The Secrets We Bury Read online

  NOTHING STAYS BURIED FOREVER...

  Doctor Rowan Dupont knows death. She grew up surrounded by it in her family’s Victorian funeral home, and it’s haunted her since the day her twin sister drowned years ago. Between her mother’s subsequent suicide and the recent murder of her father, coming home to run the funeral home feels fitting—even if it leaves her vulnerable to an obsessive serial killer.

  Rowan refuses to let fear keep her from honoring her family. But the more time she spends back in Winchester, Tennessee, the more she finds herself questioning what really happened that fateful summer. Had her sister’s death truly been an accident? And what pushed their mother to take her own life? The dark lake surrounding Rowan’s hometown holds as many secrets as the bodies that float in its chilling depths. But Rowan is running out of time if she’s going to uncover the truth before somebody sinks her for good.

  Praise for the novels of Debra Webb

  “The twists and turns in this dark, taut drama make it both creepy and compelling, multiplying the enjoyment. It’s hard-edged and emotional, ensnaring the reader in a world perfectly imagined. I bid a grand welcome to a new voice in the thriller world.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Steve Berry

  on The Longest Silence

  “Webb weaves incredible twists and turns and a mind-blowing conclusion with multiple villainous perpetrators.”

  —RT Book Reviews on The Longest Silence

  “This psychological thriller is rife with tension that begins on page one and doesn’t let up. It’s a race against the clock that had me whispering to the pair of flawed, desperate protagonists, ‘Hurry, hurry.’ A gripping read.”

  —#1 New York Times bestselling author Sandra Brown

  on The Longest Silence

  “A dark, twisted game of cat and mouse! Debra Webb mines our innermost fears as a police detective takes on a serial killer with help from an unexpected ally—or is he the bigger threat? You will fly through the pages of this action-packed thriller!”

  —New York Times bestselling author Lisa Gardner

  on No Darker Place

  “A steamy, provocative novel with deep, deadly secrets guaranteed to be worthy of your time.”

  —Fresh Fiction on Traceless

  “Interspersed with fine-tuned suspense...the cliffhanger conclusion will leave readers eagerly anticipating future installments.”

  —Publishers Weekly on Obsession

  USA TODAY bestselling author

  Debra Webb

  The Secrets We Bury

  Table of Contents

  The Secrets We Bury

  The Undertaker’s Daughter

  Also by Debra Webb

  SHADES OF DEATH

  The Blackest Crimson (prequel)

  No Darker Place

  A Deeper Grave

  The Coldest Fear

  The Longest Silence

  THE UNDERTAKER’S DAUGHTER

  “The Undertaker’s Daughter” (novella)

  The Secrets We Bury

  Look for Debra Webb’s next novel,

  The Lies We Tell,

  available soon from MIRA Books.

  For additional books by

  USA TODAY bestselling author Debra Webb,

  visit her website at www.debrawebb.com.

  This book is dedicated to Donna England Boyd.

  Thank you for being a dear, dear friend

  and for being the sister of my heart. It’s you who will

  always make me call Huntland my second home.

  May your life forever be filled with love and music and

  your heart always rise to the next dance. Love you!

  The Secrets We Bury

  Contents

  Preface

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  RIP

  Geneva Phillips

  Beloved Wife and Mother

  June 2, 1946–May 5, 2019

  Geneva Phillips was born in Winchester, Tennessee, on June 2, 1946. She was a loving wife and mother, a consummate homemaker and a treasured member of the Ladies Civic Club, as well as a talented musician and a member of the choir at the Second Avenue Methodist Church. She died at home on Sunday, May 5, 2019. Geneva was predeceased by her beloved husband, Howard, and her only sibling, a brother, Gerald. She is survived by two daughters, Patricia Patterson of Winchester and Jennifer Brinkley of Louisville, Kentucky, and three grandchildren.

  The family will receive friends on Tuesday, May 7, 5:00 to 7:00 p.m., at the DuPont Funeral Home.

  One

  Winchester, Tennessee

  Monday, May 6, 7:15 a.m.

  Mothers shouldn’t die this close to Mother’s Day.

  Especially mothers whose daughters, despite being grown and having families of their own, still considered Mom to be their best friend. Rowan DuPont had spent the better part of last night consoling the daughters of Geneva Phillips. Geneva had failed to show at church on Sunday morning, and later that same afternoon she wasn’t answering her cell. Her younger daughter entered her mother’s home to check on her and found Geneva deceased in the bathtub.

  Now the seventy-two-year-old woman’s body waited in refrigeration for Rowan to begin the preparations for her final journey. The viewing wasn’t until tomorrow evening, so there was no particular rush. The husband of one of the daughters was away on business in London and wouldn’t arrive back home until late today. There was time for a short break, which turned into a morning drive that had taken Rowan across town and to a place she hadn’t visited in better than two decades.

  Like death, some things were inevitable. Coming back to this place was one of those things. Perhaps it was the hours spent with the sisters last night that had prompted memories of Rowan’s own sister. She and her twin had once been inseparable. Wasn’t that generally the way with identical twins?

  The breeze shifted, lifting a wisp of hair across her face. Rowan swiped it away and stared out over Tims Ford Lake. The dark, murky waters spread like sprawling arms some thirty-odd miles upstream from the nearby dam, enveloping the treacherous Elk River in its embrace. The water was deep and unforgiving. Even standing on the bank, at least ten feet from the edge, a chill crept up Rowan’s spine. She hated this place. Hated the water. The ripples that broke the shadowy surface...the smell of fish and rotting plant life. She hated every little thing about it.

  This was the spot where her sister’s body had been found.

  July 6, twenty-seven years ago. Rowan and Raven had turned twelve years old the previous fall. Rowan’s gaze lingered on the decaying tree trunk and the cluster of newer branches and overgrowth stretching from the bank into the hungry water where her sister’s lifeless body had snagged. The current had dragged her pale, thin body a good distance before depositing her at this spot. It had taken eight hou
rs and twenty-three minutes for the search teams to find her.

  Rowan had known her sister was dead before the call had come that Raven had gone missing. Her parents had rushed to help with the search, leaving a neighbor with Rowan. She had stood at her bedroom window watching for their return. The house had felt completely empty and Rowan had understood that her life would never be the same after that day.

  No matter that nearly three decades has passed since that sultry summer day, she could still recall the horrifying feel of the final tug, and then the ominous release of her sister’s physical presence.

  She shifted her gaze from the water to the sky. Last night the temperature had taken an unseasonable plunge. Blackberry winter, the locals called it. Whether it held some glimmer of basis in botany or was merely rooted in folklore, blackberry bushes all over the county were in full bloom. Rowan pulled her sweater tight around her. Though today was the first time she had come to this place since returning home from Nashville, the dark water was never far from her thoughts. How could it be? The lake swelled and withdrew around Winchester like the rhythmic breath of a sleeping giant, at once harmless and menacing.

  Rowan had sneaked away to this spot dozens of times after her sister was buried. Other times she had ridden her bike to the cemetery and visited her there or simply sat in Raven’s room and stared at the bed where she had once laid her head. But Rowan felt closest to her sister here, near the water that had snatched her life away like the merciless talons of a hawk descending on a fleeing field mouse.

  “You should have stayed home,” Rowan murmured to herself. The ache, no matter the many years that had passed, twisted in her chest.

  She had begged Raven not to go to the party. Her sister had been convinced that Rowan’s behavior was nothing more than jealousy since she hadn’t been invited. The suggestion hadn’t been entirely unjustified, but mostly Rowan had felt a smothering dread, a panic that had bordered on hysteria. She had needed her sister to stay home. Every adolescent instinct she possessed had been screaming and restless with that looming sense of trepidation.

  But Raven had ignored her sister’s pleas and attended the big barbecue and swim party with her best friend, Tessa Cardwell. Raven DuPont died that day, and Rowan had spent all the years since wondering what she could have done differently to change that outcome.

  Nothing. She could not rewrite history any more than she was able to change her sister’s mind.

  Rowan exhaled a beleaguered breath. At moments like this she felt exactly as if her life was moving backward. She’d enjoyed a fulfilling career with the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department as an adviser for the Special Crimes Unit. As a psychiatrist, she had found her work immensely satisfying, and she had helped to solve numerous homicide cases. But then, not quite two months ago, everything had changed. The one case that Rowan didn’t recognize had been happening right in front of her, shattering her life...and sending everything spiraling out of control.

  The life she had built in Nashville had been comfortable, with enough intellectual challenge in her career to make it uniquely interesting. Though she had not possessed a gold shield, the detectives in the Special Crimes Unit had valued her opinion and treated her as if she was as much a member of the team as any of them. But that was before...before the man she admired and trusted proved to be a serial killer—a killer who’d murdered her father and an MNPD officer as well as more than a hundred other victims over the past several decades.

  A mere one month, twenty-two days and about fourteen hours ago, esteemed psychiatrist Dr. Julian Addington emerged from his cloak of secrecy and changed the way the world viewed serial killers. He was the first of his kind: incredibly prolific, cognitively brilliant and innately chameleonlike—able to change his MO at will. Far too clever to hunt among his own patients or social set, he had chosen his victims carefully, always ensuring he or she could never be traced back to him or his life.

  Julian had fooled Rowan for the past two decades and then he’d taken her father, her only remaining family, from her. He’d devastated and humiliated her both personally and professionally.

  Anger and loathing churned inside her. He wanted her to suffer. He wanted her to be defeated...to give up. But she would not. Determination solidified inside her. She would not allow him that victory or that level of control over her.

  Her gaze drifted out over the water once more. Since her father’s death and moving back to Winchester, people had asked her dozens of times why she’d returned to take over the funeral home after all these years. She always gave the same answer: I’m a DuPont, it’s what we do.

  Her father, of course, had always hoped Rowan would do so. It was the DuPont way. The funeral home had been in the family for a 150 years. The legacy had been passed from one generation to the next time and time again. When she’d graduated from college and chosen to go to medical school and become a psychiatrist rather than to return home and take over the family business, Edward DuPont had been devastated. For more than a year after that decision, she and her father had been estranged. Now she mourned that lost year with an ache that was soul-deep.

  They had reconciled, she reminded herself, and other than the perpetual guilt she felt over not visiting often enough, things had been good between her and her father. Like all else in her life until recently, their relationship had been comfortable. They’d spoken by phone regularly. She missed those chats. He kept her up to speed on who married or moved or passed, and she would tell him as much as she could about her latest case. He had loved hearing about her work with Metro. As much as he’d wanted her to take over the family legacy, he had wanted her to be happy more than anything else.

  “I miss you, Daddy,” she murmured.

  Looking back, Rowan deeply regretted having allowed Julian to become a part of her life all those years ago. She had shared her deepest, darkest secrets with him, including her previously strained relationship with her father. She had purged years of pent-up frustrations and anxieties to the bastard, first as his patient and then, later, as a colleague and friend.

  Though logic told her otherwise, a part of her would always feel the weight of responsibility for her father’s murder.

  Due to her inability to see what Julian was, she could not possibly return to Metro, though they had assured her there would always be a place for her in the department. How could she dare to pretend some knowledge or insight the detectives themselves did not possess when she had unknowingly been a close friend to one of the most prolific serial killers the world had ever known?

  She could not. This was her life now.

  Would taking over the family business completely assuage the guilt she felt for letting her father down all those years ago? Certainly not. Never. But it was what she had to do. It was her destiny. In truth, she had started to regret her career decision well before her father’s murder. Perhaps it was the approaching age milestone of forty or simply a midlife crisis. She had found herself pondering what might have been different if she’d made that choice and regretting, frankly, that she hadn’t.

  Since she and Raven were old enough to follow the simplest directions, they had been trained to prepare a body for its final journey. By the time they were twelve, they could carry out the necessary steps nearly as well as their father with little or no direction.

  Growing up surrounded by death had, of course, left its mark. Her hyperawareness of death and all its ripples and aftershocks made putting so much stock into a relationship with another human being a less than attractive proposal. Why go out of her way to risk that level of pain in the event that person was lost? And with life came loss. To that end, she would likely never marry or have children. But she had her work and, like her father, she intended to do her very best. Both of them had always been workaholics. Taking care of the dead was a somber albeit important task, particularly for those left behind. The families of the loved ones who passed through the DuPont d
oors looked to her for support and guidance during their time of sorrow and emotional turmoil.

  Speaking of which, she pulled her cell from her pocket and checked the time. She should get back to the funeral home. Mrs. Phillips was waiting. Rowan turned away from the part of her past that still felt fresh despite the passage of time.

  Along this part of the shore, the landscape was thickly wooded and dense with undergrowth, which was the reason she’d worn her rubber boots and was slowly picking her way back to the road. As she attempted to slide her phone back into her hip pocket, a limb snagged her hair. Instinctively, she reached up to pull it loose, dropping her cell phone in the process.

  “Damn it.” Rowan reached down and felt through the thatch beneath the underbrush. More of her long blond strands caught in the brush. She should have taken the time to pull her hair back in a ponytail as she usually did. She tugged the hair loose, bundled the thick mass into her left hand and then crouched down to dig around with her right in search of her phone. Like most people, she felt utterly lost without the damn thing.

  Where the hell had it fallen?

  She would have left it in the car except that she never wanted a family member to call the funeral home and reach a machine. With that in mind, she forwarded calls to her cell when she was away. Eventually she hoped to trust her father’s new assistant director enough to allow him to handle all incoming calls. Wouldn’t have helped this morning, though, since he was on vacation.

  New assistant director? She almost laughed at the idea. Woody Holder had been with her father for two years, but Herman Carter had been with him a lifetime before that. She supposed in comparison, new was a reasonable way of looking at Woody’s tenure thus far. Her father had still referred to him as the new guy. Maybe it was his lackadaisical attitude. At forty-five, Woody appeared to possess absolutely no ambition and very little motivation. Rowan really should consider finding a new, more dependable assistant director and letting Woody go.