“What?” Emma looked confused.
“I’ve been thinking about it. The ring was valuable, but not irreplaceable. I didn’t want it back because it was expensive.”
Emma’s eyebrow arched, doubtful.
“Okay, the money was part of it. But while I was out there waiting for the jewelry shop to open, I realized it wasn’t the only part. Although I never gave the ring to you, it symbolized something. It was kind of like a promise to myself that one day I would ask you to marry me. I know that you’re not going to sign a prenup, but so what? After everything that’s happened over the last week, I don’t worry about you leaving anymore.” He sat down at the kitchen table and blew on the coffee to cool it off. “We’re a team, right?”
Emma sat down across from him. She reached one hand across the table, palm up. When he took it in his, she smiled and said, “We’re a team.”
Liam Parker
Liam sat in a small holding cell and waited. The last cop he saw said to make himself comfortable. They were going to process him out to county. It would take a while.
A couple of hours later, Bash appeared and unlocked the door. He was alone. Liam crossed the cell and, as he did, Bash held out his hand. “I’m sorry.”
Liam shook it, but said nothing.
“Ms. Watson is waiting for you in the lobby.”
For a second, Liam thought he meant Elise, even though he knew that was impossible. He followed Bash through hallways that reminded him of the jail he’d almost returned to. He thought about the days alone in his cell and the fight that broke out in the yard. That was something he would never have to live through again, thank God.
Bash buzzed them through a door. The focal point of the lobby was a massive, oblong desk with unformed officers behind it. Rows of chairs ran along the exterior walls, metal detectors by the entrance.
The room was filled with visitors of all types. They paced the floor, filled out forms, waited in chairs.
Liam scanned the faces until he found Anita, who had already spotted him and was headed in his direction. She hugged Liam, smiled. “You owe me a new phone.”
Richard Hawthorne
Rick was once again bound to a chair with packing tape. This time he was in the kitchen of his own apartment, still trashed and drafty now that the window had been broken. He tried for some time to get free, but it was useless. He was cold, hungry, and tired.
But that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst was the flies, drawn in by the smell of rotting food. Rick did his best to shake them off when they landed on him. Shooing them away was, of course, futile.
Is this it? he wondered. Has Chris left me here to die?
At just after two o’clock, officers arrived, thanks to an anonymous tip, and a small part of Rick was glad to see them.
David Hayes
The staff gathered in the large breakroom. David had called another all-hands meeting. He started by saying he didn’t want a bunch of rumors flying around. There would be more articles soon about Liam and his arrest, but as far as the company was concerned, this was all behind them. Then he asked if there were any questions and no one raised a hand, so after saying his door was always open to anyone who wanted to talk privately, he pointed them to the spread of cold sandwiches and sodas from Fred’s Deli set up on the table in back and returned to his office.
Bash was standing by his door, waiting for him.
David stopped short when he saw the detective. “What’s up?” he asked nervously. “Everything all right?”
Then officers appeared from nowhere, boxing him in.
“Mr. Hayes,” said Bash, “you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law . . .”
Catherine Parker
Catherine had found Alice’s room empty when she went upstairs to apologize for the fight and knew her daughter had gone to the concert. She was furious. She stayed up until midnight planning to scold Alice when she got in. But by the time Alice came through the door, Catherine had given up and gone to sleep, even more mad and ready to unleash a rage unlike any Alice had ever seen in the morning.
Alice wasn’t having it. They got into a shouting match. Alice said horrible things about Catherine and Catherine returned the barbs. Alice said she needed some time alone, that something terrible had happened.
But without letting her daughter tell her what had happened, Catherine said it served her right for going to the concert, and she was going to get her ass up and go to school no matter how she felt.
Alice grabbed some clothes off the floor in a huff, dressed, and stormed out the door.
Tommy watched the whole thing from his perch on the stairs.
Catherine then snapped at him, too. “Get ready for school.”
“I am ready.”
“Then let’s go.”
Catherine calmed down some once she was alone. She put the morning dishes in the dishwasher, then walked through the house picking up things the kids had left lying around. How socks ended up in the dining room and a shirt on the banister she’d never understand. Catherine felt bad for taking her anger out on Tommy. She would apologize to him when she picked him up from school.
With order restored to the house, she did the grocery shopping and settled in for some afternoon TV. She started with a Friends marathon on CBS and would switch over to Seinfeld later. She spent a lot of afternoons watching TV. It beat going to work. And soon, her life would get even better.
David had assured her once her ex was caught he’d be able to talk Liam into selling his share of the business and under the terms of their divorce she was obligated to receive a portion of that sale. The money would go far enough in Chicago, but in Mississippi, it would go even further.
When the doorbell rang, Catherine expected it to be Jehovah’s Witnesses or a door-to-door salesman. (She was surprised they still existed but had seen several even in the last year or two.) She ignored it. It rang again, followed by several loud knocks.
She went to the door with the intention of shooing her unwanted visitor away, only to find Bash on the other side, flanked by uniformed officers.
“Well, this is unexpected,” she said. “Liam isn’t here, you know.”
Bash entered the home without waiting to be asked. “We’re not here about him.”
When he tried to tell her she was under arrest, she began to scream and curse so loud she couldn’t hear him. He shouted for the officers to restrain her, pushing her to the wall and wrestling her arms behind her back.
She didn’t stop fighting until the cuffs locked into place.
Liam Parker
The Tesla had survived the impound lot with little more than a scratch.
Liam took it to pick up the kids after school, but found only Tommy where he was supposed to be.
“Where’s Mom?” Tommy asked as he climbed into the back seat.
“You’re staying with me tonight,” Liam said, opting for a simple explanation for now. Then he called Alice. He worried that she wouldn’t answer, that something new had happened to her and it wasn’t really over. But she did.
“I just needed a little time by myself,” she said.
Liam understood. She’d probably need a lot more than that in the coming months to get over what Rick had done to her.
“Dad, are you . . . ?”
Liam wasn’t sure exactly where the unfinished question would have led, but he got the gist. “It’s all okay now.”
“I’m glad.”
He picked her up at a McDonald’s and took both kids home. Elise’s Pomeranian, Chloe, was already there; Bash had worked out getting the dog from David’s condo. Happy as could be, she waddled out when Liam opened the door and sniffed first his shoes, then the kids, and looked up at all three of them, panting. Liam felt a small pang in his heart thinking about all the times she’d done that when he’d gone to see Elise.
“Say welcome to the newest addition to our family,” Liam said.
Both kid
s dropped to the floor with oohs and ahhs, petting the dog, scratching her behind the ears.
“What’s her name?” Tommy asked.
Liam smiled. “Chloe.”
Alice picked up Chloe and kissed her on the nose. It looked to Liam as if having the dog in her arms made her feel a little better.
The doorman was right—the kids were going to love Chloe.
And Elise, if she was looking down, would love seeing Chloe in their care.
That night, Liam sat both kids down and told them they would be living with him from then on. There were a lot of questions. Most answers he gave were vague. Some details he clarified for Alice after Tommy had gone to bed.
One thing he didn’t tell her about, though, was what had happened when he went to confront David and exactly how he had proven his innocence.
Liam had called Anita as he left Ava’s. He gave her the rundown and asked if she could skip out of work. She said she could find a way. Then he asked her to reach out to Ryan Reyes. Liam knew that if David admitted to anything at all he wouldn’t do it with anyone else around, certainly not a cop. He wanted her to find out if the PI had a way to record the conversation. Something better than the built-in voice recorder on most phones. (His TracFone didn’t even have a basic one.) Liam wanted to make sure the audio wouldn’t be lost if, say, David found out what he was up to and dropped Liam’s phone out the window.
It took Anita a little while to get Ryan to come to the door, but he eventually did. Liam had expected to be outfitted with a mike taped to his chest. However, Ryan directed her to a publicly available app that would stream the audio to cloud storage in real-time as long as he had a decent cell signal.
Liam liked the simplicity of that solution. He also liked not having a wire on him. If David found a mike taped to Liam’s chest, who knew what he’d do. If Rick was right, if David had killed Elise, that would be more than enough motivation to kill again. When he met Anita to get her cellphone, he returned the gun for the same reason. Liam would never fire it, and not only might finding the gun be enough for David to kill, it would also provide a means.
The quality of the recording was, unfortunately, not very good. Rustling fabric had distorted the conversation, often to the point of being inaudible. It was enough, though, to clear Liam’s name, get a judge to issue arrest warrants, and send Bash in search of additional proof.
Over the next several months, Alice saw a psychiatrist once a week to work through the trauma of the abduction and Liam took the stand in trials against Catherine, David, and Rick.
At Catherine’s trial, the DA entered into evidence cellphone records that tracked her to Elise’s building the night of the murder and testimony from the neighbor who now admitted to seeing her. And when Liam testified, he was shown the letters Catherine had written Elise in jail and confirmed that, yes, some of Catherine’s friends called her Kate.
At David’s trial, Catherine, too, told her story in exchange for a lighter sentence.
And at Rick’s, the DA presented the notepad Liam had found in Rick’s apartment, security video showing Rick entering the condo with Alice, bank records detailing the transfers with a timestamp and Liam’s IP address, as well as testimony from the security guard, Alice, and, once again, Catherine. At sentencing, Rick attempted to use the cost of his mom’s care to justify his actions. It didn’t play as well as he’d hoped.
But when it was over, Liam made a trip to Heartland Nursing Home to meet the woman for himself. He wasn’t sure why. Perhaps he was just curious.
Although a nurse told Liam it was increasingly rare, Susan Hawthorne was lucid that day. She was kind and believed her son made his living as a franchisee of several Subway restaurants. Then Liam asked around and found out that the fake ID with Chris’s name on it was turned into Felix Winkler, and when he went to thank Felix, he relayed the justification Rick had told to the jury about needing the money for his mother’s care.
“What will happen to her if nobody pays her bills?” Liam asked.
Felix sighed. “It’s not your problem.”
That was true, but Susan didn’t deserve to suffer for the sins of her son, and since Liam could afford to pay for the care, he said he would. He owed it to Susan, or Felix, or maybe the nursing home in general. He wasn’t sure. All he knew was that if the staff hadn’t found that ID and if Felix hadn’t called Chris when he did, things would have been much worse.
It took less than a year for the kids to entirely adjust to living with Liam and Alice to once again seem like herself.
Over that year, Liam met with Anita at The Griddle on numerous occasions for some unofficial therapy for them both. They talked mostly about Elise, reminiscing and, through sharing their separate memories, finding some peace. As time passed, the meetings became less frequent. Today, exactly one year since Elise had died, he realized he and Anita hadn’t spoken for over two months. He called her up to see if she’d like to meet at The Griddle for one last chat.
And it was indeed their last one. Life had taken over and they were both too busy to do it again. But it was also a nice way to say goodbye once and for all.
UP NEXT: BURIED
When the earthquake hits, the narrow, corkscrew turn that leads into the labyrinth of tunnels underneath the North Georgia mountains collapses. Martin Campbell and his friends are stranded. But being trapped underground might not be the worst of their problems. Each of the cavers has brought secrets into these tunnels. And they are secrets that at least one of them is willing to kill for.
Readers have said: “If you like suspense with an edge, you will love this novel.”
BURIED
PROLOGUE
THE LAST SIGNIFICANT earthquake to hit the East Coast ripped through Charleston, South Carolina, in 1886. The quake measured a 7.0 on the Richter scale, toppling buildings, twisting train tracks, and killing nearly sixty people. Even as far as Georgia, walls cracked and windows broke.
While quakes of this magnitude are unusual in the Southeast, smaller ones are not. On average, Georgia experiences a magnitude 4.0 earthquake every eight years. These cause minor damage but are often subtle enough to go unnoticed by anyone not directly impacted.
Deadly quakes in the eastern United States are especially hard to predict because seismic activity can occur inside a tectonic plate, not just on its borders, and because most quakes that have struck the eastern United States have hit areas not previously known for seismic activity.
However, while researchers expect East Coast tragedies like the one in Charleston to occur about once every hundred years, significant seismic activity in or around Georgia is so rare that people often forget it happens at all.
SUNSET
NOW AND THEN
WHEN THE ONLY thing standing between you and freedom is a wall of fallen rock, you dig. So that’s exactly what Martin did. Dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved cotton shirt, spelunking helmet strapped to his head and gloves on, he scraped and clawed at the rubble. Sweat dripped down his cheeks.
He was flanked by his friends Cynthia and Ethan, who were likewise decked out in caving attire and working equally hard to clear the tunnel.
Behind them—Paul, their guide, and Gina, Martin’s sister. They were not any help, though. Paul had had his legs crushed when a stalactite fell during the earthquake, and Gina, who was not only Martin’s sister but also Paul’s girlfriend, was doing her best to tend to him.
“Everything’s going to be fine,” Cynthia said.
Martin wasn’t so sure. After all, they were more than fifty feet from the cave’s entrance. Only God knew how many pounds of debris they would have to clear to escape.
And to think: just last week, he had considered calling off the trip.
Ethan had almost choked on his beer when Martin told him. “You’re yankin’ my chain, right?”
They were sitting in a bar on Myrtle Avenue called Gunshot Pop’s. They’d taken a table near the bathrooms. The floors were sticky from spilled beer. Nineties rock
, almost too loud to talk over, blasted out of speakers that seemed to be everywhere. The place was a dive. But at less than a block from National Bank where they both worked, it was also convenient.
Martin loosened his tie just enough to open the top button on his shirt. “I’m serious. I’m starting to have some reservations.”
“Reservations? What do you mean reservations? You mean you’re starting to wuss out, is that what you mean?”
“I wouldn’t call it that.”
Ethan rolled his eyes. “What would you call it?”
Martin shrugged. When Ethan realized he wasn’t going to answer, he added, “Well, fuck me, when did this start to happen?”
“Last night. Before I went to sleep. I just kept thinking about—”
There was a squeal of metal on metal. It was the sound of the men’s room door opening. Martin stopped talking. He watched the hall that led to the restrooms until he saw a man in a plaid shirt appear. He noticed Martin looking at him and nodded. Martin nodded back. Once he was gone, Martin continued. “I just kept thinking about all the things that could go wrong.”
“Nothing’s going to go wrong, not with Paul down there.”
Ethan was probably right. Paul had been exploring caves all over the Southeast since he was a boy. He knew his way in and around their twisting caverns. He knew their histories and how they had formed. He knew the tunnels that were safe and where to step. Paul even had the gear and a van big enough for the five of them.
“Look,” Ethan continued, “Cynthia hasn’t been back to Atlanta in—what?—five years?”
“Not since graduation.”
“Exactly. And, finally, after all this time, she’s coming back to see you.”
A Reagan Keeter Box Set: Three page-turning thrillers that will leave you wondering who you can trust Page 45