Page 50 of The House Beyond the Dunes

“They weren’t on Friday.” He glances at me as if trying to reconcile what he’s heard with my words.

Kyle’s frown flashes, and I’m suddenly clamping down on anger. I can almost feel his fingers tightening on my arms.

Reece slows the truck and turns down a small, rutted dirt road. I grip the door to steady myself and maybe brace a little to jump out if necessary. This is the place a man takes a woman if he wants to kill her.

He stops in front of a small house on pilings. The wood siding is grayed by harsh weather and sun. The windows are shuttered. Tall grass grows up around the pilings, nearly reaching the front porch. There’s an old truck covered with a tarp.

“How far are we from the beach?” I ask.

“About a mile.”

“It feels light-years away,” I say, more to myself.

Seat leather creaks when he leans back. As he looks toward the house, he’s tapping his thumb against the steering wheel. “This is the house where Kyle grew up.”

I can’t reconcile the polished man I knew with this tired, deserted place. There was never a hint of a southern accent to soften his words or any mention of a humble upbringing. He often said he was a city boy. “It looks abandoned.”

“It has been since Jeb was sent to prison.”

“Was Kyle planning on fixing it up?”

“He never said a word about this place to me.”

“He said one of the worst things you can do to a person is ignore them.” This place has been disregarded, forgotten, and is literally falling in on itself. It’s a slow, painful death.

“It would cost a fortune to fix this place up. It’s not worth the land it stands on.”

Kyle was so meticulous with everything he touched. He could have tried to keep this place up over the years while Jeb was in prison, but he didn’t. “He wanted this place to suffer.”

“Suffer?” Reece flinches and then shakes his head. “It’s a house, Lane.”

“No, it’s a symbol, a warning, to where he came from and how far he could fall.” I’d come from nothing, and the higher I rise, the more I fear falling backward. “When you have nothing to lose, risk is easy. It’s only difficult when you have skin in the game.”

“Kyle was never afraid of anything.” Awe and disdain intertwine under the words. “This place is just a house.”

I stare at an open shutter, a salt-streaked window, and the sinking roof. “Was it so horrible to live here?”

“I don’t think it was good,” Reece says carefully.

The gray siding is brittle and breaking. The main support beam of the house appears to be caving in on itself. “Kyle never told you what it was like for him here?”

Reece shook his head. “Kyle never told anyone anything. He kept his secrets to himself.” He tilts his gaze toward the horizon. “I guess that’s why Kyle was good at what he did. No one wants a shrink that talks too much, right?”

I think about the notebook and the traced impression.Stevie.“He never talked to you about his patients?”

Reece chuckles as if the question is crazy. “No. We barely saw each other, and when we did, we talked about construction. The next house to build.”

“You built Kyle’s two houses?”

“I did.”

“But you never talked about fixing this place?”

“No.” His fingers tighten on the steering wheel.

Reece is a gifted craftsman who might’ve been able to resurrect this hovel into a rental property. Yet here it sits, abandoned and crumbling.

I look through the tall weeds to the stairs and wonder if they are sturdy enough for me. “Can we walk around the property?”

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