Page 11 of Obscurity (Pros and Cons Mysteries #5)

“ I ’ll take the floor,” Jason finally said after seeming to realize Olive wasn’t going to respond to his statement about only wanting her.

“Are you sure? I can?—”

But Jason had already risen. He began to pull extra blankets from the closet, his movements efficient but tense. The sight of him preparing to sleep on hardwood floors sent an unexpected pang through her chest.

It wouldn’t be comfortable, and she was just as capable of sleeping on the floor.

“Jason, you don’t have to?—”

“It’s fine.” He didn’t look at her as he arranged the blankets into a makeshift bed near the window. “I’ve slept in worse places.”

Silence stretched between them, filled with all the words they weren’t saying.

Words about the kiss they’d shared that had awakened feelings Olive thought were safely buried.

About the investigation into his father’s business dealings that had revealed troubling connections to her family.

About the way her pulse still quickened when Jason was close, despite all the rational reasons she had to keep her distance.

Their eyes met across the room, and for a moment the careful professional masks they wore slipped away.

Olive saw in his gaze the same confusion she felt—the push and pull of attraction and suspicion, trust and fear, the past and an uncertain future.

She wanted to cross the room, to close the distance between them and deal with the consequences later. But she also wanted to demand answers about his father, about the house, about whether the man she was falling for could somehow be connected to the worst tragedy of her life.

“Tomorrow we start looking for answers about Chloe. And maybe . . .” She hesitated, then decided to voice the thought that had been haunting her since she’d seen the photograph. “Maybe if I have any free time, I’ll figure out what my father was doing here more than twenty years ago.”

“Olive.” Jason’s voice was soft, careful. “Whatever we discover about the past, whatever connections we uncover—it doesn’t change who you are now.”

Her throat tightened with emotion.

She wanted to believe him. But she wasn’t sure she did.

Her father’s blood ran through her. Sometimes she caught herself acting like him even.

That was the last thing she wanted.

Outside their window, the mountain forest stretched endlessly into darkness, hiding secrets.

But the main question in her mind was whether the man about to sleep three feet away from her was someone she could trust with her heart . . . or if he was just another beautiful lie in a life that had been built on too many of them already.

“We should get some sleep,” Olive finally said, ready to turn off her emotions.

Jason nodded, already settling onto his bedroll. “Yeah. Long day tomorrow.”

She changed in the bathroom, emerging in pajama pants and an oversized T-shirt that suddenly felt inadequate given their sleeping arrangements. Jason had turned off the main lights, leaving only the small bedside lamp casting warm shadows across the room.

Before climbing into bed, she cracked the second-story window just an inch. It had cooled off outside, and some fresh air sounded nice.

“Good night,” she said softly.

“Good night, Olive.”

She slid under the covers, hyperaware of every sound Jason made as he settled on the hardwood floor. The rustle of blankets, the quiet sigh as he found a comfortable position, the steady rhythm of his breathing that gradually slowed as he drifted toward sleep.

This was ridiculous. She was a trained investigator who had faced down armed criminals and international conspiracies. She should be able to handle sharing a room with a colleague without her heart racing like a lovesick teenager’s.

But lying there in the darkness, listening to Jason breathe just feet away from her, all she could think about was the kiss they’d shared. The way his hands had felt in her hair, the warmth of his body pressed against hers, the moment when she’d felt sixteen and in love again.

She’d been so sure that night that they were moving toward something real, something worth the risk. She’d kept herself at a distance from people—from romance—for so long. But Jason had reawakened something in her. Made her wonder if being alone wasn’t her only option.

Then she’d discovered the connection between his father and her family’s house, and everything had become complicated again.

Apparently, a shell company now owned her old home in Oasis, Texas.

With the help of Tevin, Olive had done some digging and discovered that Lloyd Stewart—Jason’s father—was a part of that very shell company.

What if Jason is innocent? The thought whispered through her mind like a prayer. What if his father’s business dealings had nothing to do with what happened to my family?

But what if they did?

Olive certainly didn’t want people judging her for her father’s actions. So was it really fair that she was doing it to Jason?

No, it wasn’t.

However, a lot was at stake here, and she had to be careful. She needed to find some answers before she made any decisions.

She couldn’t handle being conned by anyone—especially not someone she cared about. It would devastate her.

A sound outside made her freeze. Muffled but agitated voices came from the woods behind the lodge.

Olive quietly slipped from the bed and padded to the window. The moon provided just enough light to make out shapes moving in the shadows at the edge of the forest.

Two figures stood about fifty yards from the lodge. One she recognized immediately as Elias Mercer. His posture appeared rigid with anger or maybe frustration.

The other was harder to make out. He was shorter, scrawnier. Leif maybe.

Their voices carried on the still night air, though most of the words were lost.

But then Elias’s voice rose, clear and sharp with panic. “Some things are out of my control. You’re asking too much!”

Olive remained at the window, her breath fogging the glass as she strained to see into the darkness.

Elias and the other man had walked toward the maintenance shed behind the lodge and vanished.

The part of their conversation she’d overheard played on repeat in her mind—the urgency in Elias’s voice, the way he’d said “some things are out of my control” like he was announcing the arrival of some dreaded inevitability.

What kind of place is this?

She remembered what Elias had said about the waterfalls and caves in this area. There appeared to be innumerous places for crimes to happen.

For bodies to be hidden.

Olive had investigated many things, but something about this case felt different. More personal. More dangerous in ways she couldn’t articulate.

She was about to step away from the window when more movement in her peripheral vision made her freeze.

A figure stood deep in the woods, barely visible among the shadows cast by overlapping pine branches. It was too dark to make out any of his features, but if Olive had to guess, the man was wearing a dark hooded sweatshirt. She had only the light of an almost-full moon to illuminate the area.

Her heart slammed against her ribs as she watched. The figure wasn’t hiding. He wasn’t trying to blend into the forest or move stealthily through the undergrowth.

He was simply standing there, watching the lodge.

How long had the man been there? Had he witnessed Elias’s conversation with the other man? Was he connected to whatever had happened to Chloe, or was he another variable in an already complicated equation?

“Olive?” Jason’s voice was barely a whisper behind her. “What is it?”

She didn’t dare look away from the window, afraid that any movement might alert the watcher to the fact that he’d been spotted.

“Someone is out there,” she murmured. “In the trees. He’s watching the lodge.”

The soft rustle of Jason rising from his bed sounded, then his quiet footsteps as he crossed the room to join her at the window.

“Where?” His voice was right beside her ear now, close enough that she could feel the warmth of his breath against her neck, that she could smell his woodsy cologne.

More than anything, she wanted to turn. To step toward him. To get lost in his kisses.

Her pulse pounded harder.

But she couldn’t allow herself to go there.

“Right there, by that cluster of—” Olive blinked, the words dying in her throat.

The woods were now empty.

In her brief moment of distraction, the man had disappeared.

Now she only saw shadows and pine branches swaying gently in the mountain breeze, creating patterns that could trick the eye into seeing movement where none existed.

Jason squinted. “I don’t see anyone.”

Olive pressed closer to the glass, scanning every shadow, every gap between trees where a person could hide.

But there was nothing.

No hooded figure. No sign anyone had ever been standing there at all.

Her hands fisted at her sides.

“He was right there,” she insisted, though doubt had crept into her voice. “I saw him clearly. He was watching the lodge.”

Jason’s hand covered her shoulder, warm and reassuring. “These mountains can play tricks on your eyes, especially at night. Shadows, wind through the trees?—”

“I know what I saw.” But even as she said the words, Olive found herself questioning her own perception.

The stress of the case, the unsettling dinner conversation, the awkwardness of their sleeping arrangements—maybe her mind was creating threats where none existed.

But the feeling of being watched and of being studied by unseen eyes lingered like a chill that had seeped into her bones.

The two of them stood at the window for several more minutes, both scanning the darkness for any sign of movement.

The forest remained still, innocent, revealing nothing of its secrets.

“We should get some sleep,” Jason finally said.

Olive nodded reluctantly, though every instinct screamed at her to keep watching, to stay alert for whatever was lurking in the darkness beyond the glass.

She pulled the curtains closed and returned to bed, but sleep felt impossible.

She lay in the darkness listening to Jason settle back onto his blankets, acutely aware of every sound from outside—the whisper of wind through pine needles, the distant hoot of an owl, the creak of tree branches that could be nature settling or could be something else entirely.

The trees are watching.

Chloe Kingston’s final message took on new meaning as Olive stared at the ceiling.

What if her message hadn’t been the ramblings of a depressed young woman having a breakdown? What if it had been a literal warning about the dangers hidden in these woods?

Now she and Jason were planning to walk directly into that same wilderness, following trails that might lead them to answers—or might lead them to become victim numbers four and five.

The bad feeling in Olive’s gut intensified as she finally drifted toward an uneasy sleep filled with dreams of hooded figures and trees with eyes and voices in the darkness whispering about things that were happening again.