Page 6 of Obscurity (Pros and Cons Mysteries #5)

“ O live.”

The familiar voice behind her made her heart flutter despite everything.

She turned to find Jason.

Jason with his short, dark hair. His square jaw. His broad shoulders and muscular arms.

Jason who’d gone from a small-town football player to an Army Ranger, becoming all man in the process.

Her throat still went dry at the sight of him.

Even after all these months that had passed since they reconnected, his presence still affected her in ways she tried to ignore.

“You’re here.” She prayed her voice sounded steadier than it felt.

“Made good time on the road.” He paused. “You have any problems getting here?”

She remembered the gas station and shuddered. She didn’t want to bring that up. Not yet.

Besides, it wouldn’t add anything to their investigation.

“It was fine,” she finally answered.

Jason’s gaze moved past her to the wall of photographs, and his expression changed. “Wait. Is that . . . ?”

She licked her lips. “It looks like my dad, doesn’t it?”

He stepped closer, close enough that she could smell his familiar woodsy cologne and feel the warmth radiating from his body.

Her heart pounded harder. Jason was the only man she’d ever loved.

Being around him right now was downright painful—yet thrilling at the same time. She wanted both to run and to draw closer.

“The resemblance is uncanny,” he murmured, squinting as he studied the photo. “Has he ever?—?”

“I have no idea,” Olive finished, her voice barely above a whisper. “I don’t know what he would have been doing here twenty-some years ago. But you know as well as I do that he never went anywhere without a reason.”

Jason’s jaw tightened as he gave a single, deliberate nod.

They’d both learned enough about her father’s cons to know that every location, every interaction, every seemingly random encounter had been carefully planned.

Her father had been brilliant. But, by all appearances, he’d used that brilliance for selfish gain instead of good.

Though he’d claimed to work for the government, he’d secretly cheated good people out of money .

. . even though Olive still wasn’t sure what he’d ultimately done with all that wealth he’d stolen.

She certainly hadn’t seen any of it—not that she would keep it if she did.

But that was just one more mystery surrounding her past.

“This can’t be a coincidence.” He rubbed his jaw as he shook his head. “Us being here, this case?—”

“Mr. and Mrs. Jones!”

They turned to find Elias approaching with that same perfectly calibrated smile. Something in his eyes had sharpened, however.

“Perfect timing,” Elias continued, not missing a beat. “I was just about to gather everyone for our evening meeting. We like to brief our guests on safety protocols while here in the mountains in addition to providing some information on scheduling for Grayfall.”

Olive wanted to ask him about the photograph, about whether he knew anything about the Northwoods Investment Group.

But something in Elias’s demeanor warned her to wait. To observe. To gather more information before showing her hand.

“I’m ready to dive in,” she said instead.

“Excellent. If you’ll just follow me out to the?—”

Before he could finish, a scream shattered the air.

It appeared they didn’t have to look for trouble. Trouble was already here.

The raw, terrified scream echoed from somewhere outside the building.

Every conversation in the main room stopped abruptly, replaced by a silence so complete that Olive could hear her own heartbeat.

Then chaos erupted as guests rushed toward the windows, voices overlapping in concerned murmurs.

“Stay inside,” Elias barked, all pretense of hospitality abandoned. “Everyone stay inside until we know what’s happening.”

There was no way Olive was staying inside.

Instead, she rushed across the lobby and pushed herself through the lodge’s front doors. Jason stayed close behind her.

In the parking lot, a young woman with perfectly styled blonde hair stood beside a bright yellow Jeep Wrangler, her phone held high as if she’d been filming herself when something interrupted her.

She wore trendy hiking gear that looked like it had been purchased specifically for social media content, and her expression showed genuine shock.

“You guys, it just—it literally just fell right onto my windshield!” Influencer Maya Riggs stammered as other guests gathered around.

Her voice carried the breathless urgency of someone used to narrating her life for an audience.

“I was doing a sunset story for my followers, and this thing just dropped out of nowhere!”

Olive moved closer to get a better look.

A large crow lay across the Jeep’s hood, its black feathers stark against the white paint. Even from several feet away, she could see that its neck was bent at an unnatural angle.

“Now, now, Maya.” Elias’s voice sounded smooth and reassuring as he appeared beside the distressed influencer. “I know it’s startling, but birds do occasionally fly into windows. The poor thing probably just got disoriented in the changing light.”

Olive couldn’t help but think that something about his explanation sounded rehearsed.

“But it didn’t fly into anything,” Maya protested, lowering her phone. “It just . . . fell. Like someone dropped it.” She glanced around nervously. “This is so not the vibe I was going for in my festival preview content.”

“There are natural occurrences to consider also,” Elias added. “Birds sometimes suffer heart attacks, especially during seasonal migration patterns.”

Olive caught Jason’s eye and saw her own skepticism reflected in his gaze. Birds didn’t typically fall out of clear skies onto parked cars.

Connor Walsh, the videographer, stepped closer. “That’s definitely not like any normal bird behavior I’ve ever seen.”

“Why don’t we all head inside for dinner? We can do the briefing there.” Elias guided Maya away from her vehicle. “I’ll have Leif, my assistant, take care of this little situation, and by morning everything will be back to normal.”

As the group reluctantly moved back toward the lodge, Olive lingered to study the scene. The crow’s eyes were still open, reflecting the porch lights like black glass. Something about the bird’s placement nagged at her.

The crow’s positioning looked almost . . . deliberate. It was too centered on the hood, almost as if it had been precisely positioned.

Was Maya lying about it dropping out of the sky?

Or was Olive reading too much into this?

“Coming?” Jason appeared at her elbow, his voice low.

“Yeah.” Olive forced herself to look away from the dead bird. “Just thinking about what kind of person stages something like that.”

“You think it was staged?”

“Don’t you?”

His nod was almost imperceptible. “It seems the most likely scenario. But why would she do that?”

“For attention,” Olive suggested. “Or as a distraction from something else.”

“You think Maya might actually be involved in this?”

“I’m saying, we should keep an open mind. At this point, anything is possible.”