“Something wild,” Reyes told him. “Something deadly. And a lot of it.”
Will stared over the railing at the Cooper River, eyes bugging at the water. “Jesus. What was this woman trying to escape that she effectively killed herself twice?”
The smooth, red face of her husband, Henry Davenport, flashed through Reyes’s mind. He’d known men like Henry before. Well, notexactlylike Henry, but close enough. His mother’s boyfriend when he was young—the tall man—could put her in the fetal position with just a look. And his sister… With his help, Lucia had managed to free herself, start over, stay safe. But her scars weren’t the kind that just etched the heart. In her last run-in with her fiancé, he’d carved her face open with a broken beer bottle, beaten her to within an inch of her life, and left her for dead in a motel room off the I-20. By some miracle, she’d regained consciousness and managed to call her brother. Reyes drove more than seven hours to collect her and take her to the nearest hospital. It was there they first learned she was pregnant. After that, Lucia came to live with him until the baby was born and they were certain Jace wouldn’t come back to finish what he’d started. Years later—Mia was fast approaching six years old—Reyes still panicked whenever his sister didn’t immediately answer the phone. He winced thinking how easily Lucia could have ended up like this woman.What was she escaping indeed.
On the walk back to the car, he wrestled with the surname, the hard, pale exterior of the man, Henry, and the large, loopingPfrom the suicide note, each insignificant on its own, but together they weighed on him with familiarity and dread. Heaven,it seemed, had gone from whispering to screaming. He glanced at Will. “What was her name again?”
Will looked at him sidelong. “Davenport. Why? You’re getting that constipated look on your face, Emil.”
Reyes ignored him. “Herfullname.”
Will glanced at the mobile computer. “Piers Davenport. No middle name.”
A wave of heat flushed across Reyes’s chest, and his throat tightened around an imaginary blockage, the old sensation still living in his cells when he couldn’t draw a breath, the day he nearly died. “Do we have a picture?” he asked hoarsely.
Will quickly pulled one up from the internet. “We do now.”
Reyes stared into the burning green eyes he remembered so well, though they were softer here, on-screen, than they had been in person that day. He felt his heart and his stomach meet somewhere inside his abdomen, everything shifting with the force.
“Jesus, Emil. You okay? You look like someone gut punched you,” his partner said.
“I know her,” Reyes let out slowly, the steady squeeze of her arms around his ribs like an ache now. She was a part of him. That’s how it was when someone stood between you and death. They stayed with you, like a scar next to the heart. “She saved my life.”
8Crow Lake
Myrtle seems nervous, turning off the lamps and sconces one by one, their little red shades darkening to plum. At the last, she pauses and eyes me from across the open room, her face haloed in its light, warped by wicked shadows. “I must confess, I’m a little surprised you found me. How did you do it?”
My own eyes are adjusting, trying to take in the details of where I find myself. The walls are paneled in honey-stained wood that matches the several small cedar tables and log chairs, their backs burned with the image of a tree. A kitchen takes up the rear of the room; and an L-shaped counter made of rough wood, bark, and twigs is situated left of the entrance. A black spiral staircase pierces the back of the café. To a sleeping loft, perhaps. And a wall-mounted TV hangs to the right. Overhead, a couple of old wagon wheels dangle from chains, lanterns suspended from the outer rings like rustic chandeliers.
I clutch my backpack awkwardly. “You told me, remember? You said you lived in Crow Lake. You made me promise not to forget.”
She breezes past me on her way to the front door. “Yes, but how did you know I would behere?”
I tell her about the article I found, memorized.
She eyes me with pride. “Clever girl.”
“You live here?” I ask, taking in the cozy lumberjack interior.
She laughs. “In the café? No. You’re lucky you caught me. I was just making sure the coffee makers were set for the morning.I always do it at close, but second-guessing myself has become a bad habit in my old age.”
We step outside and she locks the door behind us. “Follow me,” she instructs as she starts around the building toward the woods. The night is rich with smells and sounds, alive and awake in a way few places are. It feels almost illicit to stand among this much nature, outnumbered. The sky is riddled with starlight, the trees a wall of black beneath it, as solid and unbreachable as any man has built. As she nears them, I ask, “We’re going in there?”
Myrtle stops and turns toward me. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of the dark?”
I shake my head despite my reservations. I’ve stepped off a bridge. Surely, I can handle a patch of woods at night. But these woods are not a patch, they’re a sea, rolling over mountain and hill, valley and glen, blanketing the state in a thick carpet of leaves. And they do not know me. I am a stranger here. A sheep in the lion’s den.
She steps through the brush into the void.
Pausing at the edge of the forest, I look up, letting my eyes skate up elongated trunks to the ocean of stars beyond, the only thing greater than this wilderness. I am caught between infinities. There is a split second of knowing that once I pass through this barrier, I can never go back. My mind shakes the thought off like a dusting of snow, and I step in.
I quickly realize we are on a narrow trail, scarcely perceptible in the night. But Myrtle seems to know her way; her steps never falter. I do my best to place my feet where she placed hers, stumbling when I get it wrong. But she doesn’t chide me for it.
“I was sorry to hear about your mother’s passing,” she tells me as we wind deeper into the forest. “I loved Lily despite our differences.”
Slowly, my eyes are adjusting. The shapes of leaves emerge from the blackness, the subtle colors they wear. I even manage to avoid a few switches before they smack into me. But it’s the smell that really comes alive, rich and sweet as incense, the many notes of a perfume. Some hit me up front, others linger, waiting for meto notice. It is a performance, the scent of the forest, interactive and dynamic.
“She killed herself,” I blurt.
