His guts seemed to shift, rearranging themselves so that it was harder to breathe, to think, to stand up straight. Lucas couldn’t decide whether to jump out the window or rush out of his study armed with his empty coffeepot, swinging it like a wild man as he bolted for the stairs to get his kid.
Lucas shot his arm out across the varnished top of his desk, reached for his phone, missed. The device bounced off the side of his hand and skittered along the desk, landing among the pile of photographs and newspaper clippings with a soft thump. He crawled across the floor in a rush, his palms and knees hitting the ground hard as he shimmied to the opposite end of his desk. The phone was there, close to the wall outlet and the electrical cord that kept his laptop and coffeemaker powered up. He snatched the phone off the floor and pressed his back against the wall, thumbed the lock screen, and tapped the phone icon.
Josh’s text glowed bright against the home screen.
See you soon? J.
Lucas remembered having cleared it before placing another call to the police.
See you soon?
But there it was, taunting him.
. . . soon?
J for Josh. For January. For Jeffrey. For . . .
Jeanie.
The phone tumbled from Lucas’s hand. He wiped his palm against the fabric of his pants, as if touching the phone would permanently infect him with the terrified madness he was already feeling. He had to get upstairs. Had to get to his daughter. Had to make sure she was okay. It didn’t matter how scared he was.
He made to scramble to his feet, but again, his movements hitched in sudden pause. His lips parted in a quiet intake of air as a new photo winked up at him from among the pile he’d studied so closely. In it, Jeffrey Halcomb stood in the front yard with Congressman Snow’s house to his back. One arm was looped around a brunette’s shoulders, her long hair hanging around her face like silken drapes. His other arm was around Audra. Lucas narrowed his eyes and plucked the photo off the floor, bringing it in closer to his face to study the dark-haired woman. At first it had looked like Georgia, but something about her face was wrong.
That was when he saw it, that large ornate cross given to Lucas at the prison. The cross he’d shoved into one of his desk drawers, too frustrated with a lack of answers to keep it in sight. The artifact was half-hidden behind the lapel of the woman’s shirt. Lucas brought the photo in even closer, squinting at the decoration that looked hand-painted and too big to wear.
He flipped the photo over.
Eloise, Jeff, and Jeanie.
His entire body went numb.
Lucas dropped the photo as quickly as he’d have dropped a lit match lapping at his fingers. It landed faceup. Jeff’s grin was now wider than before, beaming in malicious triumph. Echo smiled out at him, the cross around her neck winking in the sun. But he hardly noticed the change in Echo and Jeff, his eyes currently fixed on Audra’s face, her stick-straight hair now a halo of loose blond curls, her plain-Jane looks replaced by his daughter’s face. His girl. His Virginia.
“Oh my God . . .” The words came in a gasping rush.
He forced himself to his feet, pushed across the room, and without allowing himself the time to hesitate, pulled open the door.
In the living room, Audra Snow’s things were gone. So was the dark figure that had stood in the corner. But Lucas knew Jeffrey Halcomb was still there.
After all, Jeff had come home.
50
* * *
Monday, October 11, 1982
Five Months, Three Days Before the Sacrament THERE ARE FEW times in life when a person genuinely doesn’t know how they arrived at their destination, when the journey has become so snared and twisted with lies that an individual can’t tell left from right. Audra had thought about leaving, had seriously considered grabbing Shadow, getting in her car, and driving to the hospital, where she’d tell them everything. The family. The pregnancy. The way she’d been made to slit Claire’s throat, only to leave Claire and her dead husband behind in their picturesque beach home. But they were watching her. Her screams at the scene of the crime had awakened their sleeping suspicion.
She was no longer Avis. Now she was nothing more than a threat.
Kenzie kept a constant vigil when it came to the news, watching for any information about Richard and Claire Stephenson’s murders. Pier Pointe police were stumped. The locals were in an uproar. This sort of thing wasn’t supposed to happen in their town. Audra hoped her father would catch wind of the crime and drive down, or at least call. But of course he didn’t. And so she remained trapped within her own home.
She had cried for the enemy, for people who had threatened her life and the freedom of her most cherished comrades. She was too weak to receive the blissful euphoria that Deacon had described eight months earlier. She understood now that to achieve that bliss, she had to lose herself. To gain that happiness, she had to give herself to Jeff beyond any sort of trust she knew.
They called it faith, but they really meant surrender.
But she couldn’t surrender, not with a baby on the way. She couldn’t shake what she’d seen, what she’d done. Claire Stephenson’s screams continued to reverberate within her skull. The way the blood spurted from Richard’s throat played itself over and over again inside her head. Even if Audra somehow made it to the police, her confession would implicate her in a double homicide. If she got to the hospital, they’d pull her records, see the suicide attempts. The mania. The endless list of medications. The fact that she was living in Pier Pointe despite her primary-care physician’s suggestion to stay close to family. Stay in Seattle, he had said. I know you and your folks have differences, but in case of an emergency . . . in case you need them on short notice. Family is always good to have.
Family.