Heartbreak Bay (Stillhouse Lake) Rachel Caine (best e book reader for android .txt) 📖

“Sure.”

“Do you trust Gina? I mean, Gwen?”

I don’t know why he’s asking, and it makes me wary again. “Yes.”

“All the time?”

I want to lie, but I know this is some kind of a test for him. “I didn’t always, but now? Yes. I trust her.”

“Do you think she really is innocent?”

“Tyler, I don’t want to talk about Gwen, she really isn’t what we’re about here. This is about you, me, the people we’ve lost. Okay?”

“I know. But . . . I need to understand. Why do you believe her? When other people don’t?”

“I choose to. I think she’s a good person.”

He nods, as if that settles something, and he opens the truck door. Before he closes it, he says, “I wish I could believe that too. About myself, I mean. Maybe someday.”

Then he slams the door, and I watch him walk inside. I wait a little bit, but he doesn’t come back, and I finally put my truck in gear.

I pull my cell from my pocket and realize that in my focus on Tyler, I’ve missed text messages and alerts.

An alert from our security system.

Our home alarm’s been triggered.

“Shit,” I whisper.

I put the truck in gear and leave rubber as I head home, fast as an arrow from a bow.

13

GWEN

I’m sitting tense, watching my phone and waiting for Sam to get home. Long minutes tick by. Half an hour. I tell myself to be patient; he was pretty far out when he texted me from the diner, and maybe he’s hit traffic, a road closure, something like that.

But I’m really starting to worry when it closes in on an hour, and there’s no word. I text him, but I don’t get a response.

It’s well after midnight when the home alarm goes off.

The siren is so loud it’s almost like being punched in the head with sound waves, shocking and nauseating in its intensity. I roll off the couch, fall on my knees, and press my thumb to the sensor on the lockbox. My gun’s in my hand in less than five seconds, and I’m on my feet and heading down the hall, no thought left but for my children. I glance at the alarm panel as I move past it.

The alarm was triggered in Lanny’s bedroom. My whole body is shaking, but I know how to control it, how to use it. Fear is a sharp, metallic taste in my suddenly dry mouth.

I open the door to Connor’s room, and Connor’s right there, bracing himself with the baseball bat in his hand. He’s put himself between danger and his sister, who he’s shoved into the corner, I realize, but she’s backing him right up, and holding her laptop like she intends to smash it into the first skull she sees. Recognition makes them both relax. I mouth, Lock the door, and Connor nods. I shut it, and go across the hall.

I take a breath, a second to get my gun in position, brace, and I ease Lanny’s door open.

Moonlight catches on curtains blowing in the breeze. Her window is up. I see a shadow moving, and for a hot chemical second I feel the twitch go through me, and I almost, almost pull the trigger. But something stops me for just long enough that the lamp next to Lanny’s bed switches on, and spills its light over Vera Crockett, who sees me with the gun and staggers back, holding up both hands. Her face has gone milky pale, a few freckles standing in stark relief. Her eyes are wide and scared, and I quickly lower the gun. I stalk past her, slam the window, and give her a glare that would probably melt steel; she looks appropriately chastened.

Then I go the nearest alarm panel and turn the siren off.

The silence flows over me like cool water, but my ears are still ringing, my nerves still burning from the stress. And I turn that right on Vee as she comes out of Lanny’s room. “Jesus Christ, Vee, what the hell did you think you were doing? I nearly shot you! I could have killed you!”

Before she can answer, I hear the home phone ringing. It’s the alarm company. I get to it and tell them, in clipped tones, that there’s not an emergency, and to call off the police response. They’re likely halfway here already. I don’t like showing up as a false report, especially now.

As I hang up, Vee says, “Ms. P, I am so sorry, I thought—I texted Lanta to ask her to turn off the alarm, I thought for sure she’d do it . . .” She trails off because now my attention is on her again, and it’s not kind. She swallows hard.

“Tell me she didn’t leave her window unlocked.”

“Uh . . . she didn’t? I kind of know how to slide those locks?” She looks ashamed to say it, but I’m actually relieved a little bit; at least this time it isn’t my daughter’s doing. Not completely, anyway. Though Lanny should have warned me that Vee was planning this. “It really wasn’t Lanta’s fault. It was all mine.”

“You’re damn right it was. Vee, why didn’t you just come to the front door like a normal person?” But I think I know, from the way her cheeks turn a bit pink. She was hoping for a little make-out session with my daughter, I think. I have no idea if Lanny’s agreed to it or not, but either way, it’s just throwing fuel on the fire. Both of them should know better. “Sit. Down. I need to tell my kids they’re not about to be murdered, thanks to you.”

“Sorry,” she mutters. “Bright side is, you didn’t even shoot anybody.”

She’s getting her equilibrium back. Far too quickly for my taste.

I knock on Connor’s door, the usual signal pattern to let him know it’s me and I’m not under duress; he unlocks it and peers out, still wary, until he sees me.