Page 68 of Trapper Road

He doesn’t have to bring up Salah Point for the words to still be sitting there between us. When Jonathan Watson threatened our family, I kept it to myself rather than tell Sam. I thought I was doing what was best. I thought I could take down Watson on my own, but I couldn’t. In the end I’d needed Kez and Sam’s help. If I hadn’t let them in, I’d be dead.

I blow out a breath. Even though I trust Sam with my life — with my kids’ lives — it’s hard to let go of control. It’s hard not to want to do this for myself, even though I know that’s not what’s best.

“What about Lanny?” I ask.

“I can drop her at Kez and Javi’s. They’ll keep her safe until we know more.”

I nod. It makes sense. But it also means leaving prospective students weekend early which won’t be easy for her. “Want me to be the one to tell her?”

I think of all the times I’ve been the bearer of bad news. All the times I’ve pushed open the door to her room and told her she has fifteen minutes to pack up her entire life and bid everything she’d known goodbye. All the times I’ve have to tell her no when she’s asked for permission to do the same thing as other teens her age.

Sam hesitates, then says, “I think it might be better in person.”

I hate the relief I feel at his offer, but I don’t turn it down. “Tell her I’m sorry. And that I’ll find a way to make it up to her. Promise.”

“She’ll understand,” Sam says, but he and I both know that’s not a guarantee. We also both know that at some point she’ll stop understanding. At some point, it will all become too much.

We can’t let that happen.

“You focus on keeping Connor and Vee safe and solving your case,” he continues. “I’ll take care of everything else.”

“Hey, Sam? Thanks.”

“I love you, Gwen. Everything the world throws at us we’ll get through together, as a family.”

I let myself bask in that knowledge. It feels so good to have someone in my life I can love and rely on without question or hesitation. “I love you too.”

“I’ll call as soon as we get there.”

I smile. He knows I’ll be on edge until I hear from him again. “Drive safe.”

19

LANNY

The year after my father was arrested and Mom was in jail and we lived with my grandmother, I started to get headaches. Bad ones. My grandmother isn’t one of those crunchy, alternative-medicine types, but she is the type to avoid the doctor’s office out of fear of what it might end up costing. At first she gave me over the counter medicine when I complained of my head, and then she tried other things: cold compresses, dark rooms, essential oils.

Eventually it got so bad that I ended up in the emergency room, my entire body so racked with pain that I couldn’t stop throwing up. They ran tests and gave me an IV that knocked me out. When I woke up, the pain was gone. Like completely gone.

It wasn’t until that moment that I realized how much pain had come to dominate my life. I really only paid attention to the headaches when they became debilitating. It wasn’t until the pain was gone that I understood how constant it had become.

It took a barrage of tests, but eventually the doctors figured it was probably stress sending my hormones out of whack. They put me on birth control for a couple of years, and that was pretty much the end of the headaches.

What I remember most, though, isn’t the headaches; it’s that moment in the ER when I woke up and realized how bad my life had gotten without me even realizing it.

That’s how it feels at Reyne. Hanging out with my freshman host Heather and introducing myself to her friends as Lanta Cade and having no one bat an eye or look at me strangely — that’s when I realize just how shitty my life had become.

I’d just become so used to being Lanny Proctor, daughter of infamous serial killer Melvin Royal, that I’d started to think it was normal.

But normal people don’t have entire organizations dedicated to hunting them down and killing them. Normal people didn’t grow up changing their names and moving from town to town, starting over again and again to avoid their murderous father and his insane acolytes. Normal people don’t have their brothers get abducted by cults, or their dad almost drowned as a sacrifice. Normal people don’t have to deal with the fallout of a school shooting or have to flee town to avoid a media firestorm.

To normal people, people being mean on the internet might be someone tweeting an insult, not sending them graphic photographs of raped and mutilated women with your face digitized onto them so it looks like you.

Lanny Proctor is anything but normal. Lanta Cade, on the other hand, is totally normal. Exceptionally normal. Even somewhat boring. And I love it.

I love hanging out with Heather and her friends, going to a row house party, dancing with other students and not being on constant panic-inducing alert.

Mom would be furious that I didn’t clock every exit the moment I entered. Which, okay, I actually did because it’s habit, but I didn’t force myself to run mental drills on potential escape routes as well. That I close my eyes and let the music wash over me and just dance without concern would make Mom apoplectic.

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