The Buried

Book 4: Bane Island Novel

by Lisa Childs

Genres: Psychological Thrillers; Suspense; Thrillers

Synopsis

For fans of the bestsellers The Sanatorium and The Guest List, the latest novel in this atmospheric series, set in a former insane asylum on a remote island off the coast of Maine, is laden with Gothic atmosphere and brilliantly plotted twists and turns.

Somewhere inside Halcyon Hall, the elite spa with an infamous past on a remote Maine island, are the answers state trooper Mae Montgomery desperately needs to solve a murder investigation. To find them, she’s checking into the exclusive retreat under an assumed name—that of her late sister, a former model. But at least one person isn’t fooled.

Fitness trainer Bode James grew up on Bane Island and took it upon himself to transform the former psychiatric hospital into a wellness resort. But a killer still lurks here. Bode already lost the mother of his child. And though he believes Mae is there under false pretenses, he also fears that without her help, more people will die.

Mae blames Bode for contributing to her sister’s death. But who can be trusted at Halcyon Hall? Beneath its history of dead and missing women is a legacy of evil that must be reckoned with at last, before it buries them all . . .

PRAISE FOR LISA CHILDS

“Atmospheric, emotional, and well-told.”
—New York Times bestselling author Lori Wilde on The Runaway

“Grabs you from page one. . . . Lisa Childs paints an eerie, haunting suspense that will keep you riveted until the very last page!” —Rita Herron, USA Today bestselling author on The Runaway

“A page-turning romantic thriller. Bane Island may be a dangerous place, but readers will look forward to coming back.” —Publishers Weekly on The Hunted

Release date: September 26, 2023

Publisher: Zebra Books

Print pages: 352

Sample

The wind rolled in off the sea, carrying the icy spray from the water, while snow fell from the dark clouds hanging low over Bane Island. On the edge of the cliff high above the sea, the wind had blown the snow back, off the rocks, flinging it across the grounds toward the drifts piled high around the snow-covered pine trees. The wind attacked more than the landscape; it bit and chafed every inch of skin exposed on the face of the man who ran along that rocky cliff.

His skin already numb from exposure to the wind chill, Bode James didn’t feel the cold. Even the pain in his wounded shoulder had dulled to a low ache. Only the pain in his head remained with the insistent pounding. It could have been from the concussion he’d sustained a month earlier. But the pain had lessened from the bullet wound to his shoulder two weeks before, so he doubted the concussion was still affecting him.

His thoughts were what kept hammering away inside his head. And even though he pushed himself to run harder, faster, he couldn’t escape them. Just as he couldn’t escape the past.

He’d been naïve to think that he could, foolishly idealistic just like his older brother had accused him of being when Bode had first proposed his business plan to convert the ruins of Bainesworth Manor into an exclusive spa. But Bode had been relentless, persisting until he’d eventually changed Elijah’s mind. He had convinced him to sink all their money and time into renovating the old family estate, into making a deal with the devil, as Elijah called their third and supposedly silent partner, to achieve their dream.

His dream.

It had never really been Elijah’s; Bode wasn’t even sure now how he had convinced the psychiatrist to return to Bane Island and Bainesworth Manor. For a brilliant man, Elijah was surprisingly superstitious, even repeating some of the locals’ claims that the island and Bainesworth Manor specifically were cursed. But over the past month, Elijah had been proven right about all his dire warnings.

And Bode’s dream had become a nightmare.

And it didn’t matter whether he was sleeping or awake, he couldn’t shake it off. No matter how fast he ran.

But he pumped his arms, pushing himself harder, faster, his feet pounding against the rocky ground. His lungs burned from the effort and the cold. He’d lost track of the number of laps he’d done along the cliffs. Lost track of the time, too.

He needed to go back to the hall, to his cottage. He needed to be there for her because now he was all she had. But he had to be in the right headspace for her. He had to have what he hoped for everyone: total wellness of the body and the mind.

When his body was good, his mind usually was, too. Usually he could run off his stress, the surge of endorphins chasing it all away. And the quiet, the cold, the peace, cleared his mind. But the thoughts and the fears persisted, chasing one another through his head.

Maybe if he ran just a little longer.

A little harder.

One more lap before he started back. One more lap. He would make it the fastest. The hardest.

So that he could think of nothing but his physical exertion. As he pushed himself to run faster, he heard a faint echo to the pounding of his feet, and not just inside his head but along the ground behind him. High-pitched howls echoed that pounding. Were the coyotes chasing him? Usually they lurked in the shadows, venturing out only at night to hunt their prey.

Was that what Bode had become?

Prey? That was how State Trooper Sergeant Beverly Mae Montgomery made him feel, like he was her prey. Like she was hunting him like these coyotes were hunting him. She probably wanted to rip him apart as much as they did. Why? Did she really believe he was guilty?

Or was there something else? Some other reason she hated him? And she certainly seemed to hate him.

The howls got louder, yipping cries from coyote to coyote, egging one another on to chase him. To get closer.

They were gaining on him because when he spun around, he could see their eyes. Like they could probably see his now. Even in the shadows, his eyes—that eerily pale Bainesworth blue—would be visible, like their eyes glowing in the shadows of the dark clouds.

“Go away!” he shouted, waving his arms around his head, making himself an even bigger threat than his six foot two, muscular frame made him. But he winced at the pain that jolted his healing shoulder. If they only knew he was weakened...

Maybe they did know.

Maybe, somehow, they instinctively sensed it.

“Get the hell out of here!” he yelled, his deep voice echoing off the cliffs. “Go away!”

The shout cut off their cries and howls, had them scurrying back into the deeper shadows of the trees. But the shadows were all around now. Those dark clouds had dropped lower and gotten thicker, blocking out nearly all the light of the winter day. That darkness wrapped around him like the wind, enveloping him.

He’d tried so hard to shake that darkness, to fight free of it, to run from it, but now it was sucking him back in, sucking him into the past. Into the never-ending nightmare he doubted he could escape, no matter how fast and how hard he ran. He couldn’t get away from it.

He’s going to get away with it.

Again.

The realization settled heavily in the pit of Beverly Mae Montgomery’s churning stomach. She shifted against the driver’s seat of the state police SUV as she peered through the frosted windshield at the tall, wrought-iron gates to Halcyon Hall. Those gates, and another smaller set farther down the street, were the only openings in the stone wall that surrounded the expansive grounds of the hall.

But those gates weren’t the only ways onto the property. There was a tunnel that started in the abandoned lighthouse on the seaside point of the island. She continued driving past the stone wall to that point where the old dock stretched out, over the rocks, into the ocean. And beyond that, the limestone lighthouse stood atop a hill. She suspected the owners of the hall had made certain that entrance inside the lighthouse had been sealed, though. So maybe the gates were the only way onto the property.

She drew in a breath and focused her attention back on the cell phone she clutched in one hand, the call on speaker. “You won’t get me a search warrant?”

She knew damn well that those gates wouldn’t open unless she had one.

“For what?” Assistant District Attorney Adam Moreland asked, his voice echoing inside Mae’s SUV. “Traffic cameras on the mainland side of the bridge picked up Heather Smallegan’s car leaving Bane Island. She’s not there. There’s no reason to search for her at Halcyon Hall.”

Mae’s stomach churned faster with doubts, the doubts that kept her awake at night, wondering, worrying . . .

Was Heather Smallegan alive? Or would she be found like the woman she had supposedly confessed to killing: dead?

Feeling trapped inside the SUV, she pushed open the door and stepped out, heading toward that dock, toward the ocean.

“Leave it to the US Marshals to find her now,” Adam said. “They’ll bring her back to face charges.”

“You really filed charges for her arrest?”

“Of course,” Adam replied. “She wrote out her confession for Erika Korlinsky’s murder, and the handwriting was confirmed as hers—”

“But her dad said—”

“Her dad is obviously not a handwriting expert,” Adam interrupted her as she’d interrupted him. “And I don’t know many parents, or even siblings, who can actually bring themselves to honestly acknowledge the failings of their loved ones.”

She sucked in a breath, stinging like he’d slapped her with that remark just as the wind slapped her long hair around her face and the back of her jacket. He knew her too well, but then, they’d once been in a relationship what seemed like a lifetime ago. Relief flashed through her once again that she’d turned down his marriage proposal all those years ago. But maybe that was why he so often turned down her requests to ask judges to grant search and arrest warrants. And whenever she tried to go around him to another prosecutor, he accused her of being unprofessional.

A curse burned in the back of her throat over his hypocrisy, but she couldn’t utter it now, not when she knew what she was about to do was not very professional at all. But she had no choice. He wouldn’t get her those search warrants, so Adam had taken away the opportunity for her to handle this the correct way.

The legal way.

“Mae?” his voice emanated from her cell phone. “Are you still there? Are you mad?”

Just as he knew her so well, she knew him, too. There was no argument, nothing more she could say, that would change his mind once he’d made it up. He’d clearly decided to close this case without a complete investigation. He was also smart enough to know that she was mad, probably just like he’d wanted her to be. Even though he’d moved on after they’d broken up, and had married and had kids, apparently his pride still hadn’t recovered from her rejection.

She wasn’t going to pander to it anymore. From now on, she was going around him for her warrants, but this time . . .

This time she knew no one else would give her a search warrant for Halcyon Hall either. Obviously everyone else believed Heather Smallegan was responsible for the murder. Everyone but her. And Heather’s distraught father.

Without sparing Adam another word or another thought, she disconnected the call. She stayed on that dock for a little while longer, feeling it creak and sway beneath her. Then she turned back. Once she settled behind the steering wheel of the SUV, she reached across the console to the passenger seat, and the papers she’d placed on the leather. One was a signed vacation slip; her request for a couple of weeks off had been approved.

So she had a couple of weeks to find Heather Smallegan and the evidence that would prove the young fitness instructor’s innocence and his guilt. The other documents were a driver’s license and birth certificate for another woman; the woman whose identity Mae would assume to get through those damn gates. Not as an officer of the law . . .

But as one of the elite guests to whom the spa catered. The last paper on the seat wouldn’t be shown to anyone; it was that woman’s death certificate, the reason Mae would be able to assume the identity of Kimber Lee. Because she was no longer using it, and because very few people knew she was dead. Her husband had been too embarrassed to announce it, and so he’d moved out of the country, back to his Paris headquarters, taking his suddenly motherless child with him.

The former fashion model hadn’t been seen for five years, so it was possible no one would remember exactly what she looked like. It wasn’t as if Kimber had ever been as famous as she’d wanted to be, as she’d craved to be.

So Mae should be able to pass for her. As long as nobody recognized her for who she really was. She focused on her reflection in the rearview mirror, at the beige hat that covered most of her dark blond hair, the brim of it shadowing her face. When she was out of uniform, even fellow troopers often failed to recognize her, walking right past her in grocery stores and restaurants. To look more like the woman whose identity she was assuming and less like herself, she was going to dye her hair a lighter blond, wear contacts to turn her dark blue eyes to a lighter shade, and get a spray tan to cover up the winter pallor of her skin.

Would anyone inside Halcyon Hall figure out who she really was? Would they see through her disguise?

If so, she had no doubt that the two-week stay she’d booked would be cut short. Her career would probably be cut short as well. For trespassing, for identity theft, for . . . any number of reasons.

But that was a risk she had to take because she could not let him get away with it. She couldn’t let Bode James get away with another murder.

Getting away with murder was easy. Almost too easy . . .

Nobody had posed a challenge at all because no one had come even close to discovering the truth. The sheriff, Deacon Howell, had once been an acclaimed detective on the mainland, but he had no clue what was really going on. And Dr. Elijah Cooke . . . wasn’t he supposed to be some kind of genius psychiatrist? Yet he missed what was happening right under his nose, under his direction because he was the director of Halcyon Hall.

The killer snorted in derision at the psychiatrist’s so-called genius. He was lucky to be alive. But that was because the killer—the real killer—hadn’t been after Elijah Cooke. He posed no threat.

Nobody did.

Not even that reporter. Edie Stone. She might have been able to figure it out if she hadn’t fallen in love with the genius psychiatrist. Now she was more focused on him than on uncovering the secrets of Bainesworth Manor, which she’d claimed she was going to expose.

And there were so many, many secrets.

A couple of other people had actually come closer than the sheriff, the shrink, and the reporter to learning the truth. The first one had died months ago, and the other . . .

The killer walked the tunnels beneath the grounds of Bainesworth Manor, shoes scraping against the rock and concrete floor. Within one of those tunnels were a series of cells from long ago, from when the manor had served as a hospital for the criminally insane.

Those convicted and sentenced to the psychiatric facility hadn’t been checked into the nice rooms of the main house like the young girls whose wealthy families had committed them to the manor. The convicts—all women—had been contained below ground, where they could not hurt anyone else and where no one could hear them being hurt.

Fists and feet rattled one of the metal doors of those cells, and cries seeped out beneath the door. Just like nobody had heard those girls so long ago, nobody could hear Heather Smallegan but the killer, the person who would eventually take the young woman’s life just like they’d taken so many others....

“What the hell kind of sick joke is this?” Bode asked as he stared with horror at the reservation list clutched tightly in his shaking hand. The Halcyon Hall receptionist had delivered a copy of the list to each of the six people, including him, gathered around the conference room table. He tore his gaze from that list to see if anyone had noticed what he had: that a dead woman was about to check into the hall.

His brother, Elijah, at the head of the table, glanced at the list and then back at Bode. “We’re lucky to have any guests at all with everything that’s happened around here the past month.”

Had it just been a month? It seemed longer. Infinite. Like a nightmare that was never going to end.

And was this another facet of it?

“Fortunately, not everything that happened here got to the press,” said the reporter sitting at the table next to Elijah. Edie Stone had been their worst nightmare when she’d first arrived on the island, determined to exploit the past of Bainesworth Manor that Bode and his brother had been desperate for people to forget.

But nobody was going to forget about it, no matter how much they wished they would, that they could.

“Thanks to you,” Elijah murmured as he reached out and squeezed her hand. They were always touching.

Bode wanted to be irritated, envious, but he couldn’t summon any jealousy. He’d always been in awe of his older brother, had always wished they could be closer. But because of the nearly ten years between them, they hadn’t really grown up together. Not with Elijah finishing high school early and going off to college while Bode was still in elementary. He’d always wanted a relationship with him, but he didn’t have to worry about Edie coming between them. Instead, with Elijah opening himself up to love, to hope, they had gotten even closer.

Warmth flooded Bode’s heart. His brother’s happiness brought him happiness. Like Adelaide did . . .

Every time his five-month-old baby smiled or cooed or looked at him. He would do anything for his daughter, anything to keep her safe. To protect her.

But how could this person pose a threat to her? This person claiming to be someone from Bode’s past who had died years ago.

“What is it?” Edie asked. Two psychiatrists and a psychologist sat around that conference table, but the reporter was the one who’d picked up on his distress. “What’s wrong?”

Now those psychiatrists, his brother and Dr. Gordon Chase, studied him with narrowed eyes, while the psychologist, Rosemary Tulle, smiled at him. “What is upsetting you, Bode?” she asked.

“Is it the number of guests?” The chef asked that question. Besides Bode, he was the only other person at the table who wasn’t involved in the mind side of the wellness center.

They used to have a publicist on staff, too, but she’d recently tried to kill Edie and Elijah. She’d hurt Bode worse than she had either of them, though. His shoulder throbbed with a dull ache from where she’d shot him. He was lucky it hadn’t been worse.

“I wish there were more, too, but it’s winter and almost Christmas,” the chef, Rene Rigaud, continued. “So it is not unexpected. As Edie said, it could have been worse regarding publicity, but I know who can make it better. . . .” The Frenchman grinned, as if just thinking of the friend he’d recommended for the job made him happy.

Just like Edie made Elijah happy for maybe the first time in his life. Bode didn’t know for certain, though, because there were so many years he and his brother had barely spoken.

Elijah chuckled. “I read Gare’s résumé. He’s coming in to interview next week.”

“If he’s half as good as Rene says he is, you should have just offered him the job,” Edie said.

Elijah grinned. “I’m sure I will.”

Edie expelled a ragged breath. “That’s good. Then I can go back to my day job.”

“Exposing the dark past of Bainesworth Manor?” Bode asked. He’d once resented and even feared the reporter’s determination to do that, but now he trusted that however she handled it, she would make damn sure it didn’t hurt Elijah.

“You two aren’t part of that dark past,” Edie said. “So neither of you are the Bainesworths who need to worry.”

“Neither of us are Bainesworths,” Elijah murmured.

Their mother was a Bainesworth, their father a Cooke. Cookes had once been respected hard workers on this island, but recently, their Cooke cousins had done unforgivable things. They’d paid for their sins with their lives. But he and Elijah would keep paying for sins they hadn’t committed just because of who their family was.

That was why Bode had changed his name completely. After dropping out of college when his personal trainer career took off, James Bane Cooke had become Bode James. Just like Bainesworth Manor had become Halcyon Hall. But renaming the property and himself hadn’t made any difference on Bane Island. Nobody would let either of them forget who and what they really were. That was probably why his mother and his aunt had left years ago and never returned.

He sighed, not with frustration but with resignation.

“We are worried, too,” Elijah said as he held up the reservation list. “This list is even shorter than last year’s at this time.”

The spa had been open for three years, with the first couple of years seeing a throng of guests even during the off-season. Maybe the ones who’d stayed that first winter hadn’t wanted to return because of the extreme weather on the island and the isolation when the bridge to the mainland shut down. But Bode suspected it was more than that....

“Gare will help with that guest list,” Rene said in support of his friend.

“You could help now,” Dr. Chase said.

And with a start, Bode realized the older man was addressing him. “How?” he asked.

“You’re the face of the hall,” Gordon Chase replied. “You’re the reason people come here in the first place.” He glanced around the table at Rene and Elijah and Rosemary. “No offense.”

They chuckled.

“You need to get out there again,” Chase suggested. “Write another fitness book. Put out more tutorials. Do a press tour.”

“You missed your calling,” Edie said. “Maybe you should have been a publicist, Dr. Chase.”

He chuckled now. “Oh, no, not me. I’m just parroting the things Ms. Plasky kept telling you.”

Elijah groaned at the mention of the former publicist.

“She might have been crazy,” Edie said, “but she was right.”

“You are the draw,” Elijah told him. “But I understand why you haven’t wanted to travel over the past year.”

Adelaide . . .

Even before she was born, he hadn’t wanted to leave her, hadn’t wanted Erika to go through her pregnancy without his support. Even though he hadn’t loved her, he’d already loved the child she carried. He had liked and respected Erika. He just hadn’t ever felt as if he truly knew her. That was why he’d so readily accepted that she’d left him and their new baby, that being a mother had been too much for her. He’d known another woman like that....

“Gare will probably suggest you start making public appearances again, too,” Rene said. “The morning shows and talk shows.”

Bode forced a laugh now. “What? Are you all trying to get rid of me?” He’d wondered if that had been t. . .