Mick was cheerful when he picked me up that night. He was almost giddy. His plan had worked. His stalking and scheduling. Using Alice to lure me into this house.
And then he was hopeful as I was kind to Alice and then returned to the house after going into the woods.
And then I tried to take that phone and he wrestled me to the floor, dragged me to that room. There was excitement in his eyes, from the physical violence. From the dominion he then had over my body, but also my emotions. He provoked terror and relief each time he walked down the hall to that dark room.
But Nicole had arrived and he had seen her in the town. She reminded him of his dead wife and the thought got in his head. Under his skin.
Still, he gave us some time. Me and Alice. But also me and him. He watched me changing. He watched me standing before him, and sitting with Alice. He slept in the bed with us. I know he tried to want me. But hope turned to frustration. I was not enough. I have not been enough.
And now, he is planning something. With his avoidance of me, but his leniency with the food. He makes accommodations to appease me and Alice.
I must accept the truth now. The kind of truth that is known from inside, without the need for objective evidence.
I see Alice squirm on the other side of the bars. Her little arms reach through them for my body. A little octopus. I lie back down and let her wrap them around me.
I feel it.
The truth.
The fight is coming.
30
Day fifteen
The day turned to night in a heartbeat, it seemed.
She and Reyes arrived at Laguna just after noon.
She texted with her father to avoid having to hear his voice. She didn’t want him to know what she’d found out, about the affair and the credit card charge in West Cornwall that day. She texted him what she knew about Kurt Kent and Edith Moore. He texted back that his PI was looking into the connection. Reyes called Mrs. Urbansky at the station, asking her to find out about the utility bills at the property on Abel Hill Lane. He asked where Chief Watkins was, said he needed to speak with him.
Then came talk of Nic going home, but she refused.
Then stay here.
Reyes insisted. He didn’t want her near Booth after the incident in his apartment, or across the street from the bar and Kurt Kent who could very well have read her expression when she saw that picture on her phone of him with Edith Moore.
It’s safer here.
He checked her into a room, then went back to Hastings to gather her things from the inn. She gave him her key—the one with the giant wooden ring. He returned a few hours later and they went to the bar.
Watkins is nowhere,Reyes reported.Not at the station or at home.
Mrs. Urbansky said he was taking a personal day. He hadn’t answered his cell, and Reyes didn’t want to alarm him by having Mrs. Urbansky track him down on the police radio. Confronting the chief would have to wait until tomorrow.
But he did have news—and a document. A title copied from the land records at town hall for a property on Abel Hill Lane.
It is a corporation—a group of investors like Booth said,he explained.A holding company.They would have to search the records with the secretary of state to get the names of the investors. Reyes said he hadn’t lived here back then, but remembered there was talk of turning the buildings into a mental facility for criminals. Again—just like Booth had said. It never happened—but that explained the fence with the barbed wire. He said the same corporation also owned the Gas n’ Go.
There was nothing online. The corporation was no longer active. But that made sense—Booth had told her the investors probably only held on to the property for tax reasons.
Reyes and the state trooper had searched the redbrick buildings, but not the house where the foreman once lived. They didn’t know it was part of the same parcel. It had a separate driveway but no registered street address. It was as though it didn’t exist at all.
Except it did.
And then…
Vodka.
