” Will called out, as he swept his flashlight across the trees. When his beam landed on the body of Officer Bullock, he stopped short. Tamping down his panic, he called over his shoulder, “Check on Bulldog and secure the house!”
The yelling stopped suddenly, but Will kept running, trying not to think too much. About Bullock lying in the grass; his neck twisted unnaturally. About the frightened voice that sounded exactly like Olivia’s, cut off mid-scream. About the twisted man who waited for him. He felt certain of it now.
By the time Will reached the Earl River, he only heard the remaining sirens, as they turned onto Seawood Lane. As if a hole in the earth had opened and swallowed Olivia whole. The absolute stillness, the moonlit calm, disturbed him even more. He readied his Glock as he scanned the woods across the water, but the all-knowing trees kept their secrets close.
“There!” JB pointed downriver. “The kid!”
In the gleam of JB’s flashlight, Will spotted a small hand above the dark water. It grasped a fistful of air before it disappeared again.
Will left his gun and flashlight on the shore and dove in without thinking, the unexpected shock of the cold water propelling him forward. Despite the summer drought, his feet barely touched the bottom, and he felt the tug of the river pulling him toward the ocean. He searched, until he spotted Thomas again, his head popping up like a turtle’s. The boy took a gasping breath, before the water sucked him back down.
Will swam toward Thomas, grabbing for him beneath the surface. He caught the boy’s leg but it escaped his grasp, his skin slippery as a fish, and they floated further downstream. Will felt his own limbs tiring, his arms heavy as they thrashed through the water.
Finally, Will’s fingers found Thomas’s slim wrist. He latched onto the boy and didn’t let go, scooping his limp body from the cold river. As he feared, Thomas’s lips had turned a purple-blue, his face as white as the moon.
Grabbing onto an exposed tree root protruding from the muddy bank, Will anchored himself, while JB and the other officers helped to haul Thomas onto dry land.
Will followed, hoisting himself up with the last bit of strength he had. He collapsed on the dirt path, shivering. It took effort to turn his head to find Thomas lying in the grass.
One of the patrol officers knelt beside the boy, placing his fingers on Thomas’s neck. “I’ve got a faint pulse,” he said, and he began breathing into his mouth. After a few rescue breaths, water bubbled up from Thomas’s lips, and he started to cough. A good sign, Will thought, wondering how long he had been in the water. Any more than a few minutes, the odds of a full recovery were slim.
“You okay, partner?” JB hovered above him, offering his hand. Over his shoulder, the sky draped like a black curtain, a shroud.
Will stared upward, lightheaded with the certainty Olivia was in danger and that flat on his back and soaking wet was exactly where Drake had wanted him.
Taking JB’s hand, he picked himself up off the ground, retrieved his gun and flashlight from the bank, and wrung the water from his button-down. “Bullock?”
JB shook his head, the answer in his eyes.
“I heard Olivia scream. She’s in trouble.”
Just then, Jessie emerged from the back door, jogging in their direction. “There’s no sign of an intruder. No indications of forced entry.”
“And her sister?”
“Only one of the beds looked slept in. I assume it was Olivia’s. Her computer and phone are in the bedroom, but they’re password-protected.”
“Take them back to the office. If we can’t get access, we’ll have computer forensics take a look. And call Thomas’s Aunt Nora. Let her know he’s on his way to Fog Harbor General.”
The arriving paramedics rushed past them to Thomas’s aid, cutting away his clothing and drying his slight frame, before wrapping him in a thick blanket. Will watched them through a haze of unreality, until they carted Thomas to the ambulance.
Another medic approached Will, placing a foil blanket around his shoulders. “We should probably take a look at you,” she said. “You’ll want to change out of those clothes ASAP. We don’t want you getting hypothermia.”
Will stared deep into the forest beyond the river, where the moonlight didn’t reach. Sergeant Kingsley’s search team had already dispersed, combing the redwoods for signs of life. Will imagined Olivia out there, Drake looming like a shadow man beside her.
“She’s right, City Boy. They’ve already started looking for Olivia.”
It took everything in him to nod. He’d be of no use anyway in his waterlogged dress shoes and soaking wet pants. “Give me ten minutes to find some dry gear. I’m not going anywhere.”
Fifty-Nine
In the back of an ambulance, Will stripped off his wet shirt, pulling on the Fog Harbor PD tee and sweatpants he’d borrowed from patrol. Then, he took off his dress shoes and turned them upside down, emptying out the river water. Discarded his socks. After drying the shoes with a towel, he put them back on, rendering them squishy but passable.
He found Chet and JB crouched by Bullock’s lifeless body. He had few visible injuries, but the strange position of his head told Will all he needed to know. Broken neck.
JB frowned up at him. “What’s this?”
Will felt certain he didn’t want to see it, whatever it was. He wanted to be back in the lighthouse, warm and dry, with his arms around Olivia. He leaned in, following the beam of Chet’s flashlight. A small object glinted beneath Bullock’s hip.
JB moved aside, allowing him a closer look. Lying in the weeds that had sprung up on the dirt path, a tourmaline token winked back at him, in the shape of a paw.
“Looks similar in shape and color to the horseshoe Olivia found in the p
ool at Ocean’s Song.” JB plucked it from the grass with a gloved hand, turning it over in his palm. “What do you make of it?”
Olivia would’ve had a theory, a hunch. A fresh take on the evidence. All Will could muster: “I have no idea.”
“You don’t think Bulldog had something to do with the Fox murders, do you? I mean, the guy is about as approachable as a porcupine but I can’t see him offing an entire family.”
“He sat right across from Thomas when he administered the lineup, so I’d say it’s pretty unlikely. But, at this point…” He threw up his hands. “Nothing would surprise me.”
From up ahead, near the riverbank, Will heard Jessie call out, “Hey, Decker, Benson, there’s a gun here.”
Will and JB hurried along the path to find her hunched in the grass, examining the old snub-nosed revolver that Will recognized on sight. “That belongs to Olivia.”
“How did it get out here, so far off the trail?” Jessie wondered.
JB shrugged. “The perp probably disarmed her somehow. Maybe he used the boy as a lure.”
Guilt took root in Will’s heart, sprouting like a poisonous weed. He spun away, fast-walking back toward the house, ignoring JB’s footsteps behind him.
“Slow down, City Boy. Heart condition over here. Remember?”
Will paused in the glow of the porchlight but didn’t turn around. “I’m gonna take a look inside. Maybe the officers missed something. I have to find Emily, too. She and Olivia had a fight this afternoon, and she must’ve stayed somewhere else. She needs to know what happened.”
“What will you tell her?”
In his mind, Will heard Olivia’s scream, brutal as a knife’s blade. “The truth.”
With most of Fog Harbor PD searching the woods for Olivia and her captor, Will found solace alone in her bedroom. He sat in front of the window looking out to the forest, cradling her desk phone against his ear. On most nights it would’ve been an idyllic view, with the moonlight shining through the trees. But tonight, listening to Emily’s tears and the questions he couldn’t answer, the whole scene took on a ghastly appearance. Like something out of a horror film.
“I promise we’ll find her. I’ll find her.”
“We had a stupid fight. I went to Nick’s just to tick her off.” Emily choked back a sob, then gathered herself, sniffling. “I should’ve been there.”
“It’s a blessing you weren’t.”
“Are you sure it’s Drake who took her? She was looking at Peter Fox’s client files earlier. Maybe she found something in there.”
Will replayed the last few days—the intruder in the garage, Cy gone missing, a message written in blood—lamenting all the signs he’d missed. “It’s him. I’m positive.”
“What can I do to help?”
“Do you know the password for her phone or laptop?”
“Um, she usually used our mom’s birthdate for her cell. March 3, 1963. Three, three, six, three. You should try that.”
Will grabbed a pen from Olivia’s desk drawer and jotted the numbers on his hand. He felt so scattered he’d be hard pressed to remember his own passwords. “Otherwise, I want you to stay put. If anything happened to you, Olivia would never forgive me. This whole mess is already my fault.”
“Your fault? How? Drake was obsessed with my sister. You know that. This is all part of some sick fantasy of his.”
“I think it goes beyond that, Emily. I took someone from Drake. Now he’s repaying the favor. The fact that it’s Olivia I care about is just icing on Devere’s cake.”
“Surely he wouldn’t risk his freedom for revenge.”
Will stared out the window, watching the searchers’ flashlights appear and disappear in the tree cover. “One thing I’ve learned about Drake is to never underestimate how far he’ll go to get what he wants. Or how many people he’ll take down with him.”
A soft knock at the door interrupted him. After Will assured Emily he’d call her as soon as he had more information, he hung up the phone and took a deep breath meant to expel his demons.
“Come in.”
JB cracked the door. “I thought I’d find you in here. There’s news from the hospital.”
Will couldn’t remember the last time he’d prayed. He’d stopped talking to God after his mom disappeared, though his dad had forced him and his brothers to show their faces in church every Sunday. Poor Captain Henry Decker and his three motherless boys. But now, thinking of Thomas, Will wondered why he’d stopped.
“Thomas is recovering in the ICU at Fog Harbor General. He’s going to be okay.”
“Do you think he’ll be able to tell us anything about what happened to him?”
“Only one way to find out.”
Sixty
While JB drove them downtown to the hospital to see Thomas, Will made two phone calls. First, to Dr. Lucy’s emergency number. She reluctantly agreed to meet them at Fog Harbor General in thirty minutes. Though she hadn’t been much help before, Will knew he was way out of his depth interviewing a kid who had been through hell and back. JB had the bedside manner of a cantankerous rhino. Without Dr. Lucy, they’d never manage to get past Nora and the ICU doc.
Next, Will called Jessie back at the station, where she’d returned with Olivia’s devices. “I’ve got the passcode to Olivia’s cell,” he told her, putting the call on speaker.
After he’d recited the numbers, Jessie released a breath. “We’re in.”
“Check recent activity. Incoming and outgoing calls. Texts. Web searches.”
“Whoa. Slow down. Give me a sec.”
Will paused for a moment, his heart pinballing in his chest. “Anything?”
“Hmm. Interesting.”
“You’re killing me here.”
JB raised his brows at Will, making a calm the heck down gesture with his free hand.
“Alright. She’s got the Fox files open to the Holt case. And her last Internet search was for that casino on the Yurok reservation. The Golden Steed. Graham and I helped the tribal police with an auto theft out there last month. The phone number matches the one she dialed. It looks like she spoke to them this evening for about three minutes.”
“Any calls after that?”
In the silence, Will white-knuckled the phone, suppressing a primal scream. “Jessie?”
“Three,” she said finally. “To you.”
JB squeezed the Crown Vic into the first available spot in the parking lot. “You want to talk about it?”
Will shook his head but unleashed anyway, smacking the dash with his palm. “If we hadn’t been in the middle of nowhere hunting for Devere, I would’ve had a cell signal. If I’d had a signal, I wouldn’t have missed her calls. I’d know why the hell she was looking up the Golden Steed, and maybe—”
“I know what you need.” Reaching across Will’s lap, JB popped the glove box. “Emergency Twinkie stash. That’ll fix you right up.”
Will snapped the glove box shut, nearly clamping JB’s hand inside. “Can’t you just be serious for one goddamned minute? Olivia is missing.”
“I know that.” JB hung his head, avoiding Will’s glare, and already Will felt guilty for barking at him. He knew his partner meant well.
“You’re not supposed to be eating those things anyway.”
JB cracked the door, muttering under his breath, “Exactly why I offered them to you.”
Dr. Lucy met them outside the automatic doors, looking less than pleased. She’d abandoned her put-together professional attire for a coffee-stained T-shirt and jeans. Her bobbed hair askew, dark circles under her red-framed glasses, she gave the impression of a woman who’d gone through her own personal Armageddon.
“Rough day for you too?” JB asked, cutting his eyes at Will.
“Well, let’s see. I came back from a couple sick days to two no-shows, three tantrums, and a waiting room full of unhappy parents. My last client had a meltdown and chucked a plastic dinosaur at my head.”
“I hope you put the little bastard
in timeout.”
An aggrieved Dr. Lucy deadpanned, “That was his mother.”
“Sheesh.”
“So, I went home and had a glass of wine or three. Took a bubble bath. Lost myself in a Lifetime movie. Just when I’m starting to relax, the phone rang, and here I am.”
“I’m sorry,” Will said. He wondered if she’d even noticed his mismatched clothing, his damp hair. The offensive chorking noise coming from his dress shoes every time he stepped. “I wouldn’t have called if it wasn’t important.”
“It always is, Detective.”
The hospital assaulted Will’s senses. The antiseptic odor. The harsh fluorescent lights. The constant and urgent sounds of sickness—beeps and alarms, distant moans. It all made Will want to run the other way. He felt sick that Thomas had ended up here. Even sicker that Olivia had vanished.
When the elevator opened to the ICU, Will spotted Nora at the nurses’ desk. Her eyes wide, she hurried toward them, wrapping Will in a desperate hug, trapping his arms at his sides.
“Thank you,” she murmured through her tears. “They told me you went in after him. You saved my nephew’s life. You’re a hero.”
Will certainly didn’t feel like one. But at least he’d done one thing right. “How is Thomas?” he asked, after Nora had released him.
Before she could answer, the doctor approached from down the hallway, a grave look on his already stern face. “Thomas is incredibly lucky to be alive. We’re treating him for mild hypoxia and hypothermia, but his vitals are good and his lungs look clear. He’s tired and hoarse. Even a minute or two longer in the water, we would be having a very different conversation.”
One Child Alive: An absolutely gripping crime thriller packed with nail-biting suspense (Rockwell and Decker Book 3) Page 24