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CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

“ Y ou just left her there?” Aspen’s words seemed too loud in the silent, snowy world.

Brent stared ahead at the beautiful vista. The gun rested on his lap, but he never let up his grip.

He gestured with his chin. “It was probably right around there.”

She followed his gaze to a break in the trees. Boulders had been positioned between the land and the drop-off, but they were spaced far enough apart that anybody could get past them. Assuming they’d even been there back then.

“This was their overlook?” Aspen asked.

“My dad had a friend in the city looking for a summer home. He bought this property not long after Jane died. I’ve been coming up here for cookouts for years. My son takes care of the place when they’re not around. That’s why I have the garage door code. I’ve never once been here that I didn’t think of her.”

“Sure. You obviously loved her so much, what with how you blackmailed my father so you wouldn’t have to face what you did.”

“You think I’m proud of that?”

“I think you’re a coward.”

He let those words settle. “So was your father, I guess.”

“My father did what he did to protect me. Not himself.”

Poor Dad. Aspen’s heart broke for him. He’d faced an impossible choice.

He would have known it wouldn’t be easy to take on the town’s richest family. It would have been him, a widower and single parent who poured cement for a living, against the son of the county prosecutor and the former mayor.

Maybe he’d have been cleared. Maybe he wouldn’t have.

Daddy had agreed to Brent’s crazy scheme to protect her.

Of that, she had no doubt.

And she knew something else too. Whatever he’d meant to say before he’d been intubated a year before, she’d misunderstood. He never would have sent her back here to face all of this. He never would have put her in this danger.

He’d wanted to do himself what he hadn’t before had the courage to do.

He certainly hadn’t meant for Aspen to do it.

If only she’d realized that. But she’d needed to know what happened to her mother. Or she’d thought she had, anyway.

Now she knew. How would her life be better for the knowledge?

Brent shifted beside her, reminding her that her life wouldn’t be all that affected by what she knew because it wasn’t going to last that much longer.

“Now you know the story,” he said. “Where is she?”

“Your plan is to dig her up, I guess. Destroy the evidence linking her to you?”

“My plan is irrelevant to you. Where is she?”

“It’s not going to work. Even if I tell you where she is, you won’t be able to get to her.”

“You let me deal with that. Wherever she is, I can get her.”

Not if Mom was buried under cement. “I don’t know for sure. It’s just a guess. Even if I don’t tell Cote, he’s going to find her. The plan has already been set in motion.”

“What plan?”

She wasn’t going to tell him about the ground-penetrating radar Cote had arranged. That kind of radar could see through cement. He knew what Dad had done for a living. He’d figure it out.

“When they find her body,” Aspen said, “and they will, you can tell them what happened, that you acted in self-defense and then panicked and buried her. Maybe they’ll believe you. But if you kill me”—she turned and leveled her gaze at him—“that’ll be the crime you burn for.”

He swallowed hard. “They’ll have to prove it. But you’re going to disappear.”

“They’ll know.”

“Like they knew I was involved with the bombing. Yet, here I am.” He lifted both hands and let them drop. “Because it’s not about what they know, it’s about what they can prove. And without a body, without a murder weapon, they won’t be able to prove a thing.”

“You’re a monster, you know that?”

“I’m just a man, a man who made a stupid decision a long time ago. A man who got away with it and intends to keep getting away with it.” He pushed to his feet and looked down at her. “Where is she?”

Aspen shook her head. “I’m not going to tell you.”

He lifted the gun and pressed the barrel against her head. “Where. Is. She?”

The feel of that cold, hard barrel…

The knowledge that he could take her life with the squeeze of a finger.

Terror overcame her.

A scream crawled up from her belly, but she clamped her lips shut and pressed her eyes closed. And breathed. In and out. In and out. She focused her thoughts elsewhere, on the sting of the cold air. The feel of downy flakes landing on her nose and cheeks. The sound of the wind whispering through the trees.

Whether at the top of a mountain in New Hampshire or at the edge of the world on a Hawaiian beach, God had created a planet filled with beautiful people. People like her best friend and her father, who’d loved her so well. People like Garrett, who’d tried to protect her.

Garrett, whose heart would break. Would he live the rest of his life not knowing what had become of her? Would he believe she’d killed his uncle and then escaped?

No. Garrett would never think the worst of her, not the way she’d thought the worst of him.

Forgive me.

God did, and Garrett would. In time.

Protect him, Father. Let him have a good life.

She had. Maybe not as good a life as some, but certainly not as bad as others. At least she didn’t have to live with what Brent Salcito had lived with for thirty years. At least she didn’t have to spend her life dragging around a weight of regret.

Her God had freed her of all of that.

If this was the end for her, so be it.

The gun pressed harder against her skull, jabbing into her skin and making the ache from her concussion throb.

She was done with it. She was done with all of it.

She wasn’t going to just sit there and let him threaten her.

Whipping her hand up, she whacked the gun away.

And then opened her eyes.

What had she done?

Salcito was off-balance.

She’d surprised him. She pushed up and rammed into him, sending him sprawling, and darted around the house, expecting to hear the roar of a gunshot, feel the sting of a bullet.

But he didn’t pull the trigger.

She darted into the trees between this house and the one beside it. These houses were too close together to offer very much in the way of forest between them.

Salcito crashed through the woods behind her, uttering obscenities under his breath. Why didn’t he just shoot her?

Because he wanted to know where her mother was.

As she reached the neighboring house, she took a deep breath and screamed. She screamed as loudly as she could, praying the sound would carry. To whom, she had no idea.

Maybe one of these houses was occupied.

Salcito was gaining on her.

She had to find something to defend herself with. But there was nothing. Nothing.

She ran toward the trees on the other side of the house. Managed to get out of the yard and into the woods again.

But Salcito was close.

Too close.

She snatched up a fallen branch covered in snow.

She turned, took a swing.

But the branch was longer than she’d realized. It whacked a tree trunk nearby, vibrated with the impact, and fell from her frozen fingers.

Salcito dove and tackled her.

She landed in the snow. She inhaled to scream, but his hand clamped over her mouth.

He glared down at her. “You’re going to wish you hadn’t done that.”