Page 31 of Bait and Switch (Subtle Deceptions #2)

NINETEEN

Casey

Wednesday night

One of the two emergency responders half-heartedly tried to get Casey to go to the hospital and get his head checked out.

“Jeremiah, I’m good to go, just like I told these guys.” He gestured toward Elton and Gabriel. “I’m fine. My head hurts and I won’t be able to brush my hair for a few days.” He shrugged. “But I’m okay.”

“I don’t want to get in trouble with Greta.”

“I’ll cover for you if something goes awry. Everything good here?”

Jeremiah didn’t look convinced by Casey’s argument but all he said was, “Yep, we got it all. A few of the lower branches of that tree didn’t make it.

All in all, it’s a good thing you had Greta call us in.

It probably would have burned itself out without doing much more damage, but you never know, do you? ”

“Thanks for coming out.”

“Yeah, sure, hope not to see you soon.” Picking up his first aid kit, Jeremiah sketched a wave and ambled back the direction he’d come, heading for the water truck and his partner, who was finishing putting the hoses and whatnot away.

“We’re all freezing,” Gabe announced, “and you’re not driving, so here’s the dealio. I can drive your truck and you can ride shotgun with me, or I can drive your truck and you can ride with Elton.”

Going by the expression on both their faces, Casey knew he wasn’t going to be able to pitch that he could drive perfectly well. Elton may have been as old as the hills, but he knew the road better than anyone. Charming Fucker, on the other hand?

“My place,” Elton said, his tone uncompromising. “In fact, I’m transporting this.”

With that, Elton picked up the backpack and started for his truck, not sticking around for the argument.

Casey caught Gabe’s amused glance and shook his head—then winced, regretting the move. “I guess there’s no debating with him.”

“Tell me about that pack. Why did you look like you’d seen a ghost?”

Gabe was doing his best to avoid the worst sections of the roadway, but Casey’s head throbbed, and he sort of wanted to vomit every time they hit a bump. But not as intensely as when Gabe had read Suzie Warner’s name off that tag.

“Suzie Warner is a ghost. I mean, if we’re finding her backpack up here after she’s been missing for twenty years.” He paused as he tried to think back and come up with a timeline.

“Keep talking, Ranger Man. Do not go silent on me now.”

“It’s just, she was supposed to have left on a hiking trip, and as far as I know, her family has always believed something happened to her on the trail, not close to home.

Sorry, my memory is muddled because this all happened around the same time Maya Crane was murdered.

I was fourteen and the only thing I was focused on was my brother and the fact that no one would listen to me when I told them I’d seen Maya alive after everyone else claimed they had. They thought I was covering for him.”

“But you weren’t, of course you weren’t. What happened with this Suzie person?”

Casey shrugged again, and pain made him regret the movement. He hadn’t thought about Suzie Warner in years, not since she’d left the island.

“Elton probably remembers better than I do. Suzie had graduated from high school and planned to hike around before starting college. No, that’s not right.

She decided she didn’t want to go to school, at least not right away.

Her plan was to hike, maybe the Pacific Crest Trail?

And then—well, I don’t know if she had much of a plan after that. ”

Casey tried to think of what else he remembered from that time. The headache was not helping.

“Honestly, there aren’t many other details coming to mind. It seems like she was just gone and never heard from again. It’s not as if people, especially women, don’t disappear on a daily basis.”

“Her parents thought she left the island?”

“I think so, yes. No one ever saw or heard from her again.”

“And yet the pack would indicate that she did not.”

“Yep,” Casey said to his reflection in the passenger window. “It would seem that she did not.”

“Your place is starting have that special Batcave feel to it, Elton. All we need is a bank of computers, an elegant butler, and maybe a fancy cologne.”

Elton had forced Casey to lay back in his recliner.

“Stay still while I clean this up again. That kid up there did a half-ass job. Pfft.”

“Is it half-ass or half-assed?”

“Gabriel,” Casey sighed. It had been a fucking long day.

Gabe stopped pacing to stand at Casey’s feet.

“Deal with it,” he said. “Humor is a coping mechanism I can afford, a bottle of whiskey is one I cannot.” Gabriel had his hands jammed deep into his jeans pockets, as if he was just barely holding himself together.

They hadn’t spoken much after Casey had shared what little he knew about Suzie.

The rest of the drive had been silent. A quiet Charming Fucker was unnerving.

“What do you remember about Suzie Warner, Elton?” Casey asked, wincing as Elton swiped the cut on his hairline with hydrogen peroxide.

“I think it was a few months before the Warners began to worry that something had happened to her. As I recall, they eventually hired someone to retrace her steps, but there was no sign of her.”

“Because she never made it to the trail and no one was looking in this neck of the woods because she wasn’t supposed to be here.”

They were silent, the hum of the refrigerator seeming to expand and fill the quiet along with their own breathing.

What the fuck had happened and why was it coming to light now?

Bowie was curled up at the base of the recliner, clearly not letting Casey out of his sight.

The cat had even emerged and was perched on the windowsill, supervising the goings-on.

“What do we do with her bag?” Gabe asked. “It’s not a body, it doesn’t prove anything. She could have changed her mind, left town with someone else. We all know that’s not true, but?—”

“Two girls, one dead, one assumed dead, presumably within days of each other…” Casey winced again. “Knock it off, Elton, the cut hurts more now than it did when it happened.”

With a sigh, Elton paused his aggressive cleaning and set the cotton swabs and antibiotics down on his side table. Casey released a quiet sigh of relief.

It was Gabe who sucked in a long breath, stared at them intently for a long moment, and then said the thing they had to all have been thinking.

“What if the backpack isn’t the only thing up there?

” His hands landed on top of his head as if he was trying to keep all his thoughts inside his skull but they were escaping against his will anyway.

“Think about it. The business with Gordon getting busted earlier in the year, which kept him out of the loop, then Silent Bob—Dwayne Perkins, I mean—and now finding this. Smacks of somebody trying to keep something hidden. Maybe more than a backpack.”

“That thought did cross my mind,” Elton said, turning and heading toward his kitchen. “Whatever they’re hiding, it has to do with Gordon’s property, Snowcap Estates, or both. I’m heating up some soup for us.”

Since it was a statement and not a question, Casey kept his mouth shut. Elton was in mother-hen mode, and nothing was going to stop him. And he was also starving.

“Yeah, Snowcap Estates. Let’s assume that something happened to Suzie Warner before she left for her hiking trip, something bad.

” Gabe walked toward the hallway, then turned around and headed back toward the kitchen as he thought out loud.

“It’s a bad thing, she’s dead. The murderer takes her remains up”—he waved—“that way. And her pack too? No. Seems more likely she was killed there. That would make more sense.”

“Panicked and then what?” Elton said from his spot at the stove. “But we don’t know that Suzie was ever up The Valley.”

“Stands to reason, though, doesn’t it? She wouldn’t be parted from her backpack. It would’ve had everything she needed in it.”

Casey’s headache was diminishing now that Elton wasn’t scraping the skin off his skull, and he thought Gabe had the right idea. Which, considering the source, made Casey grimace.

Gabriel Karne was a bit like an escaped ping-pong ball that Casey couldn’t quite grab a hold of, but he wasn’t stupid.

He encouraged people to think he was flighty and a mess, and no doubt it helped when the man had his Charming Fucker act going.

But he was smart, aware, and had good instincts. Sexy.

Dammit again.

“It stands to reason,” Casey reluctantly agreed.

Gabriel blinked and his eyebrows rose toward his hairline.

“It does,” Casey said, knowing he sounded mildly defensive. “I think it’s fairly safe for us to assume that Suzie Warner and her backpack made it up The Valley together, one way or another. Could be she was lured up there, maybe she was dead already.”

A long-buried memory from the one and only time he’d attended the senior bonfire popped into his head. He hadn’t thought about the celebration in years, maybe not since that night, because of what happened afterward.

“What?” demanded Gabe, his eyes narrowed. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m not sure. All this happened a long time ago.” He could hear Elton shuffling around, getting out bowls and spoons. “It’s possible Suzie might have disappeared the same night that Maya was murdered. Did anyone see her after the bonfire? Would anyone on Heartstone have known to look for her?”

Casey and his family had been too wrapped up with Mickie being arrested and accused of Maya’s murder for him to remember much of anything else.

Elton returned with two bowls. Steam rose off the hot soup, and once again Casey realized just how hungry he was. “Not homemade, but we won’t go to bed hungry,” Elton said, handing each of them a bowl before returning for his own.

“I don’t think anyone would have known to look for Suzie Warner,” Elton said as he sat down on the couch, his bowl cupped in his hands. “But there is someone we can ask.”

“Mercy,” said Casey, nodding.

“Mercy?” Gabe parroted.