Epiphany (Legacy of Payne) (9 page)

“Cape Pointe?” You sure this is the one?” I glanced at him.

“That’s what the attendant said.”

The headlights lit the road, catching raindrops in the beams, and trees caged us in on either side, their branches reaching out like long, skinny claws. A chill traveled down my spine before taking residence somewhere in my stomach. I pushed the pedal at every twist and turn, and the last curve was especially sharp; my tires spun on the wet pavement. Aidan braced himself beside me. The top consisted of a circular drive that led to a small parking lot, a brown building I assumed was a restroom, and a few scattered picnic tables. I bolted from the car, and rain drenched me in a matter of seconds.

“You’ll need this,” he said, tossing me one of the flashlights.

“Thanks.” I flipped the switch and aimed the beam at each of the three trailheads. “Which one? This could take hours.” I turned to him in desperation. “We need to split up.”

“Like hell we’re splitting up. A psychopath is on the loose, and you expect me to let you go tromping through the woods by yourself?”

When he put it like that, it did sound kind of nuts. “Fine, let’s start here.”

“Mackenzie, wait.” He grabbed my hand. “Let’s give the signs a try first.”

He was right. Each trailhead had one. I kicked myself for not noticing them sooner. Aidan trained his light on the wooden signs. “Here, this one leads to the rock shelter.”

We started down the path, our feet covering ground at a fast pace, and I stumbled over tree roots. Every few steps, low-lying branches hit me in the face. Nothing but tall trees and black night surrounded us, and my anxiety rose as getting lost became a possibility. It would be so easy to wander off-trail and not even realize it. I slowed, listening carefully as my eyes darted through the trees . . . so many trees. Wind rushed through the branches, as loud as a raging river, and I could barely discern the sound of the wind from the sea. My senses were on overdrive, heightened by the darkness.

“Something wrong?” Aidan asked.

“No, just trying not to get lost.” I started off again, registering Aidan’s heavy footfalls behind me. We hurried over mud and leaves, and my stomach tensed as the scenery became familiar.

“I remember this.” I was sure my words made no sense to him. As I sprinted past the spot where Six had fallen, slicing her knee open on a sharp rock, I knew we were on the right track. The rain hadn’t let up, which made our trek through the woods more treacherous. The ground had turned to pure mud in some spots despite the rocky path, and the trail reminded me of a muddy Slip ’N Slide.

“Th-this way,” I stuttered, shivering from more than just the frigid air. Fear pressed on me, weighing me down as heavily as my sodden clothing.

Aidan grabbed my hand and pulled me close, and I was struck with the seriousness of his expression. He swallowed hard. “If you think Six is out here, then I think we should call the authorities.”

I shook my head. “That’ll take too much time.” As I pulled away, his face settled into a look of resignation.

Please be alive.

The silent plea had barely formed when I saw it. Aidan bumped into me, and I gripped the flashlight, staring at the stone structure a few feet away. Tendrils of fog obscured the shelter, and when we crept forward the mist shifted to reveal pale legs dangling in the archway.

“No . . .” Aidan choked out the plea, a guttural sound that echoed my thoughts exactly.

No, no, no! Not Six.

But it was Six. The brightness of her hair, incongruent with the setting, was a sharp disparity to the darkness of the night. A noose had squeezed the last breath from her, and her bloated face, a ghastly blue color, stared back unseeing.

Frozen, just like me.

A sob burst free, and when I turned away from the sight, Aidan’s arms sheltered me. I squeezed my eyes shut and clutched the soft leather of his jacket. Unmindful of the emotion racking my body, I shook in his embrace and prayed for numbness. I didn’t want to think or feel. Relentless, the image burned behind my eyes, and I feared the sight of Six’s battered body, left bare for discovery as she hung from the beam of the rock shelter, would forever haunt me.

* * *
 

The scratchy texture of the blanket irritated my neck. I tried to recall who had draped it around my shoulders but drew a blank. The last half-hour had passed in a blessed blur. God had answered my prayers: I was numb. Emotionless. Someone had uttered the word “traumatized.” I’d wanted to laugh at that—was shocked I hadn’t laughed like a freaking hyena. I was only aware of the man sitting next to me on the picnic bench. We were both frozen from the inside out.

I ignored the people combing the area for evidence. The beams of their flashlights bounced around in the woods, illuminating the yellow tape they’d draped on the trees, as if they were laying streamers and we were all there for a party.

As if Six would suddenly jump into the center of things—like she normally would—and shout “surprise!”

“I think I’m gonna be sick.” I jumped up and let the blanket fall to the ground as I heaved into the surrounding brush. Once the dry-heaves passed, Aidan rested trembling hands on my shoulders. I turned around and faced him. Would I be able to pull myself together? Questions were about to start flying in my direction—in our direction. It terrified me to think of what my answers would be. What if I told them the truth and they didn’t believe me?

“Hey,” he murmured, “come sit back down before you collapse.” He picked up the blanket and draped it around my shoulders again, and we settled back onto the picnic bench.

A man looking to be in his late forties approached us. His dark hair, trimmed short and sprinkled with gray, belied the youthfulness of his face. Weariness rested in the deep brown of his eyes as he sized us up. Something flickered in his expression when his gaze shifted to Aidan. “I shouldn’t be surprised to see you here,” he said.

They know each other . . .

The thought barely had time to register when he introduced himself. “Sheriff Jeff McFayden.” He offered his hand.

Judd’s father. I couldn’t remember meeting him until now. As we shook hands, I tried to make sense of what I’d just heard. How—and why—had Aidan met the sheriff?

“I understand the victim was your neighbor?”

I nodded, and my throat tightened in nervous anticipation. I didn’t have a clue what I was going to tell him.

The sheriff’s eyes softened. “Did you know Ms. Hunsaker well?”

“Six and I . . . we were good friends.” I paused and wiped underneath my eyes. “We worked together.”

“And you reported her missing this morning, correct?”

“I 
tried
 to. The cop I spoke to—your son—wasn’t much help. That’s when I went snooping in Six’s apartment.”

Ask me anything but how I knew where to find her.

“You broke into the victim’s apartment?”

“Yeah, I did.” I refused to back down from his stare. “What I found told me she came home the night of Halloween, but no one’s seen her since.”

“What did you find?”

I told him about the guy dressed as Elmo and the costume on Six’s floor.

“Did you touch it?”

“Of course not. I touched her computer and her desk drawers but nothing else.”

“Probably not the only Elmo costume in circulation,” he commented.

Aidan’s empty laugh startled me. “Sure, Sheriff,” he said. “How many men have you
 
seen lately dressed in Sesame Street style?”

“Besides,” I added, hoping to defuse the situation, “Six flirted with this guy.” For some reason—a reason I was more than curious about—Aidan didn’t like the sheriff’s line of questioning.

“Do you know him?” he asked me.

“No. I served him, but the costume hid his face.”

“What about a description—anything that could help us track down this guy?”

“Um . . . he had blue eyes, and he was a few inches taller than me. Sorry, that’s all I remember. Except for his eyes, he was covered from head to toe in costume.”

McFayden nodded and wrote something down on his notepad. The rain had settled into a drizzle, and the thicket of trees overhead offered some cover, though drops still found their way to the soggy ground. He followed with several more questions, the standard variety. I answered the best I could, but trying to describe the men who came and went from Six’s life was difficult, as she loved men in all their varieties.

“How did you know where to find Ms. Hunsaker?”

The question came out of left field, almost as an afterthought, and I was just as unprepared to answer now as I’d been a half-hour ago. “Well . . .”

“I’m to blame,” Aidan said, and my eyes shot to his.

Sheriff McFayden turned his piercing gaze on Aidan. “I don’t know why I’m surprised,” he said. “So, you care to shed some light on this matter? How did you know where to find the victim?” His tone had changed. Something simmered between the two of them.

“I talked her into going for a hike. Never imagined we’d find . . . what we found.”

Disbelief seeped from McFayden’s stare. I lowered my head, unable to face him any longer. We weren’t fooling him.

“Because the weather was so perfect, right? Hiking just seemed like the thing to do?”

“If you must know,” Aidan began, “it was more about being adventuresome. You haven’t had sex until you’ve done it in the woods.”

My jaw nearly dropped, and I clenched my hands to keep from burying my face in them.

“You’re not fooling me, son,” McFayden said. “You blast into town asking questions and shoving your nose where it doesn’t belong and now you just 
happen
 upon a body?”

“That about sums it up, yeah.”

McFayden looked ready to explode. He took a deep breath, and I assumed he was gathering his last ounce of patience. “Come on. Just tell me how you knew where to find her. I know you want this bastard as much as I do. Tell me what you know, so we can do our job.”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“Dammit, Aidan!” McFayden jabbed a finger in his face. “I oughtta haul your ass in for obstruction! I told you to leave this alone. You shouldn’t even be here, and you sure as shit shouldn’t have dragged 
her
 into it.” Everyone within sight stopped and gaped at the scene unfolding. “You have zero objectivity on this. I mean it—go home.”

Somehow, I didn’t think the sheriff meant Aidan’s house on the beach. I looked at him with new interest, wondering how he was connected to what was going on in Watcher’s Point.

Aidan remained still as stone, though I sensed something scary festering underneath. “I’m glad we got that cleared up. Are we free to go now?”

“Sure, as soon as I talk to Ms. Hill alone.”

Aidan took a step closer to me. “We’ve told you everything we know.”

“Now I want to hear it from her.” McFayden gestured for me to follow him, and I gulped, shooting Aidan a helpless look. As soon as we had a modicum of privacy, the sheriff lowered his voice. “Are you sure that’s all of it? Anything else you’d like to tell me?”

“That’s it,” I said, focusing on his muddied shoes. He knew I was lying; there was no way around it.

“So you guys came up here to fool around? Why didn’t you stay in the car? It’s wet and freezing out here.”

I shrugged. “I wanted to see the rock shelter. I’d never been up here before.”

His silence weighed heavily. Finally, he handed me a card. “Call if you change your mind. I’m sure you want justice for Ms. Hunsaker.”

With a nod, I clutched the card and then loosened my fingers so I wouldn’t crush it. “I’ll call you if I think of anything that’ll help.”

Sheriff McFayden led me back to where Aidan waited. “Go, but don’t think I won’t be keeping an eye on you.” He waved us off, his mouth set in a hard line.

Aidan guided me toward the car. “I need your keys. You’re too shaken to drive.”

And he wasn’t?

Figuring silence was my best option, I handed him the keys before settling into the passenger seat. He started the engine and tore out of the parking lot with tires spinning. I gnawed on my lower lip, lulled into a zombie-like state as the car weaved toward the main road. Aidan relaxed his grip on the steering wheel once we reached the highway, and I risked a peek at him. Our eyes met as he let off the accelerator. All trace of anger was gone, but something even scarier lurked—curiosity.

He turned onto the highway and finally fractured the quiet. “Looks like we have a few things to discuss.”

Aidan drove straight to his house. I didn’t remember discussing where we’d go to “discuss” things, but now I found myself on his doorstep. I might have objected, but the thought of going home, while Six’s apartment sat next door like an empty shell, sliced too deep.

I shuffled my muddy sneakers and shivered as he unlocked the door. A scent that was distinctly Aidan—a mixture of cologne, soap, and something I couldn’t put a name to—hit me as soon as I entered the foyer.

“You’re freezing,” he said as he took my jacket. “And completely soaked.”

“You are too.” I clenched my jaw to keep my teeth from chattering. I’d just begun to warm up in the car when he’d pulled into the driveway. Now I was cold all over again—a chill so deep it penetrated my bones. My numbed state was dissipating, and the reality of Six’s death seeped in. I blinked rapidly, suddenly wishing I was anywhere but here with Aidan. The last thing I wanted was to fall apart in front of him again.

“I’m gonna grab some towels.” He shrugged off his coat and hung it next to mine, and rainwater dripped from his hair. “Make yourself at home. I’ll be right back.” He disappeared, heavy boots thumping down the staircase.

I wandered into the living room. Except for a navy T-shirt carelessly tossed over the arm of a brown sofa, the room was spotless and empty. The absence of personal items struck me as odd. No pictures and no signs of hobbies or interests—just a couch, coffee table, and the large flat screen television mounted above the fireplace.

Two windows peered at me like bottomless eyes. I pressed against the glass and gazed into the dark void where the lighthouse stood like a beacon, its beam tearing through the wall of fog creeping in off the Pacific. Maybe it was the despair grasping my insides, but I was suddenly reminded of the night Joe had packed his bags and left. I’d driven aimlessly before parking near the airport where I’d hypnotically watched the tower’s light strobe the night. Planes had come and gone, and each one had reminded me of a star. I’d wanted to hop on one and fly away.