Gun Shy by Lili St. Germain
ABOUT THIS BOOK
HAVE YOU SEEN THIS GIRL?
In the middle of a fierce snowstorm in Gun Creek, Nevada, a teenage girl disappears without a trace.
The second girl in nine years.
Identical cases. Identical conditions. Only last time, the girl was found. Dead, stuffed in a well beside the creek that feeds the town's water supply.
The killer was never found.
As the small town mobilizes and searches for newly vanished Jennifer Thomas, one suspect comes to the fore. But did he do it? Or is there something else at play? Something nobody could have anticipated?
For Jennifer's friend Cassie Carlino, the worst is yet to come. As she pins MISSING posters to store windows and joins the search, she begins to suspect that Jennifer's disappearance might be much closer to her than she could have ever imagined.
For my husband
“Will you walk into my parlor?” said the spider to the fly; “’Tis the prettiest little parlor that ever you did spy.
The way into my parlor is up a winding stair, And I have many pretty things to show when you are there.”
“O no, no,” said the little fly, “to ask me is in vain, For who goes up your winding stair can ne’er come down again.”
* * *
- Mary Howitt
You would think that when you bury someone deep enough in the ground, you’d be able to keep them hidden. Smooth your shovel over fresh-tilled soil, compact it under your boots and pray nobody ever digs there.
But dirt doesn’t let you forget what lies beneath it. It keeps settling, leaving a hollow in the earth, a dip in the landscape that reminds you of the horror encased within. A hollow that demands to be filled until it rises up instead of curving down. You give it one body, then two, and still it hungers for more.
Lie down, Death whispers, greedy in its want, a faint rasp carried on a summer breeze.
Join me.
Prologue
THE GIRL IN THE CREEK
LEO
NINE YEARS AGO
It’s not every morning you drink dead girl juice.
Wait. Let me explain.
It was the dog barking that woke me. Rox was our built-in security system, not that we had anything of real value to steal.
Technically, the five acres of rock and dirt that backed on to Gun Creek was owned by the State of Nevada. But in a dying town like ours, they didn’t exactly have a use for it.
The mayor of Gun Creek had been friends with my grandfather before he passed, and so he turned a blind eye to the double-wide and assorted makeshift dwellings that my family called home.
The fact that my mother also dabbled in meth production and small-time drug dealing made me realize, eventually, that the mayor’s eyes were being turned not with compassion, but with favors from mommy dearest.
I couldn’t think about that, though. My mother was a fuck-up who’d had too many kids to a somewhat questionable number of different daddies, but she was the only mother I had. I didn’t want to think about some greasy guy in a cheap suit putting his chubby hands on her.
“Rox!” I hissed at the dog through the narrow window, mindful not to wake my girlfriend.
Beside me, Cassie breathed long and even, her chest rising and falling in time. Her hair was covering her face, her expression weary even in sleep. I kept telling her she worked too much, but she just laughed and told me the more she worked, the faster we’d be out of this town. It was one of the reasons I loved her so much.
We’d both been raised to believe that we’d never get out of Gun Creek, but Cassie was smart. She had that spark inside her that matched mine. That’s how I knew, unequivocally, that we’d be the ones who got away.
It was peaceful inside my room. I’d built it myself when I was twelve from an old shipping container somebody had dumped on our property. It leaked in the winter and there were gaps where the corrugated steel sheets attached to the ground. I’d filled the gaps with expanding foam as best I could, but sometimes the mice still chewed through. My dog made quick meals of them if that happened. I didn’t mind the mice. They were less intrusive than my mother in her rotting double-wide up near the road.
Rubbing sleep from my eyes, I walked as quietly as possible from my bedroom to the kitchen. Loose definitions for one long, narrow space that was separated by a hanging bed sheet.
I’d been having a dream when Rox’s bark woke me, but I couldn’t remember it. I just knew that I felt antsy, and I needed to go and shut the goddamned dog up before Ma came down and started yelling.
I went to the makeshift sink, a metal bowl with a hole cut in the bottom that I’d plumbed in myself. It drew water directly from our well, so I didn’t need to pump water manually to make it flow. I even had a shower with heating that I’d made from old PVC piping and plastic sheeting, lifted from the garage where I fixed cars after school for cash. That had come later when I’d decided that if Cassie were sleeping over, she should be able to wash up without having to go up to my mom’s trailer to do it.
I turned the tap on at the sink and filled up an old jam jar. My eyes itched - the pollen was off the charts and fucking brutal in the spring.