Once on the top floor of the house, he shined the beam of his light over this cavernous space with its high-pitched roof and exposed beams. This attic space was where he’d hidden the cash that he’d stolen from the old man’s secret stash. He hardly dared believe it still existed, but this was his chance to find out.
*
Tate drove into the short lane leading to his family’s mountain retreat. The beams of his headlights illuminated the narrow front porch and paned windows of the two-bedroom cottage where he’d spent most of his summers growing up. Built in the 1930s, it was less than a quarter mile from the McIntyre place, and as a kid, Wes had loved it here. Until the night his father had given up his life to save a frantic little girl—this girl, he thought, glancing over at Kara, huddled against the window of his SUV.
Rather than head directly to the house where she’d witnessed the aftermath of her family’s slaughter, Tate had brought her here first, to test her, to see if she could handle being so near the house where she’d witnessed so much tragedy and horror. So far she was handling it, he thought, though she’d grown quieter with each passing mile as they’d driven into the mountains.
“We don’t have to go inside,” he said, but she shook her head.
“I want to.” She was already opening the passenger door and stepping into the weather, ready to face the cold as well as the truth.
“Okay, then.” And he was out of the Toyota.
Together they made their way to the porch, where he fished into his pocket for his father’s set of keys and unlocked the door. She eyed the living room, a small area with the same lumpy couch, rocker and recliner that had furnished the place for as long as Tate could remember. Flipping on the lights, he noticed that one of the bulbs in the old ceiling fixture had burned out and more than a dozen dead insects were silhouetted in the glass.
“No one comes up here much,” he admitted. “Mom remarried, but she never felt comfortable coming back to the spot where Dad died. My sister and her kids try to come up once a year or so, mainly to clean the place, fix stuff, but it’s not the same. We all say we’re going to go up to the cabin ‘next summer.’ But we never do.”
“Why not sell?” she asked, moving toward the kitchen.
“Mom hasn’t been able to, she can’t quite let go,” he admitted, running his fingers over a side table and seeing the dust. “And my sister and I, we don’t think she should. It’s like the whole family is still hanging on to this place because of Dad.” His gaze skimmed over the things that had belonged to Edmund Tate—the photographs, hunting trophies, military paraphernalia, and his heart twisted. “Dad loved it up here.” He felt his throat tighten a bit. “We all did.”
“Until.”
“Right. Until.” He walked through the house, caught sight of the military shadow box in the hallway and something niggled at his brain, something he couldn’t quite grasp. He stared at the nameplate dead center in the box:
EDMUND W. TATE
U.S. MARINE CORPS
SEMPER FIDELIS
“Semper fi,” he said aloud.
“What?” She turned to face him. “What did you say?”
His breath stopped in his throat. “Semper fi,” he repeated. As he did he felt a sizzle in his nerves, like an electrical connection, a link to twenty years ago, to the night when he’d lost his father and, for a while, lost his way. His mind spun as he stared at the shadow box.
What was it he’d overheard in the hospital when the hospital security guards in the cafeteria were talking about the last words of his father’s life?
“He wasn’t sure, but it sounded like, you know, like fee or fie . . . maybe it was fee, fi, fo, fum . . . or backwards.”
But that was wrong. Edmund Tate hadn’t been deliriously saying “fee-fi-fo-fum” from some kid’s fairy tale, but “semper fi,” a phrase dear to his heart, the shortened motto of the Marine Corps, the way it was usually said aloud.
But what did it mean?
Why had his dad muttered that phrase during his dying breaths? He’d served in the marines, yes, but he was also a cop and he would be trying to tell the EMTs what he’d seen. He yanked his cell phone from his pocket and punched out Wayne Connell’s number. As Connell answered, Tate said, “Can you check on anyone connected to the McIntyre Massacre who served in the military before it happened. Especially anyone in the marines.”
“Sure.”
“Good. I’ll explain later.” Then Tate clicked off and walked through the kitchen and open door outside to the back deck, to the spot where his father had first heard the screams from the neighboring property. Kara was standing at the rail, her gaze fastened on the lake, visible though a shifting curtain of snow. “I’m sorry,” she said as she heard him approach.