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

gift, and I value it so much. I know you want to do this with me, but Sam, please understand . . . there is no one I trust more than you to protect our children. I need you to do that for me. I’m asking you, I’m begging you . . . please keep them safe. For me.” She smiles. There are tears in her eyes, and my anger’s gone now, drowned in those tears. All I have left is fear. “I’ll come back if I can. I love you always.”

She glances at something, and I realize she sat just here in the same spot as she made this video. She was looking at the clock. I check the date and time stamp.

She made it just before nine this morning. She did it while I was asleep, while the kids were asleep. This was a plan. I remember her suggesting the sleep medication last night. She was going to take it herself. Clearly, she didn’t.

She wanted me out of the way because she knew I’d damn well stop her.

I go through the rest of her phone with trembling fingers. I see the texts sent from an unknown number, and it’s like being plunged into a lake in winter; no wonder she looked so strained last night. So closed in. The pictures of us are threats, implicit but very real.

I go through her emails. Nothing there. I open her photos. Pictures of the kids, of me, of us.

And then, suddenly, a picture of a driver’s license, and the face hits me like a punch. It’s Tyler. But the name on the license says Leonard Bay, and he lives on Beacon Street, here in Knoxville. It takes me a second to recall that Gwen said she ran into and chased down a homeless guy who’d mailed Melvin’s letter to her. And had a letter from MalusNavis as well. My stomach clenches even before I put it together.

Leonard Bay is just a false identity. And suddenly I know it’s all connected. Tyler played that part so well I never even thought to put it together with the sad, self-destructive young man I talked off the bridge. The kid who’d needed my help when he was drowning in despair.

A malus navis is Latin for a navigational beacon. Beacon Street. Dr. Dave said that he thought MalusNavis lived on the coast. A navigational beacon on the coast.

A lighthouse.

My mouth’s gone so dry that my throat clicks when I swallow. My muscles ache from how hard I’m clutching the phone. I type in pharos.

Pharos is Greek for lighthouse.

Tyler Pharos. Leonard Bay. MalusNavis. They’re all the same person.

I have fucking been played, and so has Gwen.

The hell of it is, as enraged as I am, I somehow can’t direct it against the young man standing on that bridge, pressed against the railing. I’d sensed something real there. Something very dark and terrible.

Maybe the person I ought to be angry at is me. I should have put this together. Would have, if I hadn’t been focused on projecting my feelings onto the blank slate of Tyler’s loss . . . if he even has a dead sister at all. That, too, could have been a lie.

My first impulse is to leap into my truck and tear on out of here, find Gwen, and drag her home where she’ll be safe . . . but then I realize that I can’t. She trusted me to watch over our children, and with the threats in those photos, I can’t leave them alone. I can’t.

So I call Javier instead. I’m going to ask him if Gwen is there, but he beats me to the punch. He says, “Please fucking tell me that they’re with you.”

They.

Gwen, and Kez. I feel my heart sink. “They’re not there?”

“Kez left me a goddamn note. She says she and Gwen have to go finish this.”

“Call the station. Tell them that she’s missing and in danger.”

He laughs bitterly. “She is going to be so pissed.”

“Do you care?”

“Not if it saves her life. What is she thinking? Did Gwen talk her into this? I never should’ve left her alone so soon after Prester . . .”

“What happened to Prester?”

“He’s dead.” There’s a long pause on the other end. “Shit. I should have known she wouldn’t let it go. Not even with the baby.”

Kezia Claremont is not the kind of person who can live with letting other people die, and drop it. She was never going to drop this case, but now, with her partner dead, and the fact this asshole already tried to hurt her, put her unborn child in danger—no power on Earth could have forced her to sit back and relax. Just like nothing could keep Gwen from putting herself between her kids and the danger coming for them.

“Call the station,” I tell him.

“We have to go after them.”

“Did Kez take her phone?” He doesn’t answer. “She left it behind, right? We’ve got no way to find them, Javi. Putting out an APB is the best we can do. If we can stop them before they’re too far out . . .”

“Yeah,” he says. “I’ll do it.”

He hangs up. I think about it for a second, and then I text Dr. Dave. He lives in a lighthouse, I say. Or uses one for what he does. Where is it? Give me the state, at least.

I don’t get a response for about ten minutes. I don’t know whether he had a patient or he just likes to keep me waiting, but I’ve already checked the gun safes, and found that at least Gwen’s gone armed, wherever she’s headed. That eases a little bit of my dread. A grain of sand on a beach of trouble.

Dr. Dave doesn’t text. He calls. “Sam,” he says. “Delighted to hear from you. How are you? Not arrested, I see.”

“Fuck you,” I say. Feels good. “What state does MalusNavis call home? It’s somewhere with a lighthouse.”

“I genuinely do not know,” he says. “You finally looked it up, didn’t you? Navigational beacon. Hence, lighthouse. Hence, coastline. Very