The Burying Place

She stood up. 'I think we're done here.'

'Let's talk about this,' he said.

'Now you want to talk? Isn't it a little late for that? You've had weeks to talk to me, and you didn't. But in one day with Maggie, you managed to jump into bed and tell her everything that was going on in your head.'

'It's not that simple.'

'Maybe it is, Jonny. Maybe it is.' She grabbed her coat from the hook. As she twisted the doorknob, she stopped and closed her eyes. 'Look, I know I'm not being fair with you. I haven't opened up to you, either.'

'I'm not looking for excuses,' Stride told her. 'This is my fault. Not yours. Not Maggie's.'

Serena shook her head. 'Let's not talk about Maggie. She knew exactly what she was doing. Don't tell me she didn't.'

'It wasn't like that.'

'Not to you, maybe. She saw her opportunity, and she took it. End of story.' She added in a quiet voice, 'Are you in love with her?'

'I have no idea. I know I love you.'

'But that's not enough for us, is it? Can you tell me right now that you're choosing me? That you can reject whatever feelings you have for Maggie? That's what I need to hear. If you can do that, then maybe we can try again.'

'I want to say yes,' he told her.

'But you can't.'

'It's too soon. I don't want to tell you what you want to hear and wind up lying to you. For weeks, until yesterday, I didn't feel a thing. Not for you. Not for Maggie. Not for myself. Nothing. Now everything is flooding back, and I haven't had a chance to work through any of it. You can't ask me to sort this out in a few hours.'

Serena nodded. 'You're right. That's not fair. We both need to think about what we're going to do.'

She walked over to him and kissed him with her soft lips. He didn't need a reminder of how good it felt. Then she turned and left the office and closed the door behind her.

Serena drove to Duluth on Wednesday afternoon and found a bar and grill north of the airport. She pulled into the parking lot and stared at the entrance door. Inside was vodka. Glass after glass of it. She could taste it and imagine it dulling her into unconsciousness. She hadn't fallen off the wagon in fifteen years, but now seemed like a good time. It was as if no time had passed at all since her last drink. She could still remember it on her lips.

She hadn't anticipated this crossroads. She had been slowly getting her mind around the idea of staying in Duluth forever. Of staying with Jonny forever. Those weren't decisions she made lightly, not given her past, but she had begun to believe it. She should have listened to the warning signs and realized that nothing lasts forever. She loved Jonny. He loved her. That didn't mean they could make it work. They both had too many walls and sharp edges.

She had no idea what she would do next. Stay. Go. Try again. Give up. It wasn't the first time in her life she had considered starting over, and it probably wouldn't be the last. Her instinct was to forgive Jonny, but she couldn't do it alone, and she couldn't do it without his whole heart in it. It killed her to think of walking away, but she wasn't going to sit in the background while Stride and Maggie worked side by side every day. The threesome was over.

She stared at the door of the bar. The lure of vodka was so vivid and clear that she could hear it calling to her. She could see the liquid in the bottle. Watch it splash into her glass and swirl around the ice. One drink after another after another. Until she was in the same state of mind that Jonny had been, feeling nothing.

Serena opened the car door.

As she did, her phone rang again. It was Denise Sheridan. She answered the phone and felt as if she had been given a temporary rescue, dragging her back from a cliff's edge.

'What's up, Denise?'

'I heard from the team we had following Marcus,' she reported. 'He was in Duluth this morning in surgery.'

'So?'

'So he left the hospital to go back to Grand Rapids, and they lost him.'

'How?'

'He knew they were back there. He deliberately ran a light and got them off his trail. It may not mean anything, but I wanted you to know.'

'Where was he when he skipped?' Serena asked.

'Rice Lake Road near Martin. They thought he was heading back home, but we staked out Highway 2 and he never showed.'

'What's he driving?'

'A burgundy Lexus.'

Serena thought about Marcus Glenn speeding into the north farmlands. She was in the same area herself, and she was pretty sure she could read the surgeon's mind. 'I know where he's going,' she said.

Chapter Thirty-four

Kasey, Kasey, Kasey. You're running, aren't you?

Her face came into focus through the binoculars. She stopped in the front door of her farmhouse, as if she knew she was being watched. Her nervous eyes flicked to the woods behind their garage, then to the open fields and down the dirt driveway to the highway, where a police car was parked on the shoulder. A bored policeman eyed the traffic in both directions.

Kasey balanced two boxes in her arms. She carried them to a rental truck parked next to the garage and disappeared up the ramp into the rear of the truck. A minute later, she returned to the house with empty arms for another load. He had been watching the back-and- forth from his vantage in the trees for nearly an hour. Kasey's husband had arrived with the truck around noon, and since then, the two of them had led a steady parade as they packed the truck with their belongings.

You can't run, Kasey. It doesn’t work that way. We're not done.

Bruce Kennedy opened the front door with his boot and trudged down the steps. He watched him. Kasey's husband was a big man, with fair blond hair and a bushy beard. He wore jeans and an untucked flannel shirt. He had the look of a plodder, a follower who did what he was told. No doubt Kasey could lead him around by the nose, but she deserved better. It made him angry, looking at Bruce Kennedy through the binoculars and imagining this clumsy man with no idea what a special prize he had. When he lost her, he wouldn't even have a clue what he'd possessed. The fool.

His phone vibrated in his pocket. He was secluded in the woods, invisible and out of earshot, but he looked around cautiously before answering.

'Yes?'

'Nieman, it's Matt Clayton in Buckthorn.'

'What can I do for you?'

'Have you been out to the school lately?' Clayton asked.

Nieman hesitated. 'Yeah, I make the rounds out there every few days to make sure the site is secure.'

'Do you think anyone could have gotten inside?'

'Not likely. It's locked up tight. Why, is there a problem?'

'I don't know. I got a call from Maggie Bei in the Duluth Police. She's trying to track down a missing person who may have had his eyes on the school.'

'I haven't seen anything wrong out there,' he said.