No Way Back (A Carly See FBI Suspense Thriller—Book 2)

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER ONE

Carly See hoped she didn’t look as nervous as she felt. She had something momentous to say, but she had no idea how to go about saying it. And here in her parents’ living room, she had to struggle against feeling like the self-conscious child she had once been. Maybe the problem was that stern, expectant look on her mother’s face, or perhaps it was that detached expression on Dad’s face that told her he was already a bit bored.

She sternly reminded herself that she was 30 years old with a successful FBI career. She even looked the part, wearing nice slacks and a jacket with her dark hair neatly confined in a bun at the back of her neck.

“So, what are you so anxious to talk to us about?” Mom asked.

“Yeah,” Dad grumbled, looking at his watch. “It’s late. Your mother and I both have to work tomorrow.”

Carly swallowed down a hard knot of anxiety.

How can I explain it to them? she wondered.

Her parents had picked her up at the airport after her flight from Washington, D.C. She was on leave from the Behavioral Analysis Unit after suffering a shoulder wound during her most recent murder case. After recuperating for a boring week in her apartment, now had seemed like a good time to pay an overdue visit to her family in Currie, Illinois.

Carly had hinted to her parents during the drive home from the airport that she had something urgent to discuss with them.

Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea, she thought.

Mom drummed her fingers on the arm of the Chesterfield sofa where she and Dad were sitting.

“I hope you’re going to tell us you’re quitting that awful job of yours,” she said. “Are you going back to school, maybe? Please say yes. Because you know, I think you’re wasting lots of great academic potential.”

An English professor at a local community college, Mom still harbored dreams of Carly becoming a renowned scholar at some big university, achieving the kind of success she herself had never had.

Very carefully, Carly set her cup of steaming hot chocolate into its saucer on the nearby end table. She silently congratulated herself on not spilling a drop on the carpet.

“That’s not it, Mom.”

“Then what is it? Are you getting married or something? Don’t tell us you’ve eloped. That would be really foolish.”

Then Mom gasped.

“Oh, please don’t say you’ve gotten pregnant. That would be just awful. You mustn’t do anything to limit your possibilities in life. No more than you already have, anyway. You’re not getting any younger, you know.”

Carly felt her teeth grinding. She didn’t feel as though life was passing her by. Far from it: she loved her work and the life she lived.

“Maybe now’s not the time. Maybe it’ll wait till morning.”

“No, it won’t,” Mom said. “You’ve got us in suspense. Out with it now.”

That seems only fair, Carly thought.

She spoke slowly and haltingly.

“Mom … Dad … do you ever think about … Megan?”

Dad let out a groan of annoyance.

A hurt look crossed Mom’s brow.

“Why, we think about your sister every day, dear. She’ll always be part of our family, and we’ll always love her. How can we help it? I don’t think you’re being very sensitive. Why on earth are you asking such a thing?”

That’s a good question, Carly thought.

She wished she could just say, “Never mind, just forget I said anything about her.”

But she’d taken an irrevocable step just by mentioning the name of her younger sister, an all-but-f*******n topic here at home. Megan had been 18 when she’d gone missing, and Carly had been 20. That had been some 10 years ago, and Megan had never been seen since then.

Still speaking cautiously, Carly continued.

“What I mean is … do you ever wonder … ?”

Carly’s voice faded. Dad finished her thought with a growl in his voice.

“If she’s still alive? No, we don’t. She’s dead. She’s even been officially, legally dead for several years now. We don’t know how she died, but we’ve long since made our peace about that. We’ll never know.”

“Now, Russell—” Mom began.

But Dad talked right over her to Carly.

“And don’t tell me you’ve got some reason to think otherwise. Because if Megan is still alive somewhere …”

Dad’s voice suddenly choked off.

Carly knew what he was leaving unsaid. If Megan was still alive, it had been unbelievably cruel of her to disappear from all their lives for so many years with no explanation. In some horrible way, it hurt less for Dad to suppose Megan was dead, even if she might have met some awful fate.

Dad pulled himself upright and said, “Enough of this. I’m going to watch TV for a while, and then I’m going to bed.”

He got up from his chair and said to Carly in an almost sarcastic tone, “Welcome home, sweetheart.”

Dad walked away and disappeared toward his den.

Mom shook her head.

“Oh, it’s always the TV. He spends his every spare hour sitting in front of that thing. I’m surprised he even deigned to sit down with us for a few minutes. I swear, I sometimes wonder why I ever married that man. Lord only knows he doesn’t understand the first thing about me.”

Carly’s mouth soured at the familiar note of resentment in Mom’s voice.

Mom was a great hoarder of grudges and grievances. She made no secret of blaming Dad for the fact that she was stuck in this town living such an insufferably dull life.

But Dad was a local dentist, and a pretty successful one at that, and Carly knew perfectly well that Mom had done a thorough cost-benefit analysis before she’d married him. Dad wasn’t really to blame for their dismal marriage, and Carly couldn’t help sympathizing with his need to cut himself off emotionally.

I just wish he wouldn’t cut himself off from me, she thought.

Mom took a sip of cocoa.

“But why are you bringing up Megan out of the blue like this? I don’t understand.”

Carly swallowed hard.

“I just wondered—have you and Dad heard anything from her at all?”

“Of course not. Don’t you think we would have told you if we had?”

A silence fell. Watching Mom closely, Carly was aware of the resemblance between them. Her mother’s dark hair was beginning to show some gray, and she wore it in a more stylish cut than Carly’s, but the oval face, dark eyebrows, and determined expression were similar.

“Have you heard something from her?” Mom asked anxiously

Carly felt her hands shaking now.

“Not exactly from her …”

“Then something about her?” Mom asked, her voice shaking with emotion.

Carly gulped hard and nodded slightly.

Mom stammered, “Do you—do you think she’s alive?”

“I think—I think maybe so.”

Mom gasped and her eyelids widened.

“Tell me.”

Carly took a long, deep breath.

Now for the hard part, she thought.

Carly spoke very slowly.

“Mom, we’ve never talked about this, but … I sometimes get these …”

Carly fell silent.

Mom leaned toward her and whispered, “Messages? Communications?”

Carly’s eyes widened with surprise. This was hardly the reaction she had expected.

“Why—yes. How—how did you know?”

“Carly, I got the feeling back when you were a little girl that there was something unusual about you. I didn’t want to pay attention. There had always been … rumors … about my grandmother. She was given to ‘seeing’ weird things. I never wanted to believe it and certainly didn’t want anything like that in my own family.”

Carly had never heard that, and she had no idea what to say.

“But she had those big gray eyes,” Mom murmured. “Just like you.”

Carly just stared into her mother’s steely blue eyes. Finally she asked, “What made you suspect that I … ?”

“Do you remember when that little boy went missing all those years ago? Tyler Glick was his name.”

“I remember.”

Indeed, she remembered all too well. She and Tyler had been friends all through childhood. But when she and Tyler were both 12, Tyler had left school one day and never got home. No one had any idea what had happened to him or where to look for him.

Then one night, Carly had a dream about a pinwheel—a toy pinwheel Tyler had given her as a party gift at his seventh birthday party. The pinwheel was huge in her dream, and it changed shape into a wind-powered water-pump with a whirling, multi-bladed wheel at the top of a tower. She’d dreamed that Tyler was lying motionless on the ground nearby.

Mom continued, “You told me you thought Tyler was near the windmill on Mercer’s farm. You didn’t say why you thought that, but you were most insistent about it, and finally I finally got Sheriff Corcoran to look there, and that’s where …”

Mom’s voice faded, but Carly knew what she was leaving unsaid.

That’s where they found Tyler’s body.

Then Mom said, “The truth was, I hoped it was just a one-time thing, so I never told you about Grammie. And years passed, and you never mentioned anything like that again. I figured either you’d outgrown it, or I’d been wrong and you’d never had it to begin with. But now …”

Mom stared hard at Carly for a moment.

“How do you know your sister is alive?”

Carly shook her head.

“Mom, I’m not sure I know anything. And it’s not like I’ve gotten any messages directly from Megan. I only get messages from dead people. But I heard Tyler speaking in a dream, and he showed me Megan, and she was alive—or at least she looked alive. She was standing on a beach.”

“What beach? Where is it?”

“I don’t know.”

“You mean you didn’t ask Tyler?”

Carly stifled a groan of despair.

“Mom, it doesn’t work like that at all. Messages come to me in hints and riddles. Sometimes they don’t make any sense. It’s never easy, and I don’t have any control over them at all.”

Mom’s voice was shaking now.

“If your sister is alive, it’s up to you to find her.”

“But Mom—”

“It’s up to you, I said. And if you’re not getting any more mysterious messages about it, you’ve got to find her some other way. Now that you know she’s alive, that should be easy for you. You’re in the FBI. You should be able to find anybody anywhere.”

Carly lowered her eyes from her mother’s face. Now she wished she’d never brought this up at all. How could she begin to tell Mom how hard she’d tried to track Megan down, long before this recent communication? She’d used every resource available to her as a BAU agent. She hadn’t been able to find a trace of her missing sister. She’d actually supposed she was dead—at least until that recent dream.

“Mom, it’s not that simple.”

Mom sat staring at Carly for a long moment.

Then she said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you. But the truth is, I don’t even know why you bothered to come home if this is all you’ve got to say. I just don’t understand.”

Mom got up from her chair and collected the empty cups and saucers.

“I’m going to clean things up and go to bed. You should do that too.”

Mom disappeared into the kitchen. Carly heaved a long, weary sigh and got up from the chair. She went and peeked into the den, where Dad was watching some old sitcom on TV. She thought about going in and kissing him goodnight or at least saying something to him. But she quickly thought better of it.

Why did I bring Megan up? she wondered as she climbed the stairs to her old bedroom. She felt exhausted and realized that she could definitely use some sleep herself.

But what am I even doing here?