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“Aye, just what I thought,” Iverson said.

“What I don’t understand is how we wouldn’t smell him in the room or on anything, except his phone. He should have left his scent in the room when he grabbed Gus’s bags,” Maisie said.

“Hunter’s concealment,” Iverson said. “If he planned this out—like driving a car unknown to either Chelsea or Gus—he wouldn’t want either of them to smell him coming. He most likely didn’t know the inn was owned by you and your sister.”

“Until he smelled our scents around the place,” Maisie said. “It sounds like he didn’t follow Gus and Chelsea to the inn, or we would have seen his car on video, but instead waited at the petrol station for both of you to return.”

“Unless Jack parked somewhere close to the inn but out of sight of your security cameras and then followed Gus and Chelsea back to the station after they left his room,” Iverson said. “In any event, once Gus dropped off Chelsea, she saw Jack. Jack had to have seen Gus there and then followed him and confronted him, maybe ran him off the road, had a fight with him, and then killed him.”

“I should never have joined Gus there,” Chelsea said with regret.

“If you had seen Gus at a different location or even had been with someone else instead, the result could have been the same,” Maisie said.

Robert and Iverson agreed with her.

When they arrived at Farraige Castle, several people greeted them in the inner bailey, including Enrick, Lachlan, and Grant.

“How are Colleen, Heather, and the babies?” Robert asked Grant and Enrick as they walked to Gus’s car.

“They’re good,” Grant said, “and they’re eager to learn what we discover about all this business.”

That was the thing about a wolf pack. They all wanted closure for each other.

Maisie checked out the car on the driver’s side. “I smell Iverson, Gus, and Chelsea and the heavy odor of bleach, which is burning my eyes. No one would have been able to ride in the car if it had been covered in bleach, so the killer had to have cleaned it out after leaving it on the farm. But I don’t smell any sign of Jack.”

“Which means that he must have worn concealment. It’s the only explanation for how he could enter Gus’s room, pack his bags, and remove them without leaving his scent behind,” Iverson said. “But nothing proves he actually murdered him.”

Which was true. He had motive. He’d been at the station at the same time that Gus and Chelsea had been, so he didn’t have an alibi.

“I’ll check the petrol station’s video inside the store. I didn’t before because Gus was never seen going into the store. But if I can find Jack entering it and maybe buying bleach inside the store, that would help confirm that he was the one responsible for Gus’s death,” Iverson said.

“Was Jack wearing a wrist splint when you saw him at the station?” Robert realized no one had asked Chelsea about it. And they needed to have her see the video of the man wearing the splint.

Chelsea’s eyes widened. “Aye. Jack had hurt his wrist about six weeks before I went to see Gus. He made a big deal of it because he wanted me to baby him and I didn’t. I’d learned that he had struck a wall with his fist and broken it in a fit of rage when he was angry with someone at a pub. So I figured he had kind of deserved what he got for losing control. But he wasn’t wearing the splint when he was at the petrol station. I would have noticed it.”

“If there’s nothing else that you ladies want to look at with regard to the car,” Iverson said, “let’s go home and get some rest.”

“I want to see the security video you have of the man wearing the splint,” Chelsea said.

“We’ll show it to you when we return to the inn,” Maisie said.

Robert really hoped she could identify that the man with the torn pocket was Jack. “Were Gus’s bags in the car?”

“Yeah, in the trunk,” Iverson said. “What about Gus’s cell phone? Were you able to ever get it to work?”

“No. Too much salt water,” Robert said.

They said good night to Grant and his brothers and to the others who had come out to learn what they could about their murder investigation.

On the way back to the inn, Chelsea said, “We have to prove Jack did this and take him down.”

“We will. He won’t get away with it,” Robert said.

Iverson agreed. Maisie was quiet.

Robert glanced at her. “Are you okay?” She looked pale too, and he suspected just seeing the car and thinking about the scenario had gotten to her. Especially since she’d seen Gus’s body. He reached over and gently rubbed her shoulder.

“Yeah. I’m sorry that Jack wore hunter’s concealment, though it’s possible it was someone else. But I bet it was him. I wanted to know for sure that he had been in Gus’s car though.”