CHAPTER 76 MATT

76

Matt

FROM A WINDOW IN the living room, Matt watched Ellie load the strange girl into the passenger seat of her Ford and drive off down the street toward the mountains. Gabby was in the kitchen, making a pot of coffee. Josh had given up struggling and settled into the corner next to the radiator and gone quiet.

Even though he made it clear he didn't want her there, Addie sidled up beside Matt smelling like fresh lavender. Her damp hair darkened the collar of an FBI T-shirt she no doubt pilfered from Ellie's closet. When she spoke, she kept her voice low. "Let's just get in your cruiser and leave, Matt. You and me. Drive until we find an ocean somewhere and start over." She pressed against him and ran her fingers down the length of his arm until she reached his hand.

He shrugged her away. "Will you back off? Stop flirting with me around Gabby."

She gave a sideways glance back toward the kitchen before focusing back on him with a sly smile. "Just so I'm clear, it's okay when Gabby isn't around?"

"It's never okay," he shot back in a hushed whisper. " This is not going to happen. You and me will never happen. I love Gabby."

"No you don't. I think you love the idea of Gabby. She's safe. You can picture yourself living in a little house behind a white picket fence with her and her daughter. The three of you might look like a Norman Rockwell wet dream, but that doesn't make it real." She touched the tip of her finger to the back of his hand again. "That there, the electric feeling you get when I touch you, when you touch me, that's right , that's real . You can try to deny it, but your body won't let you. That kind of attraction doesn't happen by accident. We were meant to be together. I know you don't feel that when she touches you. You want to, but you don't. You tell yourself those feelings will come with time, but they won't. She can't give you what I can." Her hand moved to her belly, and for the first time, Matt realized she was showing a little bit. "You'd be a father to this child from the start. Gabby's kid will never see you that way. To her, you'll always be the guy sleeping with her mother. A stand-in. A substitute."

Matt felt an angry twist in the pit of his stomach. "I'm not that baby's father."

"You keep telling yourself that."

"I swear, Addie, if you don't stop I'll—"

"Coffee's brewing, and I found a pack of cinnamon rolls that expired two months ago in Ellie's fridge, I don't know about you, but I'm—"

Gabby's voice cut off when she saw Addie next to Matt at the window, so close the light didn't pass between them.

Matt fought the urge to move away quickly and instead turned as if he had nothing to hide.

Because he had nothing to hide , he told himself.

When Addie shifted around, she kept her hand on her swollen belly, drawing Gabby's eye on purpose. "Have you heard anything else from your daughter?"

Gabby didn't take the bait. She kept her gaze fixed on Matt. "Ellie has a landline in the kitchen, but calls aren't getting out. When I dial the rec center in Barton, I get the same thing as everywhere else: two rings and it disconnects. Nothing at all when I dial Riley's phone." She nodded at the window. "Any sign of Stu Peterson?"

Matt was about to say no when Peterson's pickup truck rounded the corner one block to the west and coasted slowly down Ellie's street. "Shit! Get away from the windows!" He shoved Addie with a little more force than he should have; she stumbled but caught herself on the corner of the couch.

"Down! Get down!" Matt told them.

The location of Ellie's house was no secret. Half the town showed up on her doorstep when they had a problem and couldn't find her at the sheriff's office. At one point about four years back, Peterson had been a regular at Ellie's Thursday night penny poker game. She'd put an end to that when he kept picking her brain about police procedural stuff and cases around town. Not because it wasn't any of his business (it wasn't), but because the purpose of the weekly game was to distract from the toils of local law enforcement, not dredge it all up as some weekly recap.

Crouched beneath the windowsill, Matt couldn't see the truck, but he heard the rumble of the engine as it neared, tensed when it seemed to pause outside, then only felt slightly relieved when it drove off. He only looked back out when the sound faded and he caught a glimpse of the truck as it vanished around the far bend.

Addie was beside him again. "Did those come from his truck, or were they already out there?" she said, pointing at the street. At least a dozen sheets of paper were fluttering around on the breeze.

"Stay inside. I'll be right back," Matt told them all.

He opened the front door slowly, carefully checked the street, then retrieved one of the pages. He locked the door when he got back inside the house. "Looks like some kind of flyer for a town meeting tonight at the middle school. Nine o'clock." He looked at his watch. It was ten after seven. "Less than two hours."

"We should go," Gabby said. "Maybe someone found a way out."

"That's risky. It doesn't say who organized it," Matt replied. "What if it's the same people putting up fences and shooting cars when we try to leave? Maybe they're just trying to round us up? Ellie was right. We should stay here and find some way to get outside help. I know she has a shortwave radio around here somewhere, we should—"

"You're a pussy," Josh muttered from his place next to the radiator. "Admit it. You'd rather hide than risk your own skin." He nodded at Gabby and Addie in turn. "Same reason you won't marry this one, and same reason you won't admit to fathering the kid growing in that one. You're a coward looking out for numero uno and nobody else. If you had half a ball, you'd put Peterson and the others in their place. You'd walk into the middle of that meeting and act like a leader, not some loser who couldn't hack it in the real world and had to come running home. Someone who disappears when life throws real responsibility at them."

"Fuck you, Josh," Matt fired back. "You want me to gag you, just keep talking."

"Go ahead. When I get in front of a judge, I can't wait to tell him about the police brutality I've suffered today. How you tossed procedure out the window and let your emotions get the better of you." Josh looked up at Gabby, a grin slipping across his face. "He ever call you Addie when he's slipping his dick in? I bet he has."

Gabby nearly kicked him, but Matt managed to grab her foot before she could connect. She struggled in his arms as she glared down at Josh. "You're a piece of shit. Every time you step into the diner, half the town starts talking about you and Nancy Buckley. How you're off screwing her while your wife was at home coming apart. How you fed Lynn pills like some kind of Band-Aid. You know, even if she killed your kids, then killed herself, that's on you. You put her in that state of mind. And that's a big if , because I think you killed all of them, you crazy shit!"

Both his arms around her, Matt lifted Gabby from the ground and spun her around so she was facing the opposite direction. He pressed his mouth against her ear. "Don't let him get under your skin. That's what he wants. Take a breath, ignore him. He's going to spend the rest of his life behind bars, just like he deserves."

"Let go of me," she hissed back between clenched teeth. Her eyes shot toward Addie. "I'm not so sure he's wrong about you."

She pulled away from him and stomped back into the kitchen.

Matt let her go. He knew better than to try to reason with her when she was upset.

"Lovely girl," Addie mocked. "It's so obvious what you see in her."

Josh chuffed. "I think he just likes Mexican."

Matt held both his hands up. "Enough! Both of you. This isn't high school." He crossed over to the kitchen doorway, grabbed the phone off the wall, and tossed it down to Josh. He caught it in his free hand.

"What am I supposed to do with this? You heard your girlfriend; it's useless."

Matt took out his cell, loaded his emergency contact list, and tossed that down to him, too. "I want you to call everyone on that list. When you reach the bottom, you start over. You stop, and I'm locking you in a closet until this is over." He turned to Addie. "And you …" He bit his lip, choked his anger back. "Ellie has a shortwave radio around here somewhere. I need you to find it."

"Sir, yes, sir." She held his gaze for a moment, offered a mock salute, then went upstairs.

"Peterson's gonna come back," Josh said. "He'll put a bullet in your head, then mine, then both your girls, and that will be on you, just like all this other bullshit, because you're a shitty cop."

Matt wasn't about to take the bait. "Dial."

At the mention of Peterson's name, he remembered the USB drive Peterson had given him and took it from his pocket. He glanced around the living room and spotted Ellie's old Dell laptop on the coffee table under some various pieces of mail.

He powered on the machine, located the sole video file on the drive, and clicked Play.

Matt watched the video in complete silence, somehow managing to tune out the others. There was nothing but the thumping of his heart. When it finished, he hit Play again, dumbfounded.