B.J. Daniels - Shadow Lake

She thought about calling Marc, just to prove to herself that it hadn’t been his voice she’d heard at Mary Ellen’s. But she had nothing to say to him. Gillian was right. Tyler had been the reason Anna had stayed with Marc. She’d so desperately wanted Tyler to have a father even if Marc had been a disappointing one. She’d hoped that as Tyler got older, Marc would get better.

Her throat closed at the thought of Tyler, her chest aching as tears again burned her eyes, blurring everything.

You have to stop this, Anna.

Marc’s voice again and a memory so clear it hurt. “You have to stop, Anna, before you drive us both crazy. I can’t take any more.” Possibly his last words to her before he moved out of their house. Or maybe more recently. They’d had so many fights she couldn’t remember the last one.

She dried her eyes and dialed Gillian’s cell again. Still no answer. She hung up without leaving a message.

Had it only been yesterday that she’d had Gillian and Mary Ellen over for lunch? Mary Ellen and Gillian had made a point of not mentioning the divorce or the fact it was to be final later that day.

Needless to say, the lunch had been strained. Anna frowned as she recalled how distracted Gillian had been. Even Mary Ellen had been unusually quiet. At the time, Anna had thought it was just her pending divorce causing it, but now she recalled she’d picked up an undercurrent. Mary Ellen and Gillian had seemed upset with each other.

Funny she would realize that now. She’d thought she was doing so well yesterday, but apparently she’d been numb to what had been happening around her.

She felt a sliver of anxiety burrow under her skin. Since she’d come out of the coma she’d been picking up weird vibes from everyone, especially Marc. But often Mary Ellen and Gillian, as well. Either they were all walking on eggshells around her, or they were keeping something from her.

When she’d mentioned this to Marc, he’d accused her of thinking everyone was plotting against her—especially him. But she still couldn’t shake the feeling that from the moment she’d opened her eyes two months ago in another hospital, her husband and friends had some secret they didn’t want her to find out about.

She knew that was crazy thinking. No secret was as horrible as the reality of what she’d awakened to.

Closing her eyes, she lay back on the bed. Her head ached and she felt sick to her stomach. She pulled the sheet up to her chin. It felt cool and smelled fresh from the laundry. Her stomach did a slow sickening roll as she recalled her friend’s stilted part of the conversation. Mary Ellen hadn’t even used Anna’s name during the call.

Because Mary Ellen didn’t want whoever was there to know it was her?

Marc would say this was just another case of her imagining things. What did she think Mary Ellen and Marc were doing? Plotting against her? It might not even have been Marc’s voice she heard.

She was acting irrational. She battled the urge to call Mary Ellen back and demand to know what was going on. She could feel another panic attack coming on. Marc had told her she was delusional enough times. She felt delusional.

She tried her friend Gillian’s cell phone again. Still no answer. Gillian always had her cell phone with her. It wasn’t like her not to answer unless she was in court.

Anna didn’t leave a message. Instead, she tried Mary Ellen again.

Mary Ellen answered this time on the first ring. “Anna?” Apparently she’d been waiting by the phone. “Where are you? Are you all right? We’ve been worried sick about you.”

Hearing the concern in her friend’s voice, Anna started to pour out her story about the accident, but she heard herself say “We?”

Mary Ellen’s voice softened. “Honey, Marc is really worried about you.”

Anna closed her eyes. It had been Marc’s voice she’d heard earlier in the background. Just as she wasn’t mistaken about the recrimination she now heard in her friend’s voice.

“I’m sure Marc has better things to do than worry about me,” she said. “We’re divorced. I’m not his concern anymore.”

An odd silence then, “Honey, Marc didn’t go through with the divorce. The papers were never filed.”

“What?” Hadn’t that been her hope, her prayer? Losing Marc had made Tyler’s death more real somehow. Anna had clung to the marriage because it was all she had.

“He changed his mind,” Mary Ellen was saying. “But, honey, I was sure he told you that last night.”

“Last night?”

AFTER OFFICER D.C. WALKER disconnected his call with Marc Collins, he had started to dial his boss when he noticed Mac was having a problem with the winch. He walked back over to the side of the mountain and saw nothing in the mist but water.

“Hook came undone,” the wrecker operator yelled to him. “Divers are down reattaching the cable.”

Walker stared at the lake with the rain clouds mirrored in it, still shocked by what he’d learned from Marc Collins. The gloomy gray day did nothing to lift his spirits. Where the hell was spring?

The news he’d received had left him angry and upset. What else was the woman in the hospital keeping from him?

One thing was for sure: he needed to let Chief Nash in on what was going on. He started to call him, but stopped as the divers reappeared below him on the shore and signaled to the wrecker operator that the car was ready again. Mac gave Walker a thumbs-up and the tow motor revved once again.

What worried Walker was how the chief had sounded earlier when he’d called. Was there some kind of trouble in Pilot’s Cove that his boss wasn’t telling him about? Or had the chief gone to the county seat to pick up the paperwork before he announced his retirement?

Walker brightened at the thought. He’d been waiting for twelve years for that job to open up. He couldn’t stand the suspense. He stepped away from the wrecker to call the Pilot’s Cove office.

“I was hoping to catch Chief Nash,” he told the woman who answered.

“Chief Nash from Shadow Lake?”

“Is there another Chief Nash I don’t know about?” He instantly regretted the sarcasm. “Sorry, it’s important I speak with him.”

“We haven’t seen Chief Nash in about four months,” she said, her voice as chilly as the lake below him.

“He was over there yesterday doing something with your department.”

“Afraid not. Maybe he was at Dam City or—”

Walker hung up when the engine on the tow truck let out an ear-piercing whine as the cable to the Cadillac began to grow taut again. The huge steel cable hummed.

Walker walked back over to stand next to the wrecker, still a little stunned. Chief Nash had lied. Walker couldn’t have been more shocked by that. He had great respect for the man. Nash was from the old school of justice, tough as nails, but fair and straight as an arrow.

There had to be another explanation.

The rear end of the overturned Cadillac broke the surface of the water. It looked like a blue turtle flipped over on its shell.

Walker stared at the path the Cadillac had taken down the mountain, a path of broken saplings, tire tracks and carnage. The same path the car would have to take this time, only on its top.

It was a miracle the woman had gotten out of the lake alive. Since talking to Marc Collins, Walker was even more convinced Anna Drake Collins hadn’t planned it that way.

Suddenly the whine of the wrecker’s winch intensified and then the cable snapped.

Walker watched the long snaking link of steel shoot like a rubber band back up the mountain—headed straight for him.

DOC STOOD IN THE DRIZZLE, unaffected by the cold and the rain while he talked to his dead wife the way he always did. It didn’t seem to matter what he talked about, just that he did.