Page 76 of Trapper Road

“Please, Mike. Do this for Sam.”

“If you get caught with this, it didn’t come from me.”

“Of course not.”

He lets out a long sigh. “There’s a secure server. Untraceable. I’ll send you the link. You’ll have fifteen minutes to get the files before I delete them.”

“Done.”

“Don’t make me regret this, Gwen. Don’t make me regret trusting you.”

I laugh. “You’ve never really trusted me.”

I can hear the grin in his voice. “Fair point.”

He hangs up without saying goodbye, and I immediately start the car and begin the short drive back to the motel. Instinct has me watching for anything suspicious, my eyes bouncing between the mirrors and the road, but Gardenia’s a sleepy town and mine is the only car out this late at night.

As I drive, my mind churns through everything I’ve just learned. How did I not see any of this? And how long has this been going on?

If Connor had questions about his father, why didn’t he just come to me?

Maybe he tried.

I try to think of the last time Melvin Royal came up in conversation. It was right before the lighthouse. I’d gotten a letter from Melvin and shredded it. Lanny brought it up. I close my eyes and try to remember Connor’s reaction to that news that I’d destroyed Melvin’s letter without letting either of them read it.

He’d been nonchalant about it. He said something about having already said goodbye — that he tried not to think about his dad at all.

He’d called him Dad. That I remember. Because Lanny never calls him that.

I’d taken him at his word, assumed he’d put his past behind him — put his father behind him. Clearly, he hadn’t. And I never followed-up — never checked in. Not even when I learned soon after that Connor had been posting about his father on a message board under the moniker Ripperkid.

I realize now that I learned about those posts the day before I went after Jonathan Watson and ended up jumping from the lighthouse stairs. In the aftermath, I was so focused on the pain and my recovery that I let so much go. I lost my focus, my faith in myself and my gut instinct.

I let my head fall back against the headrest. None of that is an excuse. The clues were all there. I should have known. I knew he’d been posting about his father online, and I let it go. I never asked questions.

Maybe I just wanted to believe Connor was okay, and that’s why I never pressed the issue.

If I’d been paying attention, I would have realized that Connor still had issues to resolve about his father. But of course he did. Every fifteen year old anywhere has issues with their parents. It’s a rite of passage, even for kids whose fathers aren’t notorious serial killers.

I’d just missed it. I’d been focused on the madman coming after our family, and then there was the incident at the lighthouse and the recovery after.

A deep ache opens up inside me, a feeling of loss and grief. Connor had needed me, and I wasn’t there. I didn’t see.

I pull into the motel parking lot, quickly surveying my surroundings for anything out of place. There are only four other cars, none of them new guests. I’d already had someone at the office run their tags and they all checked out.

I pull into the space in front of our rooms and sit, staring out the windshield toward the motel, knowing that Connor’s just on the other side of that door. In the past I would have asked him directly about what I’d learned — no subterfuge, no talking about the topic.

We used to have those kinds of talks late at night, just the two of us, over cookies and hot cocoa in the kitchen. But when was the last time? I can’t remember. That’s how long it’s been.

Then a familiar voice inside me whispers the question I’ve been trying to avoid. If I didn’t know about Connor’s obsession with Melvin, what else don’t I know? Do I really know my son as well as I think I do?

Is it possible that Connor may have been more involved in the shooting after all?

My entire body rebels against the thought. But still I have to face it. If he was involved, I do him no favors by blindly believing in him. If there’s one thing I learned when that drunk driver opened the worst of our family’s secrets to the world, it’s that you have to face the truth, no matter how ugly.

* * *

As promised, within a few minutes a text comes from an unknown number with a link to a secure server. I grab my laptop from the backseat and connect it to the motel’s internet. I navigate to the server and find only one file. I click to download it.