Page 21 of Darkwater Lane (Stillhouse Lake #7)

I bristle at the thought of her going to my house—of her even knowing where my house is.

I deeply dislike how involved she’s suddenly become in all of this and would like nothing more than to put some distance between us.

I glance at the taxi app on my phone and curse under my breath.

The soonest they can get someone to me is twenty minutes.

As much as I hate to admit it, Madison is right. She can get me home faster. It would be stupid to turn her down when she’s headed that direction anyway.

I shift, feeling the familiar weight of my firearm under my jacket. Then I climb into Madison’s car. She already has my address in her GPS, which only heightens my discomfort at how much this woman knows about me.

“How do you know my address?”

She barely resists rolling her eyes. “I’m an investigative journalist,” she says. “I know a lot.”

I wonder if she realizes how creepy that sounds. I’m regretting accepting her offer of a ride and contemplating asking her to pull over when she says, “I’m not the enemy, Gwen.”

“That remains to be seen.”

She doesn’t respond. She must realize that nothing she can say will sway her case.

When we turn onto my street, the night is awash with flashing red and blue lights. I’m instantly thrown into the past, driving home with little Brady and Lily, seeing the cop cars crowding around the bend in the road by my house and having no idea how drastically my life was about to change.

Madison pulls to a stop on the side of the road. For a moment, I sit frozen, caught in the grip of the past. I’d seen my first dead body that day. Callie, broken and flayed, hanging from a hook in our garage.

And now, here I am, returning home to another dead body.

I briefly close my eyes.

Please don’t let it be starting again.

I notice Sam at the edge of the police barricade and am instantly out of the car, running toward him. He pulls me against his chest and I let myself sink into the warmth and security of his embrace. It doesn’t last nearly long enough.

“What’s going on?” I ask him.

He shakes his head. “I have no idea. They won’t tell me anything or let me get any closer.”

I notice the uniformed officer nearby, his attention clearly on us rather than the house. He stands casually, but I don’t miss the fact that his hand rests on his hip next to his firearm. If needed, he could unclip his holster and have his gun pointed at us within seconds.

He watches us like we’re potential suspects. And I suddenly realize we are. The severity of the situation starts to sink in then. I flash back to what Lanny said she saw: a man on our couch, head back, throat slit, blood everywhere.

I close my eyes, imagining it from the cops’ point of view. That’s not the kind of wound that would likely be an accident, or self-inflicted.

Which means this man was murdered. In our house.

Of course, I already knew that. But being here, seeing the police and the ambulance and the flashing lights, suddenly makes it all too real.

With that comes more questions: Who is in our house?

Why? There’s no way his death is a coincidence.

It has to be a message, but what it means I don’t yet know.

I cross my arms, a shiver coursing through me.

Just then, a man steps from the house, speaking briefly with another officer, who points in our direction.

He glances our way, eyes sweeping over Sam and me in a quick assessment before he heads toward us.

Given that he’s wearing jeans and a collared shirt with a badge embroidered on the chest, I assume he’s a detective.

He holds out a hand as he approaches. “I’m Detective Gutierrez. Are you the homeowners?”

“Renters,” Sam tells him. “I’m Sam Cade,” he says, shaking the man’s hand .

Gutierrez looks my way expectantly. “Gwen Proctor,” I tell him.

“And it was your daughter who called this in?” he asks me.

“She’s our daughter,” I correct him. Sam legally adopted both Lanny and Connor the year before. “And yes, she found the body and called 911.”

“Is she here? I’d like to speak with her if that’s possible.”

There’s no way I’m letting anyone near Lanny at this point.

At least not until I have a better idea of what’s going on.

“She’s not,” I inform him. I don’t tell him where they’ve gone.

He doesn’t need to know. “I didn’t want them exposed to all of this.

” I wave my hand at the flashing lights and neighbors crowding their lawns.

“I understand. We’ll try to find a way to get a formal statement from her without too much disruption, if that’s okay.

” He phrases it as a request, but there’s a steeliness to his voice that makes it clear that he intends to talk to Lanny no matter what it takes.

And I plan to protect her no matter what it takes as well.

“In the meantime,” he continues, “I notice you have a pretty sophisticated alarm system.” Gutierrez points to the cameras at the corners of our house with his pen. “Any chance it was armed and recording earlier this evening?”

I nod. “It’s always running,” I tell him as I reach for my phone. “And we’re militant about keeping it armed.”

I open the app and pull up the feed from the first camera, scrolling back through the images from earlier this evening.

I stop when I note Sam pulling out in his truck.

Gutierrez moves next to me and watches as Sam leaves and then nothing until the rideshare pulls into the driveway.

I step out of the house, pausing to verify the make and model of the car against what’s listed in the app and asking the driver’s name before getting in. We pull away.

My stomach twists in anticipation. I realize I’m holding my breath and let it out slowly. We watch, waiting for the killer to arrive. The clock on the screen clicks forward as nothing happens.

Then, the screen goes dark .

I frown. “What the hell?” I scroll forward, and the picture returns, but this time, it’s my SUV in the driveway and my kids making their way to the front door.

Lanny says something to Connor that the camera doesn’t pick up, and he rolls his eyes.

She puts her key in the lock, then disappears inside.

Connor is just about to follow her in when she barrels back out.

She shoves him, hard, and points toward the car, her mouth clearly forming the word, “Go!”

Connor doesn’t hesitate. He bolts for the car, Lanny on his heels. Within seconds, they’re peeling out of the driveway.

Exactly as I taught them. All those times we’d drilled bailing from the house had paid off. They performed perfectly. Connor didn’t push back or ask questions. The moment Lanny said to go, he went. They were out of there in seconds.

But that still doesn’t explain the blank spot in the recording. I switch to another camera with a different angle. Again, we watch Sam leave, then me. Then the screen goes dark.

“I don’t understand.” My pulse pounds hard enough that I hear it in my ears.

“Are those the only two cameras? The ones on each corner?” Gutierrez asks.

I shake my head, my forehead furrowed in concentration. “No, we have two more that are hidden in case someone decides to mess with the main cameras. They’re on a different system too.”

I switch to another app. We run through the same routine, but again…nothing. The recording goes blank soon after I leave, starting up again right as Lanny and Connor return home.

Pressure mounts in my skull, causing a throbbing ache.

“This doesn’t make sense.” I click through the camera settings, trying to figure out what happened to the missing recording.

Perhaps some sort of setting was changed or the recording saved somewhere else.

“The cameras are set to run anytime the system is armed. Lanny said it was on when she got home… ”

I trail off, clicking back to the first app to check the log again.

We each have our own code so the system can track who arms and disarms the system.

I trail my finger down the screen—Lanny and Sam leaving for school this morning, Connor going for a walk, Sam running errands.

Lanny returning home from school and then leaving again to take Connor to the barn.

Sam leaving. Then me, on my way to meet Madison at the hotel.

I should have been the last user to arm the system until Lanny and Connor got home. Except there’s one more name after mine: Sam Cade.

I note the time: He disarmed the system only a few minutes after I left, then rearmed it twenty minutes later. Right around the time I was at the hotel bar waiting to meet Madison.

What the actual fuck ?

I quickly flick my finger across the screen, shifting to a different window.

I’m hoping Gutierrez didn’t have a chance to see Sam’s name on the log as the last one to have accessed the system.

I want a chance to ask Sam about it myself before handing that piece of information over to the authorities.

But when I glance over at the detective, I notice that his lips are pressed tight. Something in his demeanor has shifted, and I have a sinking feeling I wasn’t able to close the log before he noted Sam’s name.

“Can we get a copy of that?” he asks, nodding at my phone.

“I’ll have to figure out how to download the file first.” It’s a lie. I know how to use this system forward and backward, but something makes me hesitant about handing it over.

“My forensics team can take care of it if you’d like.”

I dodge the offer. “Can you tell us what’s going on?”

He considers us closely as if trying to determine how much to share. Then he asks, “Does the name Leonard Varrus mean anything to either of you?”