Wendy Walker, author of Emma in the Night and Don’t Look For Me, turns up the heat in What Remains, a tense cat and mouse thriller. Read on to discover the synopsis and first chapter of What Remains, which is out now!
She saved his life. Now he‘ll never let her go.
Detective Elise Sutton is drawn to cold cases. Each crime is a puzzle to solve, pulled from the past. Elise looks for cracks in the surface and has become an expert on how murderers slip up and give themselves away. She has dedicated her life to creating a sense of order, at work with her ex-marine partner; at home with her husband and two young daughters; and within, battling her own demons. Elise has everything under control, until one afternoon, when she walks into a department store and is forced to make a terrible choice: to save one life, she will have to take another.
Elise is hailed as a hero, but she doesn’t feel like one. Steeped in guilt, and on a leave of absence from work, she’s numb, even to her husband and daughters, until she connects with Wade Austin, the tall man whose life she saved. But Elise soon realizes that he isn’t who he says he is. In fact, Wade Austin isn’t even his real name. The tall man is a ghost, one who will set off a terrifying game of cat and mouse, threatening Elise and the people she loves most.
CHAPTER ONE
I’m in the towel aisle at Nichols Depot when I hear the shots. Two pops followed by a chorus of screams.
I think the sounds might be distant, from outside the store. But this place is enormous, a vast warehouse of goods stacked floor to ceiling, wall to wall. The screams echo, then stop. Elevator music fills the void. I stand frozen in these seconds, my eyes taking in several brands of towels in two dozen shades of pink. I’d pulled one from the middle shelf and brushed it against my cheek, wondering if it was soft enough for my girls. It’s still pressed to the side of my face when the sounds come and go. There is a place inside me that knows this is gunfire even as I think instead of balloons from Amy’s ninth birthday party and then Fran jumping on a piece of Bubble Wrap and then the generator backfiring after the last power outage, which caused Mitch to haul it from the garage.
None of those were followed by screams.
I don’t move because fear has reached my body before conscious thought catches up. Racing heart. Shallow breath. Narrowed vision.
They come again, two shots.
Pop. Pop. Bright balls of color tied to folding chairs in the backyard as I carried a cake from the house. Corkscrew curls flying around the gleeful smile of a five-year-old in the kitchen. The smell of gasoline.
That is where my mind goes, and I feel a fleeting rush of warmth as I see the faces of my children and husband, even as I drop the towel to the floor and reach for my gun.
I am suddenly aware that, after twelve years in the department, this is the first time I have drawn my weapon in the outside world. My four years on active patrol had been quiet, and for the last eight, I’ve worked cold cases. It’s difficult enough for me to face the anguish of the ones left behind, the loved ones of the missing and the dead. That has been my battlefield—balancing the empathy and the implications of horrific crime with an otherwise normal life. I had never sought the thrill of a chase or a crime unfolding before my eyes. And now, as a crime does unfold, I feel as much a civilian as anyone else in this store.
It is an old reflex, a relic from my training, that causes my hand to grip the handle, though it shakes through to my arm and down the back of my spine.
I am ill-equipped for what I now know for certain is happening. I was just here to get towels—soft pink towels for my daughters.
My partner, Rowan, is circling the parking lot because I said I wouldn’t be long. Megastores unnerve me—the height of the shelves, the length of each aisle, the endless choices in every department from produce to video games to home goods. Towels. Pink towels. Two dozen shades. All of it wreaks havoc with my anxiety, which Rowan has had to endure these eight years. There are small things, like checking twice that we’ve locked the car, and bigger things, like never letting anything go—a piece of evidence, an unlikely suspect, a witness who lies. Things that are out of my control have no place to live inside my head, and Rowan gets that. He never complains. He has his own demons.
Mere moments ago we were driving back to the station after an interview when I spotted Nichols. My girls needed new towels, having worn the old ones down to bare threads. I saw the store and thought, Yes, I’ ll get them. I’d surprise everyone when I got home later. Fran would shriek with excitement. Amy would seem indifferent but be secretly pleased. Mitch would whisper something sweet in my ear—something like “Thanks, babe”—because I’d spared him the chore.
“There’s this thing called the internet—you can order stuff like towels there . . .” Rowan had said. He knew what was really going on with me. The interview had been unsettling. A missing woman. A grieving husband and child. I was frustrated that we hadn’t made progress on the case, the frustration leading to anger, the anger fueling my anxiety. I couldn’t do a damned thing to help them, but I could face my fear of department stores to help my family. It was an absurd deflection, but he knew he couldn’t stop me.
“At least the wardens will be happy,” he’d said. That was the term he used to tease my girls. They had names for him too. Their affection for him ran deep.
I’d gotten out, closed the door, watched the car pull away from the curb, then marched through the entrance. My phone had rung just after I found home goods. I’d turned on my earpiece and heard Rowan’s voice.
“Hey, can you get me some laundry detergent?”
I’d answered with a sarcastic quip about “this thing called the internet.” He was distracting me, pulling me away from the sorrow of that family and then the sea of shelves and the thousands of things piled upon them. That’s what happens when you spend every day with someone, thinking out loud about unsolved crimes and lingering tragedies. In between, you kill the time talking about other things. Your likes and dislikes. Your personality defects. They’re impossible to hide, even as you construct boundaries that honor the relationship between the two of you and the ones at home.
I was the boring, married lady with the little girls, and he was the former Marine who wore a badge and carried a gun, all of which got him a date any night he wanted one. Anxiety led me down rabbit holes, while worries rolled off his back and into pints of beer. We were different in countless ways. But Rowan had become one of my own. Like kin. I think now, as I scale the side of the aisle, gun drawn and clutched with both hands, that I want him to be here, pulling me behind him, taking the lead. Rowan is a soldier. Rowan has fired all kinds of weapons. He would give his life for mine, but I would give mine for his, so
I swallow the need.
The screams that follow the second round of shots stop, their echoes bouncing off the walls and the sky-high ceiling before yielding to silence. I hear movement at the far end, the one that leads to a door with a sign: Employees Only. A young woman is on her hands and knees, her face taut, hair spilling over her eyes. She wears a brown-and-white uniform. She crawls across the floor, sees me, and stops, leaning back on her heels. She puts her hands in the air and whimpers. I realize then that I am in plain clothes. That I’m holding a gun. That it’s pointed in her direction. I release my left hand and pull the edge of my jacket away from my waist so she can see my ID, and she seems to understand. She slowly rises, pointing to the place where the gun fired and the screams echoed, and I nod. Then she swipes a keycard and opens the door.
I expect her to slip inside and lock it behind her, but she waits, waving to people I don’t see until they emerge from hiding in the aisles on either side of mine. She waits for them to follow, leading them to safety. She waits until there are no more. Not one left behind.
I stare at the empty hallway as I make a move. The silence breaks with isolated cries. And then I hear the voice in my ear. It reaches so deep inside me I choke back tears.
“What’s happening? Elise? Elise!”
I’d forgotten about the phone and the earpiece. Rowan is still outside in the car.
Thank God, I think.
I should run. I should hide. But I don’t. A switch has flipped, and the fear retreats. I think about the woman with the brown-and-white uniform, fighting her own terror to help strangers. I look back at the pink towel on the floor. The flashes of balloons and Bubble Wrap are gone. The faces of my girls, my babies, fade away. I’m not a mother. I’m not a wife. I’m not a sister or a friend. I’m not a partner.
I’m a cop, and I’m alone.
Rowan says we don’t know what’s inside us until we’re tested. He said this after Mitch’s affair four years ago. I’d gone to him for advice and comfort while we were fighting to save our marriage, and to confess what I’d done to gather enough evidence to believe it was happening.
He hadn’t judged me for that, and he didn’t persuade me one way or another. He said I would know what to do. That it would come from inside. This is a different test now. I am about to find out what else has been hiding in my heart and in my mind. Perhaps even in my soul.
“Elise!”
My vision is sharp and focused as I walk out of the aisle and down the hall toward the cries. I disregard the vacuum cleaners and toilet paper, the floor tiles and the faces of people—so many people frozen in place, crouched into little balls, trying to disappear—as I move through the vast space. I am again surrounded by human suffering, by people who will never be the same, even if they come out alive. But I can’t think about this now.
Hearing honed, drowning out the elevator music, the heating vents blowing overhead, the whimpering, and yes, even the screaming. Listening only for the shots so they can guide me to the source. In the moments between them, I hear the beats of my heart and the whirring of my breath as my body settles in for the fight.
Rowan is in my ear. “Don’t move! I’m coming! Help is coming!”
“Stay in the car,” I whisper back.
He doesn’t listen. I hear muffled sounds—his car door slamming shut, then the world outside, the vastness of the air reaching up to the sky, broken by human chaos and distant sirens and his feet racing across the concrete sidewalk. “Clear the area!” he yells to those who have made it out.
“I’m going to find the shooter,” I tell him.
“Elise, no!”
At the end of home goods, the aisles open up to a large circular area with racks of clothing. A sign hangs from the ceiling on long silver chains: Men’s Department. I take in the scene, then retreat to find cover in the last aisle. I close my eyes and bring the picture into sharper focus. There was a man turned away from me, facing the entrance to a rectangular structure—the dressing room. Jeans. A gray hoodie. White sneakers. Long, stringy hair. A gun in his hands, aimed.
Someone else was moving, running toward that same structure. A woman in a dress. I think that her shape was round or maybe the dress was loose. I did not see her face.
And a second man, standing still. Exposed. Tall and thin, in khakis and a button-down shirt. His hands were in the air, as if surrendering or pleading for his life.
A new wave of fear unleashes. I feel the chemicals surge in my blood, and I draw a deep breath to make them settle. This is the part that can’t be simulated in training. This is the part I’m not prepared for. I rely on knowledge, lines from a textbook, words from an instructor. It’s not the same. Not even close.
The instinct returns. I could find my way outside through a back exit or fire door. I could get to safety. There is still time for flight. I’ve never been a fighter. Not like this. Not in combat.
I studied forensics because I was drawn to the order it created. The solving of mysteries and puzzles. I’d taught at the local college— classes on evidence and crime scenes. All of it pulled from past cases or hypothetical situations. Everything known or under my control. The survivors we encounter are not in danger. They suffer from their loss. Grief. Despair. Sorrow. They are not devoid of emotion, and that emotion torments me. But the terror has faded. Terror has a short shelf life.
Yet that is what electrifies the air. What races through every person in this store. That man standing, the next target, is paralyzed from it.
Run! The thought, the urge, is powerful.
And yet my body responds to a different call. To the tall man pleading for his life. To the others in the back of the store who might be next.
My head clears. My fingers close around my gun and release the safety.
“Elise, stop! Help is coming . . .”
The tall man sees me as I step out of the aisle and move quickly toward the suspect. His face changes with a wash of desperate hope, and the suspect turns his head. He’s so young. Maybe twenty. His expression is calm, but his eyes grow wild when he realizes he’s not the only one who is armed.
I call out. “Police officer! Drop your weapon!”
My hands are raised just below my chest. I peer over the end of the barrel, taking aim. The shaking is gone. My finger teases the trigger.
Then, suddenly, the tall man moves toward the dressing room, passing through the peripheral vision of the suspect, who turns his head back and then his torso. The gun is aimed and moves with him, and I think, This is it . . . he’s going to fire, he’s going to kill that man . . .
Suddenly, I know what’s inside me—what has been revealed by these mere minutes, crashing over the order I’ve created, the family I’ve fought for and loved with every cell in my body.
I take aim at the back of his head, and I feel my finger squeeze, and God help me, I pull the trigger and watch him fall.
And my life is forever changed.
