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Looking up at me, with pain in his eyes, was Landon Bell.

Chapter

Thirty-Six

“She’s lucky.”

Dr. Holly Moran found me in the visitor lounge. It was two o’clock in the morning. I felt my entire body turn to gelatin. “Is she awake?” Dan Holland and Karen Maven sat on either side of me.

“She’s got a nasty bump on the head, but miraculously, the concussion is mild. The bruises on her neck will heal. Her knee is pretty banged up. This girl put up one hell of a fight. I’m going to keep her for twenty-four hours. I’d like to get a social worker in to see her as soon as possible. But Geneva is going to be okay. At least from a physical standpoint.”

“What about the others?” Dan asked. “When can I talk to the brother and her father?”

Mac walked up carrying a full cardboard four-cup holder. He passed them out to the grateful three of us. “Detective Lighthorse from my office is gonna handle that. We’ve got this from here, Dan.”

Dan looked tortured, but he set his jaw and nodded. It was going to be hard for him to let go. He and I had it out a couple of hours ago.

If only he’d trusted me when I came to see him all those weeks ago, maybe I could have made the connection between Kevin Bell’s stationery and the letters sent to Derrek Sidney sooner.

But none of that mattered now.

“I’m actually more worried about Kevin Bell physically than I am his daughter. I’m sending him for more imaging. He’s got a fractured skull, a few broken ribs, and his right wrist is shattered,” Dr. Moran said.

Not long after he and Landon threw me out, something set Landon off. He beat his father severely using a cane his physical therapist had left for him. Kevin had yet to regain consciousness.

As for Landon? He had barely a scratch on him.

“Thank God you went back there,” Karen said.

Things at Deadwater Lake played out about how I feared. When the team arrived, they found the place empty. Geneva’s discarded phone was found at the bottom of a hill where Landon had thrown it. We were still unclear on exactly what had happened out there.

“She’s ready to talk,” Dr. Moran said. “But she insists Mercy be present. I’ve strongly suggested that she get some rest first. But she wants to do it now.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “I won’t leave her side.”

Less than an hour later, Geneva Bell carried out the third most courageous act of her life. The first was surviving Deadwater Lake twelve years ago. The second happened just twenty-four hours ago.

Dr. Moran led Agent Maven, Mac, Dan Holland and me into Geneva’s room. Geneva’s hospital social worker sat in the corner of the room.

Geneva’s words were halting. Her voice cracked at first. But the longer she spoke, the more strength she gathered.

“I didn’t know,” she said. It worried me that Geneva’s voice was flat along with her affect. She could recount the events, but I knew she was a long way from fully being able to process them.

“I was just heading to the grocery store to pick up some things for Dad the other morning. I remember opening the trunk to clear some things out. Then I woke up. I thought I was dreaming. I thought it was a nightmare.”

Landon had drugged Geneva and thrown her into the trunk of his car and taken her back to the house at Deadwater Lake. He meticulously staged it to recreate that night twelve years ago when he murdered four of Geneva’s friends in order to impress Derrek Sidney. She woke up with a bikini top around her neck and tied up in the bedroom where she watched Annabelle Oleson die from across the hall.

“When I came to, I didn’t know it was Landon who took me,” she said. “I was so groggy. Things were so blurry and hazy. I was alone in that bedroom. Then someone came up behind me and put a bandana over my eyes. I couldn’t see anything. How could I have not realized it was Landon?”

“You were experiencing tremendous trauma, Geneva,” the social worker said. “Your mind was trying to protect you.”

“I could hear someone moving around the house. Those sounds. They were just like that awful night. Those footsteps above my head. Coming down the back stairs. It was like he retraced all of his steps from that night and left me waiting there. Anticipating it all over again.”

“But how did you end up in the neighbor’s barn?” I asked.

Geneva sniffled. “He left me in that bedroom for hours. I think I was alone for a long time. I managed to shift the bandana so I could see a little out from the bottom of it. I remembered my phone was in my back pocket before everything went black. I was trying to reach for it. It wasn’t there. But then I heard it. You were trying to call me, Mercy. I just couldn’t get to it. One of the times my phone alerted with a text notification, the man … Landon came back into the room. He saw my phone on the floor and went nuts. He kicked me sideways and picked my phone up. He left me alone again and I could hear him swearing. When he came back, he didn’t have my phone anymore. But something was upsetting him. He was talking to himself. I couldn’t make sense of anything. Then he came to me. He hit me again. Hard enough that everything went black. When I woke up again, the bandana was off and I was inside the barn.”

“We think he might have been spooked by something,” Karen said. “Your phone was recovered near the shoreline. Maybe he didn’t realize you had it with you. Maybe he thought he wasn’t safe in that house anymore. But he moved you.”