When Lucas’s final lead resulted in nothing but disappointment, he sat staring at the linear wood grain patterns of his desk. That all-too-familiar dread was creeping back into his blood, poisoning him with anxiety from the inside out. He was at the end of his rope. His options were spent. If he wasn’t able to get in to see Halcomb within the next few days, his chances of talking to Halcomb twice were whittled down to once. And if he couldn’t get into that visitation room even once, the entire project was screwed. By then he’d be packing up his stuff, ushering his kid out of a goddamn house he should have never agreed on dragging her to in the first place. For all he knew, the current owner of the house on Montlake Road was in on Lucas and Jeffrey’s deal. Maybe as soon as Lucas vacated the premises, the property management company would alert the owner, who in turn would let Halcomb know. Boom, suddenly Lucas was in breach of their little contract and Jeff wasn’t obligated to see or hear from him ever again.
The possibility of the home owner being in on the deal nagged at him. Grabbing his cell, he called the property management company and asked for the owner’s information. This could have been a lead he’d nearly let slip through the cracks. But the damn place was listed under an LLC, not an individual name. It seemed that someone had done their homework to conceal their identity. Lucas could only hope that they had done so because of the house’s dark history and not because of what he and Jeff had going on.
Hitting yet another dead end, Lucas clenched and unclenched his jaw, trying to keep his frustration under control.
But the sudden memory of Kurt Murphy standing in the airport terminal waiting for Caroline pushed him over the edge.
His wife was gone. His relationship with his kid was fading. He still didn’t understand the point of Halcomb promising him one thing and doing the opposite.
His leads were gone. The project was dead.
He was fucked. Everything was fucked.
Abruptly, he rose from his chair. His arms shot out in front of him and did a violent sweep across the top of his desk. Papers flew in a burst of fluttering white. Books that had been at the corner of his desk hit the side wall, and his lamp crashed to the floor. The only thing that survived the onslaught of Lucas’s anger was his coffeemaker, the machine standing steadfast and true like the Little Engine That Could.
You are Lucas Graham.
He squeezed his eyes shut.
You can do anything.
“Fuck!”
It nearly startled him how loudly and forcefully the profanity shot out of his throat. It had been a full-fledged yell, a thunderous exclamation skirting a scream. What if Jeanie heard? He couldn’t bring himself to care, sure that his daughter had yelled that very same word at least a few times in her short life. Not that it mattered. He’d blown his chance at nurturing that relationship when she found him out. Because what kind of a father forced his kid to reside at a major crime scene? What kind of a dad was comfortable letting his preteen daughter live in a house steeped in blood, in a possible satanic ritual, in undeniable cult sacrifice?
The kind of father that could also run his only child out of town.
A selfish, single-minded sociopath.
The correlation skittered down his back like a spider.
“Fuck.” The word was more subdued this time, dripping with defeat. He shoved his hands through his hair, took a moment to try to steady his nerves, and shot a look around the room he had hit with his pent-up rage.
The coffeemaker seemed to wink at him from the corner of the desk.
Come on, Lou, just wait it out. Keep pushing. Keep trying. What else is there to do?
He fell back into his seat with a sigh. Plucking his cell off the floor, he speed-dialed Lambert Correctional. Halcomb was going to give him his fucking interview, and Josh Morales was going to return his fucking call.
“Hi, this is Lucas Graham.” He didn’t even bother to attempt at a friendly tone. “I have media clearance for inmate Jeffrey Halcomb. The last time I—”
“Oh, hi, Mr. Graham.” He recognized the voice. Lumpy Annie wasn’t feeling particularly friendly, either.
“Hi. I had an appointment for an interview, and he canceled on me.”
“Yes, Mr. Graham, I’m aware of that.”
“Has someone talked to him about this?”
“About what, sir?”
“About a reattempt at an interview.”
Lumpy Annie sighed heavily into the phone. “Sir, I told you . . .”
“And I don’t care what you told me, lady. I drove three thousand fucking miles—”
“. . . sir . . .”
“—just to talk to this fucking guy—”
“Sir.”
“—and this isn’t just a matter of him not feeling like it, okay? This is a matter of him telling me one thing and doing something else. I don’t care about his fucking rights, you get me? We had a goddamn deal.”
“Mr. Graham. I’ve already told you, the inmate isn’t taking any visitors right now.”
“Right, of course he isn’t. Except for some woman . . .”
“I don’t know anything about that, sir.”
“And what about the message I left for Josh Morales? Why hasn’t he called me back yet?”
“I really don’t know the answer to that, sir.”
“Can you at least make sure that he got it?”
Another sigh. “Yes, sir, I’ll make sure that Officer Morales gets your message.” Lucas left his number with Lumpy Annie for a second time and jabbed his finger against the phone’s LCD screen, ending the call.
He paced his study, waiting for his aggravation to taper off.
It didn’t.
He needed a drink.
Stalking across the house, he pulled open the refrigerator door and grabbed a sweaty Deschutes. But rather than trudging back to his study—he was still too worked up to get a damn thing done—he remembered the cross Halcomb had passed on to him a few days before. He’d nearly left the thing in Selma’s Toyota. She had tucked it into the mail slot before driving back to Seattle. Before Mark had left his Honda in exchange for the U-Haul rental truck, in exchange for Lucas’s Maxima, which he had yet to pick up. Goddammit.
That was when he heard something crunch up the driveway. Mark?
Maybe his friend had grown tired of waiting for his car to be returned. And now Lucas would feel like an asshole for yet another thing he’d promised to do but hadn’t. This is my life, he thought. Nothing but an endless train of feeling like a dick.
Pulling open the door, he prepared his apology. I’m sorry, man. Seattle just keeps getting pushed to the back burner. But rather than Mark, he found his weird neighbor Echo standing on the front doorstep. She held a small photo storage box nestled against her chest.
“Hi.” She flashed him a wide smile.