“We’re not sure, Margaret.”
“But no one knows where he is, and you’re back again. And… a gun is gone.”
“What?”
“From the cabinet upstairs.”
“Show me.”
She took Nick through the foyer, past her display of masks, and up the stairs. She stopped at the oak cabinet on the wall in the hallway.
“Right there,” she said.
Nick saw the empty spot. “A .38?” he asked, of the missing gun.
“I don’t know… I don’t know guns. They scare me. I’ve never handled them. I don’t even like to clean this cabinet…” Starting to babble.
Nick took her shoulders. “Look at me, Margaret. Did Jack keep ammunition around?”
“In the bedroom, not here. Too many guests, strangers. And Calvin liked to handle them.”
“Go check. See if anything’s gone.”
She came back in two minutes, holding a box of .38-caliber hollow points. It was open. Missing ten rounds.
“Dear God,” Margaret said, staring at the bullets. “He shot himself, didn’t he? Is that what you came to tell me?”
“No,” Nick said, taking her arm. She was beginning to tremble. “We still haven’t found Jack. Come on, let’s find a place to sit down.”
And passing back beneath the masks to the front sitting room, Nick looked down at the box of hollow points
and thought,
Helluva thing to do before you drive your car off a ledge.
The Angelmaker tooled past Rebecca’s house, dressed so commonly no one would notice the incongruity of it. Fools. Yet another example of how easily manipulated people were. And another example of the Angelmaker’s superior skill.
No one was home; at least, that’s what Rebecca seemed to want people to believe. The younger sister would be at school and Leni at the restaurant. That left Rebecca. Holing up with all the curtains closed, pretending to be innocent and untouchable, yet all the while watching.
Knowing.
Anger rushed in. Need a plan. Need to get her. As soon as she comes out, be ready with a pl—
A sheriff’s cruiser pulled around the corner. The Angelmaker froze. What? It rolled in front of Rebecca’s house, Chris Jensen at the wheel.
Erin Sims got out. Jensen walked her to the door and knocked. Knocked again and again, and finally, the door opened.
Rebecca.
They spoke for a couple minutes then Rebecca walked away, leaving the door wide open. Erin patted Chris Jensen on the arm and he left, and then she went inside with Rebecca. Shut the door behind her.
Oh, dear.
This
was a problem.
Erin gave Rebecca some space, paged through a
People
magazine about ten times, then slapped it down on the table. Rebecca had been holed up in her bedroom for twenty minutes. She refused to press charges for rape. Ace hadn’t meant to hurt her, she claimed. He
loved
her.
Erin couldn’t count the number of times she’d seen it. She’d never gotten used to it.
A rattle sounded at the door, like someone working the lock. Erin froze.
Katie stepped in. “Whoa,” she said, drawing up short. “God, you scared me.”
“Sorry. You scared me a little, too.” A lot, maybe. Erin’s heart was racing.
Katie glanced around. “Where’s Mom?”
“She’s still at the restaurant. I’m here because I was hoping to talk to Rebecca. But she wasn’t interested. I thought I’d wait a little while and try again.”
“Oh.” Katie deposited her backpack and jacket on a hook in the mudroom, then toed off her shoes and put them in a basket beside the door. On the way to the kitchen, she bent to pick up a piece of leaf someone’s shoes had left on the carpet, tossed it into the trashcan.
Erin followed, careful not to invade her space. “How was your social studies meeting this morning?”
“My what?” Katie pulled a glass from the cupboard and dropped in some ice.
“Your group project.”
For a split second, her hands stopped moving. Then, “Oh, yeah. Uhh, it turns out we didn’t meet. Joey couldn’t come.”
Erin’s antenna went up. Katie—the sweet younger sister and perfect student—was lying. She hadn’t had a group meeting this morning.
She got a glass of water then stuck her glass in the dishwasher. “So, where’s Becca?”
“In her room,” Erin answered. “She wasn’t very happy about having me here.”
“Sorry.” Katie got a dish cloth and toweled off a couple
drops of water that had spilled onto the counter. “She’s not always like that.”
Erin thought it likely that she was. “She’s been through a lot lately.”
“She’ll be okay,” Katie said, scrubbing the counter more fervently. “Everything’s okay. We’re fine.”
Erin’s heart slipped.
Everything’s okay.
She wondered how many times she had said those words when she was Katie’s age, trying to make it so.
“Katie,” she said, “you don’t have to pretend anything with me.”
“What have I got to pretend? I’m not the one Ace Holmes raped.”
“Maybe not, but my guess is you’re the one trying to make the family okay. I bet you’d do anything to help your sister.”
Katie looked at her, maybe getting ready to say something, but the side door flew open and Leni rushed in. Her face was flushed.
“Ace is out of jail,” she said, her voice quaking with anger. “And—” She looked at Erin. “Jack Calloway is dead.”
E
RIN WATCHED IT
on TV, disbelieving. She stood in Leni’s living room with her arms wrapped around her midsection like a tourniquet, trying not to shake.
Sheriff’s departments from two counties spent the day clearing the wreckage of a truck fire at an abandoned quarry in Rawling County. Police have been looking for the owner of the vehicle, Jack Calloway. Channel Eight Eyewitness Account has learned that authorities in Hopewell County now believe he might have been involved in an accident just before his truck ran over the ledge. A suicide note was found by his wife. More on that from Leslie Roach, who is live, near Hilltop House…
The shot morphed to the reporter, her breath coming out in frostclouds, and Hilltop House looming as a backdrop.
Erin could hardly make sense of what she was hearing. She heard her name and the words “accuser” and “slander” and “injured.” A token attempt to be unbiased reared up when a county official said something about the need to investigate whether there was any truth to the accusations, but the slant was clear: The Florida woman with
a vendetta against Jack Calloway had finally pushed him over the edge—literally.
He was dead. Suicide. Dear God.
Justin.
Pounding. There was a terrible pounding on the motel room door.
Erin stood up. Television running in the background, phone on hold. She was trying to reach Victor Santos. The Starke County sheriff’s department. The Florida Attorney General’s office.
No one would talk to her. Justin’s only hope was dead. She might as well have pushed him into the quarry herself. Might as well have held the needle for Justin.
She opened the door. Sheriff Mann.
He took one look at her and kicked the door closed with his foot. Turned off the TV.
“Get your bags. You’re coming with me.”
“Where?” she asked.
“Where they won’t find you.”
By ‘they,’ he meant the media. He stood in the lobby of the motel and made some phone calls, checking her into another motel across town, carefully spelling her name into the phone. He called Dispatch, also from the lobby, and did it all in a voice a bit too loud. “Make sure we have a deputy outside Dr. Sims’s motel tonight—the new one, over at the Riverview Inn on Knight Road. That’s right.” When he finished, he looked at the man and woman working the check-in counter: “Don’t spread it around,” he warned.
But instead of going to the Riverview Inn, he took Erin to his house.
“I don’t understand,” Erin said, clutching her jacket
around her body as he pulled into his driveway. She couldn’t seem to get warm in this god-awful state. “The other motel was a decoy?”
“I don’t want them hounding you yet.”
Yet.
“It won’t give us much time, but maybe the night.” The words were brusque. Erin realized he was coiled like a spring. “I imagine the employees working the lobby have spread the word over half the town by now that you’re at the Riverview.”
“This can’t be over,” she said, shivering. “I have to save Justin. It can’t be over.”
He pulled the keys out of the ignition and looked at her across the front seat of the truck. “It isn’t over, honey. It’s just beginning.”
Hannah was at his mother’s house; D.D. was, too. After the call from Rawling County, Nick hadn’t been sure he’d get home at all tonight, so he’d made those arrangements earlier. Now, he carried Erin’s bags inside and dropped them in the kitchen. Part of him wanted to strangle her for bringing this shit to Hopewell, even though his head told him it was Jack who’d brought it. Another part of him wanted to take her in his arms and shield her from the hell she was about to face.
“Come on,” he said. She followed him to the great room and he got a fire going. He unlocked a liquor cabinet, poured a glass of the good stuff, and handed it to her. “Brandy. It will warm you up.”
She took a sip and coughed; Nick waited for that dependable slither of heat to unravel in her gut. She was going to need it. It was only a matter of time before the accusations started.
Nick drew a deep breath, thinking,
No way
. No way Erin Sims killed Jack and staged his suicide; it wasn’t in her. Murder might be in her, but the hypocrisy necessary to cover it up wasn’t. If Erin Sims were going to kill Jack Calloway, she’d march up to him, blow his brains out, and damn the consequences.
Besides, she needed Calloway alive. To take the fall for Justin.
Still, if Jack was dead—a substantial if—either he’d committed suicide or someone who
did
have the capacity for hypocrisy had killed him. Either way, he was gone and Erin Sims was standing in Nick’s great room struggling to wrap her mind around the consequences for her brother. Brandy wasn’t the answer. She needed comfort. A friend.
He gave her more brandy.
“I didn’t mean for him to do that,” she said, staring into the fire. “Damn him, how could he do that? How could he leave Justin—?”
The trembling started but Nick didn’t think she realized it. By the time he got her glass out of her hand, bone-deep tremors rattled her from the inside out. He opened his arms and let her cry, trying not to think about how relieved he was to know that Jack’s death had come as a surprise to her.
Trying not to notice how sweet she felt against his body.
He held her while five seconds passed, several times over. That sixth was always a killer.
She pushed away and touched her cheeks. “God,” she said, “twice in two days.”
“Go sit in front of the fire. You’re still shivering.”
He pulled himself together enough to think; for a minute there, it had been touch and go. But simple attraction
wasn’t the reason he’d brought her here. Not you-woman, me-man. More like me-sheriff, you… suspect. At least, that’s how it would appear to everyone else.
Fuck ’em.
He went to the kitchen for something to put in her stomach besides brandy. He cut up an apple and sliced some good white cheddar, grabbed a package of whole wheat crackers and took it all back to the great room. She was a little more composed now, had stopped trembling and taken off her jacket. Flames played over her face as he set down the food.
She slanted him a look. “So you’re
not
trying to get me drunk and take advantage of me in my stupor.”
“Crossed my mind,” he said, honestly. “Too easy.”
“That’s what you think,” she said, but blushed. She rotated the plate of food in front of her. “Sheriff?”
“Nick. Once a woman has eaten my cooking, slept in my house, and cried in my arms, the rules say to go by first names.”
A tiny smile turned up the corners of her mouth. “Nick?” She held up a slice of apple. “Do you have a Three Musketeers bar or something?”
“Eat it,” Nick ordered, and when she had, he replaced the brandy with water. He needed for her to be clearheaded.
He sat down on the coffee table, facing her. “There’s something we need to talk about.” She looked up at him and Nick’s heart squeezed. She’d entrusted the better part of a day to him, when a few days were all Justin had. And now Justin was worse off than ever. “Jack Calloway wasn’t found in the truck that went into the quarry.”
She blinked. “You mean… Oh, God, he’s still alive?”
“Maybe. More likely, he killed himself and his body
will float up sometime next month. Or, someone murdered him and then pushed his car off the ledge.” He paused, looking her square in the eyes. “Where were you this morning before I picked you up at Engel’s?”
It took a minute, then she glared. “You aren’t serious. You can’t be serious. You can’t really think—”
“I don’t, honey. God help me, I don’t. But unless we find a body with a lot of answers, the press is gonna float two stories: one, that Jack staged his suicide to run away from the murder charges you threatened. And two, that someone killed him and set up the truck to look like an accident, or suicide. In either case, you’re the first person everyone wants to talk to.”
“I didn’t kill him. He can’t take the blame for Lauren’s murder if he’s dead. And I was here most of the night, you know that.”
“Jack’s car went over the ledge early this morning.”
“Then I was at the motel. Deputy Vaega took me straight there. I showered. I ate an Almond Joy. Maybe someone saw me get it out of the machine in the lobby. I logged on to Wi-Fi and Googled you, like you said. Wouldn’t my computer history show what times I was online? You can check it.”
“I will,” he said, “and that’s good. All that will help. Does anyone know you have that gun?”
“Besides the motel clerk who called you?” she asked. “Not that I know of.”
“Good.”
“Would you like to confiscate it, Sheriff?”
“How well can you shoot it?”
“Better than most of your deputies, I imagine.”
“Keep it,” he said. His nerves might have settled except for the small sound that caught his attention while she
spoke. He waited, expecting D.D. to bark, then remembered D.D. wasn’t here.