Page 77 of Bad Mother

This isn’t helpful, Decker. Move.

Gavin grabbed a sweatshirt and headed for the door.

He made the twenty-five-minute drive to Argus’s in nineteen, his hands gripping the wheel, forcing himself to stay as calm as he could, knowing he needed to be quick but that it would do no one any good if he got into a car accident because he was in a state of panic.

He parked a block away and walked through the backyards to Argus’s house, his hand on his weapon. The house was dark, but the moon overhead was full and bright. He could see that the back curtains were closed. His heart pumped quickly as he stole around the front, stopping every few steps to listen for any small noise, but all was still and silent.

The unlocked front door opened, emitting a soft creak as it swung on its hinges. He drew his weapon, holding it facing downward as he put his back to the wall and moved inside.

He smelled the body before he found it—the very early stench of decay—his heart slamming in his chest.Oh fuck. Argus. Oh Jesus.His throat burned, his chest aching as he stared, back pressed against the kitchen wall, at the remains of the only father he’d ever known, the man who had taught him how to shave, how to tie a tie, and how to look another man in his eyes when you shook his hand. A painful lump filled his throat, but he swallowed it down, his breath coming short.Oh God. No time, no time for that.Argus was gone. Sienna and Mirabelle were his priorities right now.

He forced his eyes from Argus and glanced around the room. There were two phones on the edge of the counter, and Gavin walked to them. One belonged to Sienna. He recognized the red phone case. And the other was his mother’s. Sitting next to those was a note in the handwriting he recognized from the letters he’d been asked to read, looking for clues that might turn the police in the right direction.

Danny Boy.

Danny Boy had killed Argus, and now he had Sienna and his mother.

A jolt of fear and adrenaline tensed his muscles. He blew out a sharp breath, looking down at the note.

Gavin—Don’t call the police if you want to see your mother or girlfriend again. I’ve left you all you need. Ask Violet about me; she has the key. If you involve anyone else, it will be game over. You play fair, and I will too. You’re such a big winner, Gavin. I have all the confidence in the world that you’ll find us. But time is of the essence. Soon the countdown will begin. Danny

A surge of pure rage went through him. This psycho had the two women he loved most in the world, and he expected Gavin to play some sick game in order to find them?

Anger gave way to frustration, laced with fear, and underneath that was still the grief over Argus that he could not address, not now. Later, but not now, even as his body scented the room with death.

What was he meant to do, search this house for some small trinket that would lead to another trinket? Where would he even start? The only thing Danny had left him was the note and the two phones. He read through the note again, forcing himself to do it more slowly. Who the fuck was Violet? He tossed it down, cursing, his eyes moving to the phones. He picked up Sienna’s first and brought it to life.

The image on her screen was of two palm trees, one bent in front of the other, a red sunset behind them. It reminded him of something, and he had to stare at it for a few moments before it clicked. It looked like a photo version of the Paradise Estates logo. Just to be sure his memory wasn’t playing tricks on him—though he didn’t think it was; he’d looked at that logo almost every day for the first eighteen years of his life—he brought his phone out and did a search. He made a concerted effort to still the shaking of his hands. The mobile home park’s website came up, and Gavin stared at it. The logo had been updated and now featured some type of tropical plant with a swish of water behind it. Which made absolutely no sense, but then neither did the name of the community. Sienna had always made fun of it, called it ironic. Which of course it was, and the fact that it wasn’t purposeful irony made it all the more cringeworthy.

His chest ached.Sienna.

No, he was pretty damn sure this screenshot was a very close representation of that old logo, the one that had been on the sign at the entrance of the community they’d grown up in. And he was also fairly certain it hadn’t been on her phone when he’d seen the text from “Main Squeeze” come through.

He brought Mirabelle’s phone to life and saw that the picture on her screen was the same one that’d been there for months, if not afull year: Mirabelle and Argus sitting in lounge chairs beside her pool, glasses of lemonade in hand. He’d taken it himself.

He had to stuff down the ball of grief that rose up inside him at the sight of Argus smiling next to Mirabelle.Not now, not now.

He went to her text messages, but nothing seemed unusual. He opened her web browser and found that the only page open was the front page of a local news station. He frowned. Mirabelle didn’t look at news. Although she had said she was paying more attention now that Sienna was in town. Was this related? He let out a frustrated growl low in his throat, tossing the phone on the counter.This is insanity.

He opened Sienna’s phone and found the text that had been sent to him, the one he could only assume had actually been sent by the man who had her.

Helplessly, he looked around the kitchen, keeping his gaze purposely averted from Argus’s body, but nothing was out of place that he could see. The only clues were the phones.

“Jesus,” he muttered, his hand on his firearm as he once again left the house, took the same route he’d taken from his car, and got inside.

He steeled his resolve as he drove away, hating that he couldn’t even call the cops to notify them about Argus’s murder.I’m sorry, Argus. But I know you would be telling me to focus on our girls now.

It took him fifteen minutes to get to the trailer park, and when he got there, he had no real memory of the trip, his mind so preoccupied with what he’d found himself in the middle of and how this all might end. He parked near the new sign, with the new logo, a large boulder sitting next to the signpost. That was new too. Gavin walked to the sign and circled it once, running his hand along the top in case something flat that he couldn’t see was there. But there wasn’t. He moved his attention to the rock and attempted to push it aside, but it was too large and too heavy. He’d need a damn crane to lift the thing. God dammit. If he wasn’t meant to behere, where was he supposed to go? He swore, falling to his knees and desperately moving the sand around the base ofthe boulder aside to see if something might be buried in the dirt, but there was nothing.

He knelt there for a moment, listening, as a dog barked, then another and another as they all answered each other. A few yells rose in the air—owners telling their hounds to shut the hell up. He smelled the lingering scent of charcoal and meat. Someone, or several someones, had grilled their dinner, as many did rather than smoke up the small spaces inside their trailers.

He had to have been led here. Of all the people picking up that phone, only he would know that the picture on the screen was not Sienna’s and that it was a photo depiction of the old Paradise Estates logo.

He brought his phone out and shone a light on the rock, and with the additional illumination, he could see that there were etchings and writing on the surface of the stone. He moved the light around, his heart beating swiftly. It wasn’t graffiti; this looked very intentional and themed, done in shades of brown and gray, so he hadn’t immediately spotted any of it in the low light. There were outlines of children’s hands with inspiring words that declared,Faith!andBelieve!andGrit!It looked like the owner of the trailer park, or whoever had redone the sign, had had the children who lived here participate in some feel-good art project that blended into nature and that they could be encouraged by as they passed it at the beginning and end of each day.

As a poor kid who’d grown up in a trailer park and gone to a public school system lacking in funds, Gavin was well versed in this type of project, some big like a man-made lake with swans to beautify a downtrodden area, others smaller like this rock of positivity. They were the projects that made others feel good but that typically did little to change lives.

Cynical, Decker.And not the time. His mind was just in a free flow, and he was so damn scared he was running out of time in some specific way he didn’t know how to measure.

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