Page 29 of Frozen Secrets

Her father wasn’t just a liar or a killer. He’d cheated on her mother. Had she known? Was that where the brightness in her eyes had gone after Winnie had been born? Had she known her husband wasn’t the man he’d presented himself as to their family, the community?

“Technically, you look like me since I’m older by about two months.” Her attacker smiled. “Daddy Dearest sure liked to play the field, didn’t he? Who knows how many others are out there? I wonder if he killed them when they wouldn’t get rid of their babies so his wife didn’t find out, too.”

Winnie’s mouth parted to say something—anything—to make this better, but there was no justifying her father’s actions. All these years she’d given excuses for why he’d rejected her over and over, telling herself he was grieving for the love of his life, that he only felt whole working that damn case, that she wasn’t enough for him. But it’d all been him. He was the failure. He was the one who didn’t belong. “I’m—I’m sorry.” Understanding clicked into place, and Winnie snapped her mouth shut. “You’re not Lila Mercer’s daughter. You’re Lila Mercer.”

“Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner.” The killer pointed at her with that wide smile that reminded Winnie of sociopaths mimicking others. Practiced.

“You were sixteen when she disappeared.” A crack sounded beneath Winnie’s feet, spidering from her heel and chasing across the ice toward the cinder blocks. Her heart jumped into her throat, verging on panic, but if she could just get Lila to believe her, they might be able to walk away from this alive. “The same age I was. How did they get it so wrong?”

“My mom was a nurse. That much was true. She got pregnant with me during a fling with a police officer who promised her the world, but he refused to leave his wife. So she broke up with him, only learning about me afterward. She never told him. She knew he’d demand for her to have an abortion to save his marriage and his precious image. Bastard children don’t really make for good campaign material.” Lila circled to the left, toward the cinder blocks, and the ice fractured in little lines from her added weight. “I was handed around to neighbors and friends whenever she had a shift. She didn’t have the means to leave the town that’d judged her for being an unwed mother, so we stayed in that crappy little house at the edge of town for years. Until one night, there was a knock on the door. My mom was in the kitchen, so I answered it. And found a BHPD officer staring at me like he’d seen a ghost. I think he knew then. Who I was. What she’d done. I must’ve been a spitting image of you at that age, and if anyone were to put two and two together, he’d lose everything he’d built with his lies.”

Winnie braced as another crack streaked between her feet. The ice was at a breaking point, heavier with Lila closing in.

“The officer left without saying anything. I didn’t even tell my mom about his visit. I don’t know why he was there or what he wanted. I just went back to watching TV, but that night, there was a break-in. The intruder came through the back door. She woke me up with a hand over my mouth, shushing me when I heard them inside. She had a knife. I don’t know how she got it, but after she went into the living room I heard her scream. Then a groan.” Lila’s gaze came back to Winnie. A split second before she stomped one foot near the cinder blocks. The ice splintered and protested, fractures barreling outward, and Winnie braced herself for the final fall. “She called the police and filed a report. He’d left blood at the scene. She’d somehow managed to stab him before he fled, but, as you can imagine, nothing came of it.”

Winnie’s breath shuddered as she tried to back up, to put as much distance between her and the spreading cracks as possible. But the cinder blocks were heavier than they looked. The chains snapped around her ankles and nearly took her down. Her skin felt too tight, her tongue too big for her mouth. She was going to die out here. Die with the knowledge her father had deserved every ounce of pain Lila had most likely put him through, deserved every friend, neighbor, officer and his own damn daughter abandoning him so he could rot in this world alone and with a guilty conscience. Arthur Hutton wasn’t the hero she’d believed. He was nothing. Nothing. And she was going to die because of him. She was going to lose her chance to tell Adrial she didn’t hate him, that all these years apart was like a piece of her soul had lived outside of her body and that she’d finally felt whole in his arms.

Winnie hadn’t fought for her father’s attention after her mother died or when the kids in high school took their turns humiliating her. She hadn’t fought when her fiancé had left town, leaving her to pick up the pieces of the future they’d planned together. She hadn’t fought to keep her husband after discovering the affair. Life had kept happening to her, and she’d let it. But she was going to fight now.

“But one little stab wound wasn’t enough to stop him for coming for her. I waited for her to come home from work for hours. I called the clinic where she worked. No one had seen her since her shift ended, and I knew. I knew something had happened and that it had something to do with the officer who’d shown up at our door and the break-in that same night. We’d spent our entire lives just trying to survive, and that instinct told me I needed to get as far from the house as possible. That she was never coming home. That he took her from me.” Lila’s voice had taken on an animalistic sound, more predatory and unnerving. She slammed her boot into the ice a second time, and one of the cinder blocks went under.

The chain jerked tight against Winnie’s ankle and swept her leg right out from under her. She hit the ice. Hard. Clawing against the weight dragging her toward the fresh hole in the ice, she tried to breathe through the pain, but her fingers kept slipping. Her body remembered what that water felt like, tensing up in all the wrong places. She dug her opposite knee in, her screams lost as the wind cut across the lake. “No! Please! Don’t do this. Please!”

A pair of boots centered themselves in front of her face. “Turns out BHPD did not have a reliable way to age remains twenty years ago. The technology wasn’t there, and forensic anthropology was being used to identify victims of mass genocide overseas. Not so much in small towns with no resources and no future.” Lila crouched, hovering over Winnie with her head positioned against the overcast sun like an angel of death coming to finish the job. “Our neighbors watched me for her, but they weren’t our friends. They didn’t know her like they knew me, but I’d left Black Hollow. Got in the first car that’d stopped on the highway and kept on going, for weeks, so when reports of a woman with blond hair found in Hollow Lake started coming in, everyone assumed it was me. And with her teeth and fingers missing, they couldn’t prove otherwise.”

Winnie fought against the pull on her ankle, tears freezing on her face as the chains cut into her skin. Her toes skimmed the water’s surface. “Please.”

“Do you think she begged him for her life?” Lila stood, planting her boots mere inches from Winnie’s face. “Do you think he would’ve let me live, taken me in, raised me with you?”

She didn’t have an answer for that.

“I didn’t think so.” Lila Mercer kicked the last cinder block into the water.

And Winnie went under.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Black Hollow PD had misidentified the body.

Adrial had torn through the official investigation file before running for his vehicle, looking for any signs one of the many detectives—including him—had been blinded by their bias over the years. It wasn’t hard to imagine Arthur Hutton had known exactly who’d been recovered from Hollow Lake, seeing as how the son of a bitch had most likely put her there in the first place, but original investigators had identified the remains as Lila Mercer. Had it been intentional, a process of elimination, or had the chief of police been the one to make the determination? Detectives had no reason to believe that assessment had been wrong, but it changed everything now. If the body wasn’t who they believed, who was it? And where had Lila Mercer been all this time?

Adrial gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles felt as though they were going to break through the skin along the backs of his hands. Well, he certainly had cause for exhumation now. He’d handed the file to Ruby with orders to put together everything she could on the victim, but just with her offhand examination, a judge had no reason not to grant the exhumation order and give the forensic anthropologist a chance to identify the victim.

The picturesque homes, tree-lined streets and naked snowmen standing guard in front yards blurred through the windows as he fishtailed onto Winnie’s street. The SUV tilted to one side but managed to stay connected to the road. Hell, even if he’d rolled, Adrial would find a way to get to her. This—all of this—was connected back to Arthur Hutton’s sins, but Winnie would be the one to pay for them. There was still so much to unravel between them, but he wouldn’t slow down until he had Winnie in his sights. She could be angry with him. She could hate him and tell him she never wanted to see him again, but she’d be alive. He’d make sure of it.

Baxter grabbed for the handlebar above his head, bracing himself but not saying a word. His friend knew all about this feeling bubbling up inside Adrial’s chest and squeezing his heart with every breath. The numbness Adrial had slid into over the past two years was gone. Only panicked fury remained, and it wouldn’t budge unless he had Winnie in his arms. The SUV righted itself a split second before Adrial slammed on the brakes in front of the ugly kelly green house with redbrick. Burning rubber infiltrated his senses as Adrial grabbed for the handgun in the center console. “You armed?”

“That’s a dumb question.” Baxter didn’t wait for orders and shoved free of the vehicle. They’d worked together long enough they each fell into step as they rounded the hood of the SUV and checked their weapons. His best friend would go around the back while Adrial went through the front. They’d meet in the center of the house and clear it together.

“It’s a sliding glass door. She still wants to sell the place, so try not to break too much.” Adrial holstered his weapon opposite where he normally kept it thanks to the damn sling strapping his injured arm to his chest. He’d trained to compensate for situations like this, but the difference might cost him a second or two. He just hoped it didn’t come to that.

Baxter tucked his pistol into the shoulder holster beneath his jacket. “What if there’s a broomstick in the track?”

“I’ll pay for any damage. Get moving.” Because staying still was starting to eat at him. There was a chance Winnie was inside, safe, sound and asleep since he’d left her, and, hell, he’d give anything to have her throw him out on his ass again, but this tightness—his instincts—were telling a different story.

“See you on the other side.” The forensic investigator offered his knuckles, and Adrial met them with his own. It’d become a ritual between them on cases like this, a reminder they had each other’s backs, and infused Adrial with a shot of determination to see this through.

The willow out front wasn’t doing its dance, since it was laden with at least a half inch of snow on each branch, silent and imposing. Its position in front of the living room window kept him from making a quick assessment of the situation inside, but it also kept anyone inside from seeing him before he crossed the threshold. Sidestepping, Adrial watched that window as he approached the front door. Another window—belonging to Winnie’s bedroom—stared out over the porch, but it was impossible to see past her curtains. He tested the scuffed gold door handle, compressing the flat lever with his thumb.