Another thump. A scream.
Mommy?
I’m at the top of the stairs now. There’s something at the bottom.
Something big.
Something lumpy.
And suddenly, my mother is on the stairs, kneeling in front of me. “Go back to sleep, baby.”
There’s blood on her hands.
“Did the old man come?” I ask. “Did he hurt you?”
My mother presses her lips to my head. “It’s just a dream.”
I came out of the memory with my body still pressed against Dean’s, my head buried in his shoulder, his hands combing gently through my hair.
“There was blood on my mother’s hands,” I whispered. “The night my mom and I left Gaither, I heard something. A fight, maybe? I went to the top of the stairs, and there was something at the bottom.” I swallowed, my mouth so dry the words wouldn’t come. “There was blood on her hands, Dean.” I forced them out anyway and didn’t let myself stop. “And then we left.”
I thought about the rest of the memory.
“There’s something else?” Dean asked.
I nodded. “The day we left,” I said, pushing back from his chest, “I’m fairly certain I met Malcolm Lowell.”
Nightshade’s grandfather still lived in a house on a hill overlooking the Serenity Ranch compound. Malcolm Lowell was pushing ninety, confined to a wheelchair, and—as his home health aide informed Agents Sterling and Starmans—not up for visitors.
Agent Sterling didn’t take no for an answer.
Back at the hotel, I sat between Dean and Sloane as we watched the live feed from Sterling’s lapel camera, all too aware of the risk Agent Sterling was taking by flashing her badge. If word got around that Sterling was FBI, Holland Darby might start to consider Lia a liability.
As the nurse reluctantly allowed Sterling and Starmans into the massive house, my mind went to what I’d remembered. The stairs. Something at the bottom.
In my six-year-old mind, the scary old man who’d yelled at Melody and me and the events that had transpired that night were integrally related, but from a more mature perspective, I could see that they might well be two independent, traumatic events, linked in my mind only by their proximity to each other in time.
An intimidating old man had scared me. And that night, something had happened—something that had ended with blood.
“Mr. Lowell.” Agent Sterling took a seat across from a man who appeared no older than he had a decade earlier. He was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, just as he had then.
The scars were still visible.
As a child, they’d scared me. Now, they told me that Malcolm Lowell had woken up every day for the past thirty-three years with a very visible reminder of the attack that had left his daughter and son-in-law dead.
“I’m Special Agent Sterling with the FBI.” Agent Sterling let her posture mimic his—straight and uncompromising, despite his age. “This is Agent Starmans. We need to ask you some questions.”
Malcolm Lowell was silent for several seconds, and then he spoke. “No,” he said, “I don’t believe you do.”
She wants to ask you some questions, I thought. There’s a difference.
“We have reason to believe that your family’s tragedy may be related to a current serial murder investigation.” Agent Sterling danced the line between offering specifics and offering truth. “I need to know what you know about the original murders.”
Lowell’s right hand crept up his left sleeve, running his fingertips over a scar. “I told the police what I knew,” he grunted. “Nothing else to tell.”
“Your grandson is dead.” Agent Sterling made no attempt to soften those words. “He was murdered. And we would like, very much, to find his killer.”
I glanced to Michael.
“Grief,” Michael said. “And nothing but.”
Malcolm Lowell had disowned his grandson when the boy was nine years old, but more than thirty years later, he mourned his passing.
“If you know something,” Agent Sterling said, “anything that might help us find the person who attacked you—”
“I was stabbed repeatedly, Agent.” Lowell met Agent Sterling’s gaze, his own uncompromising. “In my arms, my legs, my stomach, and my chest.”
“Did your grandson witness the attack?” Agent Sterling asked.
No response.
“Did he participate in the attack?”
No response.
“He’s shutting down,” Michael told Agent Sterling over the audio feed. “Whatever emotions your questions might have provoked a couple of decades ago, he won’t let himself feel anything now.”
“Sound familiar?” Dean asked me.
I thought of Nightshade, stonewalling the FBI the exact same way his grandfather was now. He’d learned the power of silence firsthand.
“Ask him about my mother,” I said.
Agent Sterling did me one better. She withdrew a picture—one I hadn’t even been aware that the FBI had. In the picture, my mother was standing onstage, her eyes rimmed in thick black liner, her face alive with expression.
“Do you recognize this woman?”
“Eyesight isn’t what it used to be.” Malcolm Lowell barely even glanced at the picture.
“Her name was Lorelai Hobbes.” Agent Sterling let those words hang in the air, using silence as her own weapon.
“I remember her,” Lowell said finally. “Used to let her little girl run wild with Ree Simon’s hellions. Trouble, the lot of them.”
“Like your grandson was trouble?” Agent Sterling asked softly. “Like your daughter before him?”
That got a reaction. Lowell’s hands balled themselves into fists, loosened, and balled up again.
“He’s getting agitated,” Michael told Sterling. “Anger, disgust.”
“Mr. Lowell?” Agent Sterling prompted.
“I tried to teach my Anna. Tried to keep her home. Safe. And how did she end up? Pregnant at sixteen, sneaking out.” His voice trembled. “And that boy. Her son. He cut a hole in the fence, found his way down to that godforsaken compound.” Lowell closed his eyes. He lowered his head, until I couldn’t make out a single one of his features onscreen. “That’s when the animals started showing up.”