Page 88 of This is Why We Lied

Faith had assumed she’d have to file a warrant to hack the phone. “What’s your password?”

“My gotcha day,” he said. “Oh-eight-oh-four-ninety-two.”

Faith traced the numbers into the lock. The phone opened. She felt an unwelcome shakiness as her finger hovered over the voicemail icon. Before she played it, she took out her own phone to record whatever the message said. Her hand was sweating inside the glove when she finally tapped play.

“Dave!” Mercy cried, almost hysterical. “Dave! Oh my God, where are you? Please, please call me back. I can’t believe—oh, God, I can’t— Please call me. Please. I need you. I know you’ve never been there for me before, but I really need you now. I need your help, baby. Please c-call—”

There was a muffled sound, like Mercy had pressed the phone to her chest. Her voice was heartbreaking. Faith felt a lump in her throat. The woman sounded so desperately alone.

“I failed her,” Dave whispered. “She needed me, and I failed her.”

Faith looked at the progress bar under the message. There were seven more seconds left. She listened to Mercy’s soft cries as the bar got smaller and smaller.

“What are you doing here?”

Mercy’s voice sounded different—angry, afraid.

“Don’t!” she yelled. “Dave will be here soon. I told him what happened. He’s on his—”

There was nothing more. The bar had reached the end.

“What happened?” Dave asked. “Did Mercy say what happened? Is there another message? A text?”

Faith stared at the phone. There was no other message. There was no other text. There was only the timestamped notifications and Mercy’s last known recorded words.

“Please,” Dave begged. “Tell me what this means.”

Faith thought about what Delilah had told Will. The money motive. Her asshole brother. Her nasty sister-in-law. Mercy’s serial killer vibes brother. His creepy friend. The guests. The chef. The bartender. The two waiters. The locked-room mystery.

She told Dave, “It means you didn’t kill her.”

12

Sara stood on the edge of the loading dock in the bowels of the hospital as she watched the rain pour down. The search for Jon had turned up nothing. They had checked his school, the trailer park where Dave lived, and a few hangouts that Delilah remembered from her days as a teenager. They were heading back up the mountain to check the lodge and search the old bunkhouses when black clouds started rolling in. Sara could only hope Jon had found a warm, dry place to shelter before the sky had broken open. Both she and Delilah had been adamant that they wouldn’t let the weather stop them from searching, but then visibility had dropped, and thunder had shaken the air, and they had both decided to go back into town because it would do Jon no good if one or both of them were struck dead by lightning.

The weather app on Sara’s phone was predicting the rain would not let up for another two hours. The deluge was unrelenting, sending creek water over the banks, spilling out of gutters, and turning the downtown corridor into a river. Delilah had gone home to feed her animals, but there was no telling whether she would make it back into town.

Sara looked at her watch. Mercy would be ready for her soon. The hospital’s X-ray tech had told them it would take at least an hour to get through the backlog of living patients. Nadine had gone on a call to fix an air conditioner while Biscuits stayed with the body. Sara had been relieved when the sheriff had turned down her offer to spell him. She needed time to prepare herself mentally for the exam. The thought of seeing Mercy McAlpine lying on a table filled her with a familiar sense of dread.

In her previous life, Sara had been the county coroner for her small hometown. The morgue had been inside the basement of the local hospital, much as the one the Dillon County coroner used. Back in Sara’s coroner days, the victims had been familiar if not personally known to her. That was how small towns worked. Everyone either knew each other or knew someone who did. The job of coroner was one of tremendous responsibility but could also be one of great sadness. Working for the state, Sara had lost sight of what it felt like to be personally connected to a victim.

A few hours ago, she had been stitching together Mercy’s wounded thumb inside the bathroom at the back of the kitchen. The woman had looked washed out and beaten down. She had been worried about the argument with her son. She had been troubled by what was going on with her family. The last thing on her mind had been her ex-husband. Which made sense, considering what Faith had discovered. Sara wondered what Mercy would’ve thought to know that one of her last acts on earth was to give her abusive ex an alibi.

“You were right.”

“I was.” Sara turned to look at Will. She could tell from his expression that he was already beating himself up over the mistake. She wasn’t going to pile on. “It wouldn’t have changed anything. You still had to find Dave. He was the most obvious suspect. He checked the most boxes.”

“You’re being a lot nicer about it than Amanda was,” he said. “The access road to the lodge is washed out. We can’t get any cars in or out until the creek goes back into the bank. We need an off-road vehicle that can make it through the mud.”

Sara caught the irritation in his voice. Will hated standing around. She saw his jawbone sticking out as he clenched his teeth. He moved his freshly bandaged hand to his chest. Elevating it above his heart would stop the throbbing, but the pain would continue to gnaw at him because Will refused to take anything stronger than Tylenol.

She asked, “How’s the hand?”

“Better,” he said, though the tightness in his shoulders told her otherwise. “Faith gave me a Snickers bar.”

Sara hooked her arm through his. Her hand brushed against the gun under his shirt. He was well and truly back on the job. She knew what was coming next. “How are you going to get back to the lodge?”

“We’re waiting on the field office to bring some UTVs. That’s the only way we can get up there.”