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“I was hard on him,” Ned said. Regret tinged his words. “Too hard, probably. The kid had it tough. Think about it. Me, his stepfather, the guy who raised him, was responsible for him not knowing his dad.” The back of his neck tightened. “Not that Bruce Hollander was any prize.” He nodded, agreeing with himself, and then his shoulders slumped a bit. “Still . . . I could’ve gone easier on the kid. I was the one who arrested his old man for beating on his wife and then ended up marrying her. At the time, Luke was a baby, didn’t know any different, but as the years went by and he grew up, figured it out, was teased about his old man being locked up, it was a different story.” Another absent swallow from his cup, then, “Ah, hell! Nothin’ to do about it now.”
“Water under the bridge.”
“Is it? I wonder.” He turned to face her, blue eyes holding hers steady. “Well, we just have to deal, right? Like we have been all along.” He scraped back a chair and sat across from her. “Did you hear he’s out of prison? Hollander?”
“Mom told me.”
She saw his jaw tighten at the mention of Melinda and wished to God they could just get along.
“You called her?”
“No, she mentioned it the last time I saw her.”
“All this”—he motioned to the newspaper in the bin—“it’s gotta be tough on her, too.” He caught Rachel’s gaze and held it. She got the unspoken message.
“I said I’d call her. I will. Promise.”
“Has he—Hollander—contacted your mother?”
“Not that I know of. And I think she would have said.”
“Good.” He took a sip of coffee. “Either way you cut it, Luke wasn’t born lucky when it came to the whole male role model thing.”
“What’re you talking about? You were a great dad.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
She looked at the clock again, then dragged her cell phone from her pocket. “I want you to see something. I got this text message the other day, and right away I thought of Luke.”
Her father’s eyebrows crashed together.
“I know, crazy, right? But . . . well, it kinda freaked me out.”
He frowned at her phone as she handed it to him and he read the message. “Did you call or text back?”
“No response. And the police are looking into it, but Cade thinks it’s probably from some kind of burner phone. Untraceable.”
“Could be a mistake?”
“Don’t think so. Because of the time. The first one came in around midnight twenty years to the very date that Luke died. The night that Violet was murdered. I thought the text message might be a mistake, a weird coincidence, but then I got another one.” She scrolled to the second text. “Got it this morning, just hours after Annessa was murdered.”
“Someone’s trying to get to you.”
“He has,” she admitted and then told him the rest: sensing someone outside, the footprint, the scrawled message sprayed upon her door.
He returned her phone to her. “You file a police report?”
“Cade insisted on it.”
“They find anything?”
“Not yet.”
“Jesus. I’d say it was just teenagers—y’know, bored and making trouble—but the murders put a darker spin on it.”
“Yeah.” She told him about the precautions they were taking, then, seeing the time, got to her feet.
“Anything you want me to do?” he asked as she set her half-full cup in the sink.
