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CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

T HIRTY YEARS AGO.

It was a miracle Jane hadn’t been pulled over after the explosion.

Maybe not a miracle, though. Every police officer, fireman, and paramedic in town—probably within a few towns—was headed to the sight of the explosion. Nobody was looking for a red hatchback, not yet.

And the overlook was only a ten-minute drive from the lumber company, along back roads that wound through the forest and past summer houses that were mostly abandoned in March.

Though Jane drove, she seemed to have lost her grip on reality.

Brent feared that something in her mind had snapped. He directed her, afraid she’d forget her destination. She did what he told her to do, but when he caught her eyes in the rearview mirror, it was obvious that she wasn’t all there.

They drove up Rattlesnake Road, past the condo development that was under construction and the one house on the road.

“Slow down,” he said. “I’m parked right…”

But she zoomed past his car.

“Jane, you need to drop me off.”

“It was empty. The building was empty.”

“Fine. It was empty. Turn around and take me to my car.”

But she kept going, all the way to the top. Then she slammed on the brakes, and they screeched to a halt. She jumped out before slipping it into park, and he had to reach into the front seat and jam the gear shift forward to keep it from driving into the woods.

She’d lost it. She’d completely lost it.

He didn’t know what to do.

All his planning, his careful plotting, and she’d blown it. She’d broken the first rule. The one rule they’d all agreed on.

And murdered a woman.

It could only have been a woman. He’d heard her voice in her sobbing. A sad woman, alone in the building.

Please, let her have been alone.

Jane was running toward the overlook, going too fast.

He followed her. He didn’t know if she was trying to kill herself or if she was just too far gone to understand what she was doing. A tiny part of him thought maybe it would be better if she flew over the edge.

But he pictured her body at the bottom, broken and bloodied.

No matter what she’d done, he loved her.

He was faster and caught up with her before she careened over the edge. He grabbed her wrist and yanked her back. “What are you doing? You’re going to kill yourself.”

Her eyes were wild, insane. She yanked something from her pocket, lifted it and brought it down toward his head.

He managed to deflect her hand, catching the glint of metal an instant before pain registered in his palm. A knife?

She’d sliced his palm with a knife.

He didn’t know where it’d come from, only that if he hadn’t seen it coming, she’d have stabbed him in the chest.

“What are you doing?” he asked. “Stop it. Sweetheart. You need to pull it together.”

But she was out of control. She reared away, took a few steps back, closer to the edge of the cliff. It wasn’t far down, maybe twenty or thirty feet, but she probably wouldn’t survive a fall.

“Please, Jane.” He kept his distance, afraid that if he stepped closer, she’d back away. Another two or three steps and she’d go over. “Listen to me. It’s going to be okay.” It had to be. They could still fix this. “We just have to follow the plan. You remember the plan?”

But Jane wasn’t listening. She wasn’t there.

She let out a visceral scream and came at him again. He managed to grab her wrist and turn the knife to the side an instant before her body crashed into his.

He lost his balance, and they both tumbled. She landed on him. He wrapped his arm around her and turned her over so he was on top. He needed to get her under control. He needed to pull her back from…from wherever she’d gone. He needed to reason with her.

He pinned her wrists to the ground and levered himself up over her. “You need to listen to…”

His words faded as he took in the sight.

He’d angled the knife outward. Out, toward air. Hadn’t he?

But there it was.

Protruding from Jane’s neck.

Blood spurting from the wound, painting the ground crimson.

“Jane. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh.” He pulled out the knife and pressed his hand to the wound as if stopping the blood flow might save her life.

But in the moonlight, he knew the truth.

Her eyes were no longer wild.

They were empty. Empty of the woman he loved.

She was gone.

Only a few seconds passed before he heard the sound that must have been there all along.

Someone was there. Breathing heavily.

He stood and came face-to-face with Michael.

Jane’s husband.

Brent didn’t know what to say. There were no words to fill the silence between them. The silence hovering over the body of the woman they both loved.

Michael spoke first. “It was you, wasn’t it? The explosion?”

He’d heard it? In town? Or had he already been up at the overlook?

Would it have been so loud?

Brent didn’t know. He should have known how far away it could be heard. He hadn’t considered that in his planning.

Michael crouched down beside Jane. He reached out as if he might touch her, then pulled back.

Fury rose within Brent. “You never loved her. Not like I do. You stole her from me, but you never loved her!”

Michael gently closed Jane’s eyes.

“How can you be so calm?” Brent screamed. “She’s dead. She’s?—”

“Calm?” Michael sat back on his heels, and his shoulders heaved. Moments passed. Finally, he looked up. In the moonlight, Brent saw the wetness on the man’s face. “You just killed my wife.”

“It was self-defense. I didn’t mean for it to happen. She came at?—”

“I saw what happened.” He stood, shook his head. “I’ll tell them. You won’t go to prison…for that, anyway.”

He started across the dirt toward the road.

When Brent looked that direction, he saw what he’d missed before. The black minivan he’d always sneeringly thought of as Michael’s “dad car” was parked farther up the road, nearly hidden in the darkness beside a thick bush.

He was going to get in it. Drive to his house, or maybe the closest pay phone, and call the police.

And then Brent would go to prison.

“You’ll be implicated.” He didn’t yell the words. He didn’t have to.

Michael stopped in the middle of the asphalt and turned. “What are you talking about?”

“In the bombing. Jane set it up to frame you.”

The other man’s gaze flicked from Brent to where they’d left her. “In her state of mind? I’ll take my chances.”

“She couldn’t have done it by herself. You’re right about that.”

Michael’s eyes narrowed. “What does that mean?”

“The person who made the bomb did it with your tools, wearing your clothes. We kept all that stuff, along with hair Jane collected for us. All that evidence will be sent to the police station tomorrow.”

Again, he studied the body that lay behind Brent. “Why?” He sounded perplexed, hurt. “Why would she do that?”

“She needed an alibi. She was going to ask you to tell the police she was with you tonight.”

Michael closed the distance between them so fast that Brent barely had time to step back. “It was your idea, wasn’t it?”

“I was trying to keep her out of prison.”

“Nice going. If only you’d tried as hard to keep her out of the grave.”

The words hit their mark.

Brent stumbled back. His legs suddenly felt like jelly, and he barely kept himself from falling backward. Over the cliff and to his own death. He went to his knees, then leaned onto his hands and vomited.

His body was beginning to understand what had happened.

It would take his mind and heart some time to catch up.

When he sat back on his heels, Michael was still standing there, glaring down at him. “So, you and my wife—and Dean, I guess—decided to blow up… Was it the lumber company?”

Brent said nothing, but Michael had put it together.

“Her plan was for me to meet her here, then go home with her as if we’d been together the whole night. She was going to blackmail me into telling the police she’d been with me. Do I have that right?”

Brent just nodded.

“And then, what? We’d go on with our lives?” He scoffed, shook his head. “No. You knew I wouldn’t be able to live with it. I’d leave her, and you’d step in. You did all this”—he gestured as if he could encompass all the horrible events in the sweep of his arm—“as one big elaborate scheme to steal my wife.”

Brent crawled away from the vomit and forced himself to stand on shaky legs.

“And now she’s gone,” Michael said.

Brent couldn’t stand the condemnation he saw on the other man’s face. He averted his gaze, then caught sight of the glow in the forest below.

A fire.

Caused by the explosion.

Caused by the bomb .

Had they found the woman’s body yet?

There were no secrets between them now. Michael needed to know it all. Then, hopefully, he’d do the right thing.

Do right by Brent, anyway.

“The building wasn’t empty.”

Michael’s eyes widened.

“We’d agreed not to do it if there was anybody there, but Jane…” He closed his eyes against the memory of her face when she’d run from the building. The pure unadulterated joy he’d seen. “She decided to do it anyway.”

“You should have stopped her.”

He didn’t bother to explain what had happened. It didn’t matter now.

“Your wife murdered a woman. And you’re going to be implicated. You can tell them I was with her, but nobody will be able to prove that. It’ll be your word against mine. Maybe they’ll believe you. Maybe they won’t.

“My partner will mail the evidence to the police station tomorrow. The police will follow up on that. Jane will be dead, and you’ll be implicated in what happened here as well. Maybe none of the charges will stick. But maybe they will. Maybe you’ll get sent to prison. Maybe your little girl will grow up knowing her mother murdered an innocent woman, and her father murdered her mother.”

Michael cringed as if the idea caused him physical pain.

“Or,” Brent said, “we hide her body. Everybody’s going to believe she set that bomb off, and she did. The blame will fall exactly where it should. They’ll come after me and my partner, but we’ll both have alibis. Nobody will be able to prove anything. Jane will disappear. Just…be gone. The world will think she realized what she did and ran away to avoid facing charges.”

He wasn’t sure what he expected Michael to do. Yell at him, maybe come after him. Maybe collapse. But the man stood his ground and said nothing.

Brent added for good measure, “You’ll get to raise your little girl.”

“And you’ll get off scot-free.” His words were cold.

“I didn’t kill her. You know that. You know it was self-defense.”

“You set off the bomb. You?—”

“I didn’t set it off. I tried to stop her. I failed. I see now that I should never have… She was losing it. I thought I could keep her under control.”

“If you’d backed me up when I tried to have her committed…” Michael’s words trailed, and he blew out a short, humorless laugh. “I knew she was a danger to herself. You knew she was a danger to others. But you kept that tidbit to yourself.”

He had. It was stupid, and he’d never forgive himself.

None of that mattered now. “If you take me out, then I’ll take you out. You and I will both lose. But you know who’ll lose even more?”

Michael didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. The truth was written across his face.

Aspen meant more to him than justice. His daughter meant more to him than anything.

He’d loved Jane out of obligation.

He loved Aspen from a place of pure adoration.

The details were spinning and setting themselves in place in Brent’s mind. “It’s very simple. You take Jane—and the knife. You bury them somewhere. The knife has my blood on it.” He lifted his hand to show where he’d been cut, registering only then the blood dripping down his arm. “You can take my jacket too.” He shifted so Michael could see where Jane’s blood drenched the arm of his canvas coat.

“And then?” Michael asked.

“You have evidence against me. I have evidence against you. We both leave here tonight and say nothing about what happened. We claim we don’t know what happened to her. We haven’t heard from her. We keep our mouths shut, and we go on with our lives.”

“Just like that?”

Brent lifted his shoulders, let them drop. “I’ll never forgive myself for what happened tonight.”

Michael stared at him a long moment. “Not exactly a fitting punishment.”

Brent couldn’t hold his eye contact. He slipped off his jacket and dropped it on the road. Then he walked away. When he was well past Michael, he broke into a jog until he reached his car a few hundred yards down the mountain.

He went home, bandaged his hand, changed his clothes, and left with his father for the city.

Hoping Michael would keep his mouth shut.