Page 63 of The Lake of Lost Girls

“Want me to stand guard?” I joked half-heartedly.

“Nah, I think I’ll be okay,” she remarked weakly before leaving the room.

I grabbed the remote, pointing it at the TV to turn it off when a picture of a yellow muscle car filled the screen. Against my better judgment, I turned up the volume again.

“An eyewitness has come forward claiming to have seen Meghan Lambert in a car similar to this one, a Boss 429 Mustang, on the day she went missing. Police are now looking for any information regarding this vehicle …”

I dropped the remote control and it clattered to the floor. I stood frozen in a state of horror with the image of a car, nearly identical to my father’s Mustang, on the television.

CHAPTER12

LINDSEY

Present Day

RYANDROVE INsilence for several miles, and I was glad. I didn’t know whom to trust. All I knew was that I sure as hell couldn’t trust Ryan McKay. I felt like such a moron for ever thinking I could.

I gripped the cardboard box on my lap. I didn’t want to let it out of my sight.

“There’s a great little greasy spoon up ahead. Should I stop so we can get something to eat? Maybe go through the file together?” Ryan suggested cautiously.

He hadn’t said anything about what I had revealed at Sergeant O’Neil’s house. He hadn’t asked how I knew he had dated Jess. He hadn’t tried to explain himself. He simply let the dark truth dangle between us, not acknowledging it. How could he act like everything was the same, when it clearly wasn’t?

I scoffed at the very idea that he would think I would want to go anywhere with him ever again, even a crappy diner.

Perhaps he was too focused on getting his hands on Sergeant O’Neil’s file. The thought of letting him have it was abhorrent. I had to protect whatever it contained, which meant keeping him away from it.

I refused to look at him, keeping my attention outside the window.

I was grateful to Sergeant O’Neil for finally doing the right thing after all this time, but I was angry with him, too. He had ignored obvious leads. He had purposefully looked the other way when suspects were practically thrown in his face. If he had actually done his job decades ago, then maybe it would have saved us all a lot of pain.

And while I was glad the retired detective had decided to try and help now, it would never make up for how little he had done when it actually mattered.

A clear conscience was something he wouldneverhave.

Ryan pulled into the parking lot of a small, rundown diner.

“What are you doing?” I snapped. I glared at him, my disgust for Ryan and the aging detective blending together. “Take me home, now.”

Ryan put the car into park and turned to me, his brown eyes pleading. “Like I said, I thought we could get something to eat and look through the file … together. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find something he missed. Sergeant O’Neil clearly never took the cases seriously enough.”

I hugged the box to my chest, my eyes widening in disbelief. “Are you serious? I don’t want to be anywhere near you. How can you think everything is fine between us?”

“But—”

“You lied to me, Ryan,” I yelled. “From day one, you were dishonest. Right from that very first meeting. You could have come clean and told me who you really were, but you didn’t. You chose to keep me in the dark about everything.” It was too much. I was overcome by a combination of rage, sadness and grief.

“Lindsey—” He reached for me and I pulled away.

“Don’t you dare touch me,” I hissed. “You’ve been flirting with me. Making me think you …likedme,” I hissed. “What iswrongwith you? How could you do that to me?” I broke down, wrenching sobs left me gasping. “How could you do that toher?”

“Jess hasn’t been my girlfriend in a very long time,” Ryan tried to explain, as if that made this any better.

“You purposefully deceived me,” I spat out.

Ryan looked appalled. But there was nothing he could say to justify his behavior.

“You and Jess fought on the day she disappeared. That doesn’t look great for you,” I accused. I realized, almost as soon as the words left my mouth, how precarious my position was. I was confronting a man I was beginning to suspect of horrible things, and we were alone … in his car.

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