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And he knew just the guy.
Pulling his phone from his pocket, he second-guessed himself, then decided he was tired of hitting brick walls. It had been twenty years. He was stuck in this damned town again. Jonas Frickin’ McIntyre was a free man. And the competition for this story,hisstory, had just gotten a lot tougher.
Time to pull in the big guns.
As long as they were concealed weapons.
He pulled up his contact list, found the number, and punched it in.
* * *
Driving through the mountains, Kara checked her watch—nearly ten thirty—just before she spied Sawtooth Road, barely a lane cutting through dense stands of fir and pine. Only a series of ruts and a faded, iced-over sign indicated where what had once been an old logging road intersected with the county road. Visibility was difficult, the flurries of fat flakes turning into a near-blizzard as she’d driven ever higher into the mountains.
A lap blanket was tossed over her legs as the damned heater had given up and she hadn’t yet bothered to fix it. Now she was paying the price as the defroster, blowing cold air, couldn’t keep up with the condensation constantly building on the inside of the windshield.
Swiping at the fogged glass with her gloved hand, she tried to find Merritt’s place. A mobile home, Celeste had said.
Creeping along the tire tracks, she squinted, searching through the veil for mailboxes or names on the cabins hidden deep within the trees and undergrowth. A sparse few came into view, all appearing to be uninhabited. No vehicles parked close by, no recently broken paths in the snow, no smoke curling from chimneys, just old cottages, stark and dreary, windows shuttered, snow drifting on forgotten woodpiles.
A good place to get lost, she thought as the wind picked up, high-pitched keening, slicing through the branches. Kara felt her nerves tighten.
Which was ridiculous.
She reminded herself that Merritt had once been her ally and if his current wife didn’t have the time of day for her, his second, Helen, had been close to her, being more of a mentor and mother-figure than Aunt Faiza had ever hoped to be. Merritt, too, had helped her along the way, even as his own life and career had spiraled downward, especially after Helen had died suddenly, the victim of a rare virus.
Why then was she so nervous?
Because of Jonas.
You know Merritt kept Jonas’s secrets. Attorney-client privilege.
Her stomach twisted as her mind went to places that she’d never allowed herself to consider. What really did the lawyer know? Had Jonas told him the truth, or had he perpetuated a lie?
What really was the truth?
She thought about Wesley Tate and his accusation that she didn’t want to know what had really happened on that horrible night, but that wasn’t true. She did. That’s why she was driving through the mountains, determined to find Margrove.
As for Tate, she wanted to dismiss him. She remembered him as a boy, but he no longer looked like the pudgy, freckled-faced kid with wild, untamed hair, glasses, and braces. Nope, he was all grown up now. Dark hair, bladed features and a dimple she hadn’t noticed way back when. His glasses had been replaced with reflective shades, his teeth straight and white, his awkward boy-child innocence having given way to a hard edge evident in the set of his jaw and the tight corners of blade-thin lips.
Stupid that she’d noticed or even remembered leaning across him in her own damned rig, his breath warm against the back of her neck as she’d flung the passenger door open, her heartbeat quickening.
Don’t think about him now. He’s not worth it. You’re just hyped up because Jonas has been released and Tate reminds you of that night. Adrenaline. That’s all it was. Nothing more. And you have more important things on your mind. Remember that night, what happened. Tate’s wrong. So wrong. You do care about digging up the truth, no matter what!
She bit her lip as she took a corner a little too fast, the back end of the Jeep sliding as she hit a spot of ice, then righting as the tires dug in.
Her heart leapt to her throat and she slowed a bit, her mind turning back to Christmas Eve so long ago. What had happened to Marlie? Why did she know to protect her younger sister? Why had her clothes been laid out on the bed as if she intended to leave? Why the hell had she been so scared? Had she somehow been a part of the slaughter?
“No,” Kara whispered out loud, not daring to believe what so many had insinuated in the articles, true crime reconstructions on televisions, and more recently the blogs and Facebook groups dedicated to the murders.
But someone knew.
And she needed to find out.
Her fingers clenched around the steering wheel as the towering firs, needled limbs laden with snow, flashed past.
Kara had always suspected that Jonas or Merritt, or both, knew more about her sister’s disappearance than either admitted, but she had no proof.
There’s that paranoia kicking in again.