IT WAS LATE, nearly midnight, but Lucas continued to sit at his relic of a desk with his head in his hands. He’d checked up on Jeanie earlier, asked her if she was hungry, made a couple of turkey sandwiches, and left them in the fridge in case she decided to tear herself away from her computer and come downstairs. And then he’d shut himself up in his study the way Caroline had warned him not to, hoping to find comfort in the room’s warm tones of green and brown. He stared at a scrawled list of names, people who he may or may not be able to find, folks who either knew Jeffrey Halcomb or people who had once run in his circle. They were all soft leads, none of which offered what that mysterious and frequent prison visitor could. He had nearly called the prison to ask Josh Morales if he’d talked to Officer Eperson about Halcomb’s caller. But that was unlikely. Lucas had just been to Lambert Correctional that morning. He didn’t want to come off as demanding. Or desperate.
Up until now, he had been able to squelch his anxiety about the project with the knowledge that Jeffrey Halcomb had asked him to write this book. With Halcomb at Lucas’s disposal, the book seemed as though it could have written itself. Even Halcomb’s insane deadline seemed manageable. All Lucas had to do was ask the right questions and transcribe Halcomb’s answers. But now, with his main source inexplicably playing hard to get and time running out, Lucas felt on the verge of folding beneath his sudden lack of confidence. Jeff Halcomb hadn’t just broken his promise—he’d stolen the last of Lucas’s hope.
Book or no book, Caroline was going to leave him. He’d fight for custody, but he already knew that Caroline would use his biggest weakness against him. She’d tell the judge he didn’t make any money. The judge would then ask how Lucas expected to support a child when he could hardly do so for himself. Lucas would lose. And after a few years of seeing his kid on school breaks, Jeanie would decide visitation was a pain in the ass. She’d find a boyfriend, which would seal the deal on her not wanting to spend three months of her life on the West Coast. Suddenly, he wouldn’t know his kid anymore, his daughter opting to not hang out with a washed-up loser of a dad who didn’t understand her, who couldn’t relate, a man who had turned into some weird hermit surrounded by books about ax murderers and serial rapists while living on the rural Washington coast.
And then there was the faithful literary agent John Cormick, the steadfast optimist. He’d drop representation of Lucas in two seconds flat after hearing that the book on Halcomb was stillborn.
Sorry, Lou. We’ve had a great run, but I gotta cut you loose. Keep your head up. Best of luck.
Without putting a single word of this new project to paper, he was already defeated.
“Fuck.”
He exhaled the profanity into his palms, dragged his fingers down his face, and let his hands slap against the varnished oak. Not knowing what else to do, he stepped out of the room with his head bowed and his thoughts scrambled, only glancing up for half a second to see Jeanie’s closed bedroom door. He made a beeline for the kitchen. Rummaging through the few unpacked boxes, he located his desk-sized coffeemaker—a little four-cup job just large enough to keep him fueled. It was a crappy old thing that needed replacing, one he had bought out of frustration, each trip to the kitchen for a refill robbing him of precious momentum. That was during a time when he’d actually had momentum. Now he was simply hoping for a caffeinated jump-start. Tugging the coffeemaker out of the box by its cord, he tucked it beneath his arm, grabbed a filter from the pantry, and fished a bag of Starbucks grounds out of the refrigerator door. He all but tripped over the box he’d left in the middle of the room, just barely catching himself on the wall.
“Jesus Christ.”
He continued onward, determined to set up his coffeemaker and get to work, no matter how shitty or unmotivated he felt. Maybe, somehow, by some miracle, he could pull a rabbit out of a hat. Because if he gave up now, it wasn’t just about the book—it was everything. Caroline. Jeanie. His career.
Goddammit, he forgot the water. He turned around, climbed the two brick steps from the recessed living room into the kitchen, and stopped midstep.
There was a voice.
It was far-off. Indiscernible. Nothing but a handful of muffled underwater tones, but it was distinctly female.
Lucas froze and listened as he stood in the mouth of the kitchen. He held his breath, trying to make out where the sound had originated. His first thought was that it could have been Jeanie watching some late-night TV, but there was no television in her room. When he had glanced upstairs on his way to get coffee, her door was closed.
The voice faded as quickly as it had come, leaving Lucas to shake off the goose bumps that had crawled across his skin.
Just my imagination. After all, houses had a tendency to unnerve new tenants, and this one had an especially good reason to creep someone out. Except what about the shadow figure he had thought he’d seen in the corner of the kitchen minutes after he’d first stepped into the house? Had that been more of his runaway creativity? It seemed to him that this house was making him jumpy as hell. If anything, it should have been sparking some literary artistry. But instead, it was just making him feel like he was losing his mind.
He stepped into the kitchen, still listening for what he swore he had heard—you didn’t hear a damn thing, Lou—and stuck the small glass coffee pitcher beneath the faucet. That was when he saw her; a blond-haired woman running through the cherry orchard. It seemed as though someone was chasing her. She looked panicked, half tripping over her feet as she darted between the trees.
Lucas’s heart sputtered. He squinted, struggling to see past his own reflection in the window above the sink. She moved out of sight before he could get his bearings, leaving him to stare at rows upon rows of trees glowing silver in the moonlight. A moment later, he saw a flash of two or three others, tailing her like pale streamers tied to her feet.
“What the hell . . . ?”
He left his pitcher of water on the counter, unlocked the door that led out onto the back patio, and stepped outside.