Killman Creek (Stillhouse Lake Series Book 2) Read online

  We don’t expect to find much, and when we ease through the trees into midafternoon sun to look down at the little valley where the town had been, it looks like a movie set. The four-building main street still stands, probably because it’s built of brick, but most of the other wooden buildings are some flavor of leaning, weathered, collapsing, or wreckage. Disaster in slow motion. We hunker down and observe for a while, but nothing moves except birds and, twice, a lean and slinking cat. A door hanging on one hinge creaks shrilly in the wind.

  “If she’s here,” I say, “she’s got to be in the brick structures. Right?”

  “Right,” Sam agrees, then stands up. “Let’s make an agreement right now: we don’t shoot unless we get shot at. Okay?”

  “Can we make exceptions for knives? Clubs?”

  “Sure. But nonfatal wounds. We need to question Arden, not haul her dead.”

  It puts us at a serious disadvantage, but he knows that.

  As we go down the hill, I catch sight of glass glinting behind some leaning boards, and I pull Sam to a stop to point. It’s a car. It’s not some relic left behind from the glory days, either; this looks to be a fuel-efficient midsize no more than five years old. I’m lucky to spot it. Someone’s gone to some effort to keep it concealed. From the glimpses I can make out, it doesn’t seem neglected. More like it was parked there recently.

  I alert Sam, and we ease around to take a look. The hood is cool when I cautiously lay a hand on it. I’m careful of tripping any alarm sensors . . . and then I think about that. I exchange a look with Sam, and we are once again perfectly in sync.

  “Do it,” he says.

  I yank hard on the door handle—locked—and the quiet is ripped apart by a wailing, honking banshee that rattles painfully in my ears. Sam and I fall back to the shadows and wait; it isn’t a long delay before a slender red-haired woman runs from the open doorway of one of the brick buildings, tosses aside boards, and glares at the car. The alternating hazard and headlights turn her face white, then gold, and she fumbles keys from her coat pocket and turns off the alarm.

  In the silence, I say, “Arden Miller?”

  She nearly falls down, she backpedals so fast, but Sam’s moved to block her retreat, and she bounces off him and into the car, practically climbing up the hood. I see the fear chasing over her face. “Leave me alone!” she shouts, then pushes off to rush at me, hoping to break past.

  I calmly pull my gun and level it at her, and she stops in a spray of twigs and leaves and pebbles. Her hands shoot up like they’re on strings.

  “Don’t kill me,” she says, bursting into wrenching, terrified tears. “Oh God, don’t kill me, please, I can pay you, I can give you money, I’ll do anything—”

  “Relax,” I tell her. There’s a command in my tone, which I realize is counterproductive. I ease it down. “Miss Miller, nobody’s going to hurt you. Deep breaths. Relax. My name’s Gwen. That’s Sam. Okay? Relax.”

  The third repetition seems to get through, finally, and she gulps a breath and nods. She doesn’t match her photo much. The hair is still red, but it’s in a short, sassy bob, and she has on thick glasses that magnify her blue eyes. She’s a conventionally pretty woman, but there’s something about her . . .

  It takes me a moment to spot it. Arden Miller didn’t start life as biologically female, but her transition is very nearly perfect. She moves correctly, carrying her weight in the right places. If she’s had plastic surgery done, it’s flawless. She looks more feminine than I do, and acts it, too.

  “Did they send you?” she asks, transferring her tear-filmed stare from me, to Sam, and back to me. “I don’t have them! I swear I don’t, please don’t hurt me, I’ll tell you!”

  “Don’t have what?” Sam asks, and she flinches. I give him a little hand motion to back off, and he does. I holster my weapon.

  “Tell you what, Arden, let’s just sit down. Is there somewhere you’ll feel more comfortable?”

  She sniffles, dabs at her eyes with the care of someone who knows not to smear her mascara, and says, “Inside. I mean, it’s not much. I come here to work.”

  “Okay,” I say. “Let’s go inside.”

  Arden’s work, it turns out, is stunning. I don’t know a lot about art, but even I can tell that what she’s creating here with paint and canvas is phenomenal—she’s documenting destruction, breakdown, beauty. She’s taken Markerville and made it astonishing instead of morbid. There are six canvases propped against walls to dry. She’s working in the old post office/general store, which still has—against the odds—glass in the front window, and it gets eastern light. She has lanterns burning now, and she’s found an old sofa that’s reasonably clean. I think she sometimes stays here all night; there’s a rolled-up sleeping bag and a tidy collection of camping gear. Arden’s made use of the old rolltop desk—surely a collector’s item—that hulks against the far northern wall, and it holds a laptop. No Wi-Fi out here, so she probably uses a disposable cell phone for a connection, and an anonymizer to go online. It’s what I’d do.

  Arden’s already feeling better, in here; the sight of her paintings, her space, gives her steadiness and strength. She leads us to the couch, and she and I sit, while Sam studies the paintings. Arden keeps glancing toward him, but she focuses on me.

  “What do you want?” she asks me anxiously. “Did they send you?”

  “Nobody sent us,” I tell her, which isn’t quite true, but close enough. “We just thought you might be able to help us, Arden.”

  Her back straightens a little, and I don’t miss the wary flash in her eyes. “With what?”

  “Absalom.” I drop the word deliberately, and I see the pure, stark panic flare through her. She holds herself very still, as if she might break. I take a chance, a blind one. “They’ve been after me, too. And him. We need to find out how to stop them.”

  The breath goes out of her in a rush, and she folds her arms over her chest. Defensive, but not against me. “I stay off the grid, mostly,” she says. “So they can’t find me. You should, too.”

  “I try,” I tell her, and then I play another hunch. “When did you leave the group?”

  This time, she barely even hesitates. I sense that she’s been desperate to tell this story, and for simple human contact. Friendship, even if it’s temporary. “About a year ago,” she says. “I was never in the inner circle, you know. It was just a game at first. Trolling pedos. Taunting people who deserved it. Or we thought deserved it, anyway. And we got paid for doing it, too.”

  This time, I am the one who sits back, because this is something I’ve never considered. “Paid? By whom?”

  Arden laughs. It sounds like a rustle of leaves in a dry, dead forest. “Like I’d know. Good money, though. And I was fine with it until . . . until I found out why we were doing it. It wasn’t like they advertised it to the rank and file like me, but one of the higher-ups slipped and mentioned it.”

  I swallow. I feel desperately in need of water for some reason, as if I’ve been crawling through a desert. I’m in strange territory now. “I don’t understand.”

  “Look, we certainly did it for the lulz, no question; we were good at it, too, which was why they recruited us for the special projects. I thought it was some kind of crusade, you know? Pure. But they sent us after people when they stopped paying blackmail money. They sent us to punish them into cracking open the bank again,” she says. “We were just virtual leg breakers. When people dig in their heels, the hounds like me come off the chain. I know I’m a bitch, but come on.” Arden laughs again. It doesn’t sound any happier. “The idea somebody was making hard cash off ruining people—that’s just wrong.”

  “It’s better to ruin them for free?” I ask. I feel a little dazed.

  This time, I get an apologetic shrug. “If you’re doing wrong and you’re on the Internet, you have to expect some of that, don’t you?”

  I like Arden, but this baffles me. It’s a blind spot, an assumption that cruelty is fine in the right c
ontext. Doing wrong. Everyone’s done wrong to someone. Even now, she can’t see the toxic effects of having that easy access to a victim.

  I have to start rearranging the whole image I have of Absalom. I’ve been thinking of them as manipulative fanatics, in it for the sheer bloody chaos of destruction, and some of them certainly fit that description. What Arden is describing, though . . . this is bigger. More cynical. Had Melvin paid them to go after me? How? He hadn’t had access to cash in prison. Maybe he’d traded favors.

  Dealing with dedicated, incredibly psychopathic trolls was one thing. Dealing with them when it was their job to come after me might be even worse.

  “Arden.” I lean forward, putting out all the good intentions and sincerity I can. “Why did Absalom turn against you?”

  Her face contorts into a grimace, and she sweeps a hand up and down her body. “They found out,” she says. “A lot of them hate women. All of them hate trans women. They started posting about me. I fought back. When they kept at it, I downloaded a bunch of their payment records from the server and told them I’d put it out public if they came after me. I thought it would stop them.” She looks away. “I had a friend staying over that day. I went out to get us Chinese food. When I came home, my apartment was on fire. The whole building went up. Seven people died.”

  “And . . . you don’t think that was an accident,” I say. “I’m so sorry.”

  She nods and fights back another wave of tears. “They thought they got me, for a while. But I’ve been moving around, finding places to stay low. One good thing, I took up painting, and the gallery I showed them to says I’m pretty good at it. I need to sell these and get out of the country. Maybe it’ll be easier somewhere else. Sweden, maybe.”

  “These files you took,” I say. “Arden . . . do you still have them?”

  I’m praying she says yes, but she gives me a sad look and shakes her head. “They were stored on a thumb drive,” she says. “It went up with everything else. I don’t have anything to hold over them now. I’m scared to death, Gwen. Aren’t you?”

  “I am,” I tell her. “Are you sure you don’t know anything that can help me find them . . . ?”

  She thinks about it. Picks at a stray red hair on her jeans and lets it drift down in a ray of sunshine. Watches it fall.

  “I know one thing,” she says. “The asshole who was the angriest about me, I know where he lives. That was the last thing I found before I was afraid to push it anymore.”

  I glance at Sam. He turns to look at us and nods. “Then . . . would you tell us? Let us go after him for you?”

  Arden folds her hands together in her lap and sits up straight. She meets my gaze, and there’s defiance in there. Anger. Fear. But mostly, there’s resolve.

  “I wasn’t a good person,” she says. “I hated myself, and I thought the world was shit and everybody deserved what they got. I wanted to see everybody hurt the way I did. But I’m not like that anymore. And I’m sorry for all the people I went after online. I never meant—” She stops and shakes her head. “I know that doesn’t mean much. But if you can get this guy, maybe that’s a step in the right direction. You got a pen?”

  I’ve left pen and paper in the car, but Arden just shrugs, goes to the rolltop desk, and pulls out supplies. She writes, walks back, and hands it to me. I blink, because I’m expecting an address.

  “GPS coordinates,” she tells me. “It maps to a cabin in Bumfuck, Georgia. But you be careful, Gwen. You be really careful. I was a terrible person, but this guy’s evil. I get the creeps just thinking about him.”

  “Thank you,” I say, then put the paper away. I get up and hesitate. “Will you be okay?”

  Arden looks up at me. Her eyes are clear, her perfect jaw set. I recognize the look. I’ve seen it in the mirror. It comes when you own your fear and use it as fuel. “Not yet,” she says. “But someday. Yeah. I will be.”

  I offer her my hand, and we shake. Sam comes closer, and I see Arden’s body tense a little. She’s gun-shy with men, and I wonder how much abuse she’s already taken. But he just extends his hand, too, and she finally completes the gesture.

  “You’re really good,” he tells her. “Keep doing this. And keep safe.”

  She gives him a faint, cautious smile. “I will. You, too. Both of you.”

  I call the kids from a pay phone that is sticky with sweat and other things and smells like spilled beer. Connor is as tight-lipped as ever, and Lanny adopts a cool, distant attitude that tells me how angry she is about me being gone. I hate it. I hate that I’ve had to leave them. It won’t be long. This might be the break we need.

  Maybe I’ll let Sam go on without me, I think as I hang up. But though it makes me ache with guilt, I also know I probably won’t. I need to stop Melvin.

  Just a few more days.

  It takes us another full day to get near the GPS coordinates Arden’s provided, and I hope they’re not random numbers she scribbled down to get rid of us . . . but she’s right, they do lead us to the ass end of nowhere in Georgia, which is as remote as it gets. After some discussion, Sam calls in to his friend Agent Lustig, and we tell him what we know from Arden; Lustig says he’ll check it out when he has the manpower.

  We decide that might be never, and that we don’t care to wait.

  We sleep in the SUV for a few hours down on a logging road, and when Sam finally wakes me up, it’s night. Chilly, too, and damp. There’s a light freeze in delicate crystal lace over our windshield.

  “We should get moving,” Sam says. “See if this guy’s home.”

  “Tell Lustig we’re going in,” I say.

  “Mike will tell us not to.”

  “Well, then he can get his ass out here and stop us.”

  Sam smiles, dials the phone, and gets voice mail. He gives Lustig a brisk account of where we are and what we plan to do, and then he turns the phone off and puts it in his pocket. I silence mine, too.

  “Ready?” he asks me. I nod.

  And we go.

  It’s a hard hike up a steep, difficult slope, and if we hadn’t known where we were heading, we’d have missed it entirely.

  I kneel behind a screen of Georgia underbrush, in the shadow of a looming pine tree. It’s a small cabin, two rooms at most, and it’s well kept up. Gingham curtains in the windows. A neat stack of firewood waiting to make the place warm and cozy. Nobody’s burning a fire tonight. No smoke coming from the chimney.

  A light flickers on in the main room. Someone’s home. Sam’s made me agree to observe and report, and only go in if we’re sure no one’s inside; after Arden’s warning, neither of us wants to be in a violent confrontation with a sociopath. So we’re going to have to wait for him to leave . . . or come back later. As cold as I am, I’m in favor of the latter option, because it’s murderously dark already, and there’s a wind with a viciously icy edge to it that brings tears to my eyes. Every breath burns like a paper cut. And I’m sore and stiff, and I want to go home and hug my kids forever.

  But I focus during the long hours that follow as lights flicker on and off inside the cabin, as the TV comes on and switches off. Leave, I beg the man inside, but that doesn’t happen. In my mind, I run through what we’d like to get out of this. A handwritten list of the real names of other Absalom hackers would be nice. Never happen, of course. But I’d settle for online handles, which we might be able to get the FBI to track. Sam’s friend in the Bureau could get us useful information. But at the very least, we’ve identified a suspect for Mike Lustig to grill. That has to count for something.

  In the cabin, a radio is playing. Something low and quiet. Jazz, I think. Maybe it’s stereotypical, but I expected thrash metal for a hacker. Coltrane seems out of character, somehow. I only really notice because the music shuts off, and about a minute after, the light goes out in the front window. From where I kneel, I can’t see the side, but I can see the light that’s being cast out over the ground in a golden spray. I see when it, too, cuts out.

  Our mark is goi
ng to bed. Finally. I check my phone for the time. It’s nearly two in the morning.

  Sam is noiselessly rising to his feet, and I try to do the same. I’m athletic and strong, but creeping around in the dark forest isn’t among my particular skill sets. I just try not to do anything obviously stupid. He makes a throat-cutting gesture; he wants to punt this and try again tomorrow. We have to find a time when our man isn’t at home, to avoid any confrontations. I understand why, but it’s so frustrating to be so close and not get answers. Any answers.

  You don’t want to hurt anyone, Gwen, I tell myself. That’s my better angels talking. My demons are telling me that I absolutely do, that I want to put a gun to this man’s head and demand to know what right he thinks he has to make my life, and the lives of my innocent children, a living hell. What kind of sick bastard takes the side of a cold-blooded psychopath who tortures and kills innocent young women? And gets paid for it?

  I don’t want to leave. I want to go in there and ask. But I know that Sam is right, and I’m fiercely and terribly emotional about all this. I want my ex-husband dead, because every moment he’s out in the world is another moment he’s hurting people. And coming for my kids, and for me.

  I force myself to agree with a nod to Sam that, yes, we will break off our approach and come back tomorrow.

  A blur of movement catches my eye, and I snap my head to the right, in time to see a small rabbit break cover and race across the open space in front of the cabin. Behind it comes a black cat intent on its prey. Neither of them makes a sound. Life and death, happening right in front of us.