The winter chill seeped through every pore of his skin and he broke into a run. Seamus Watson, eighty-year-old patriarch, retired cop who walked with a cane, followed Chiefs football and teared up at family weddings the same way Duff did was a casualty of this mess? No. Not allowed. “How bad?”
“Bad. Niall’s trying to stop the bleeding. Get down here. Now.”
Duff had no one left to chase. The shooter’s trail had gone as cold as the snowflakes clinging to the black wool of his tuxedo.
“On my way.”
July
“Who cleans up a scuttled boat?”
Frowning at the smell of bleach filling her nose, Melanie Fiske waded barefoot into the ankle-deep water that filled the wreck of her late father’s fishing boat each time it rained and opened the second aft live well, or rear storage compartment where fish and bait had once been stored. She expected to find water, rust, algae or even some sort of wildlife that had taken up residence over the past fourteen years, like the nest of slithering black water moccasins she’d found hidden inside three years ago.
Poisonous snakes had been reason enough to stop her weekly sojourn to the last place her father had been alive. But too many things had happened over the past few months in this idyllic acreage where she’d grown up—the rolling Ozark hills southeast of Kansas City—for her not to explore every available opportunity to find out what had happened to her father that night he’d allegedly drowned in the depths of Lake Hanover and was never seen again.
Now she was back, risking snakes, sunburn and the wrath of the uncle who’d raised her, to investigate the wreck, tipped over on the shoreline of Lake Hanover next to the old boat ramp that hadn’t been used since the boat had been towed ashore to rot.
All these years, she’d accepted the story of a tragic accident. She’d been so young then, motherless since birth, and then fatherless, as well, that she’d never thought to question the account of that late-night fishing expedition. After an explosion in the engine, he’d fallen overboard, and the eddies near the dammed-up Wheat River power plant had dragged him down to the bottom. It had been a horrible, unfathomable tragedy.
But she’d caught her aunt and uncle in too many lies lately. She’d seen things she couldn’t explain—arguments that hushed when she entered a room, trucks that arrived in the middle of the night to take handcrafts or baked goods to Kansas City, fishing excursions where no one caught a thing from the well-stocked lake. And maybe most importantly, her uncle’s control was tightening like a noose around her life. There were rules for living on the farm now that hadn’t been there when she’d been a teenager, and consequences for breaking them that bordered on abuse.
Yes, there were bound to be flaring tempers as they transitioned from a simple working farm to a stopping place for tourists from the city seeking outdoor fun at the lake’s recreational area or a simple taste of country life without driving farther south to Branson and Table Rock Lake. There were reasons to celebrate, too. The farm had grown from a few family members running a mom-and-pop business to a small community with enough people living on the 500-acre property to be listed as an unincorporated township. But Uncle Henry still ran it as though they were all part of the same family. Their homes and small businesses were grouped like a suburban neighborhood nestled among the trees and hills. Instead of any warm, fuzzy sense of security, though, Melanie felt trapped. There were secrets lurking behind the hardworking facades of the family and friends who lived on the Fiske Family Farm.
Secrets could hurt her. Secrets could be dangerous.
When she’d hiked out to the cove to look for fourteen-year-old bloodstains or evidence of a heroic struggle to stay afloat after the engine had blown a softball-sized hole in the hull of the boat, Melanie hadn’t expected to find new waterproof seals beneath the tattered seat cushions that closed off the storage wells. The first fiberglass live well she’d checked had been wiped clean. Blessedly free of snakes, this second storage compartment also smelled like bleach.
Only this one wasn’t completely empty.
Curiosity had always been a trait of hers. Her father had encouraged her to read and explore and ask questions. But her uncle didn’t seem to share the same reverence for learning. The last time she’d been caught poking around for answers up in her uncle’s attic, she’d been accused of stirring up painful memories of a lost brother, and not being grateful for the sacrifices her aunt Abby and uncle Henry had made, taking in an eleven-year-old orphan and raising her alongside their own daughter. Melanie had moved out of the main house that very night and things had been strained between them ever since. And though she wasn’t sure how much was her imagination and how much was real, Melanie got the sense that she had more eyes on her now than any bookish, plain-Jane country girl like her ever had.
Squinting into the thick forest of pines and pin oaks and out to the glare of the waves that glistened like sequins on the surface of the wind-tossed lake, Melanie ensured she was alone before she twisted her long auburn hair into a tail and stuffed it inside the back of her shirt. Then she knelt beside the opening and stuck her arm inside the tilted boat’s storage well. The water soaking into the knees of her blue jeans was warm as she stretched to retrieve the round metal object. Her fingers touched cold steel and she slipped one tip inside the ring to hook it onto her finger and pull it out.
But seeing the black ring out in the sunlight didn’t solve the mystery for her. Melanie closed the live well and sat on the broken-down cushion to study the object on her index finger. About the circumference of a quarter and shaped like a thick washer with a tiny protrusion off one edge, the round piece of steel had some surprising weight to it. Unravaged by nature and the passage of time, the ring couldn’t be part of the original shipwreck. But what was it and how had it gotten there?
With a frustrated sigh, she shoved the black steel ring into her jeans. Her fingers brushed against a softer piece of metal inside her pocket and she smiled. Melanie jumped down onto the hard-packed ground that had once been a sandy beach and tugged the second object from her pocket as she retrieved her boots and socks.
It was her father’s gold pocket watch. She traced her finger around the cursive E and L that had been engraved into the casing. A gift from her mother, Edwina, to her father, Leroy Fiske had never been without it. From the time she was a toddler, Melanie could remember seeing the shiny gold chain hooked to a belt loop on his jeans, and the prized watch he’d take out in the evenings to share with his daughter.
But the happy memory quickly clouded with suspicion. The workings of the watch had rusted with time, and the small photograph of her mother inside had been reduced to a smudge of ink. Melanie closed the watch inside her fist and fumed. If her father’s body had never been found, and he always had the watch with him, then how had it shown up, hidden away in a box of Christmas ornaments in her uncle’s attic?
Had this watch been recovered from the boat that fateful night? Why wouldn’t Leroy Fiske have been wearing it? Had it gone into the lake with him? Who would save the watch, but not the man?
The whine of several small engines dragged Melanie from her thoughts.
Company. She dropped down behind the boat to hide. Someone had borrowed two or three of the farm’s all-terrain vehicles and was winding along the main gravel road through the trees around the lake. Maybe it was one of the resident fishing guides, leading a group of tourists to the big aluminum fishing dock past the next bend of the lake, about a mile from her location.
