Once inside his loft, he peeled out of his jacket and hung it on the hall tree that served as a closet. The apartment was austere with its concrete walls, tall windows, and exposed pipes. He’d furnished it with a couch, recliner, and an area rug he’d picked up at a garage sale when he’d moved back to Oregon. His table doubled as a desk. He’d bought the old claw-foot at a flea market, along with his filing cabinet, which was really an old TV console, circa 1950, built of sturdy blond wood and now devoid of the television and stereo that had once been the guts of it.
He did have a bed, pushed into one corner, and a flat-screen dominated one wall. But that was it. When he’d rented the loft, he’d thought this place would be temporary. So far, he’d been wrong.
Just like he was about so many things.
Including his attempt to get an interview with Kara McIntyre.
“Idiot,” he said to himself as he dropped into his desk chair and rolled it closer to his monitor, a large screen that connected to his laptop. He pushed aside the various legal pads, newspaper clippings, and printed reports that were scattered over the surface.
Tate had foolishly thought that if he could see Kara McIntyre face-to-face, if he could find some way to gain her trust, that he might have a chance for an interview. Not only did he want to find out the truth and expose what had really happened on the night of the massacre, but he also had plans for a book of his own on the subject, told from the unique perspective as the son of one of the victims. Kara’s take on what happened as she’d been the prime witness, a kid herself, would add to the whole concept of the “kids as survivors” theme.
Of course, she didn’t trust him, but he’d figured he would be able to gain her confidence, if only she’d give him a chance.
So he’d played it for what it was worth.
Feigning being injured.
In that split second when she was backing up, he’d made the decision and thumped the side of her Jeep with his fist before throwing himself down in the pile of snow.
It had been a quickly concocted ruse.
And she’d seen right through it.
Let him know it on the ride back to his parked SUV.
So now, he wasn’t even back to square one. He was at square minus eleven or so. “Idiot,” he said, the only injury he’d sustained was the serious wound to his male pride. He should have just gone up to her front door. That had been the original plan. And then when he noticed the garage door rolling upward, he’d taken advantage of the situation and the whole thing backfired spectacularly.
He’d have to tread carefully.
And he might need help.
Someone who had military training, someone who was a techno wiz, who had the skills and connections to help him in his attempts to gain information that seemed locked away from him.
And he knew just the guy.
Pulling his phone from his pocket, he second-guessed himself, then decided he was tired of hitting brick walls. It had been twenty years. He was stuck in this damned town again. Jonas Frickin’ McIntyre was a free man. And the competition for this story, his story, had just gotten a lot tougher.
Time to pull in the big guns.
As long as they were concealed weapons.
He pulled up his contact list, found the number, and punched it in.
*
Driving through the mountains, Kara checked her watch—nearly ten thirty—just before she spied Sawtooth Road, barely a lane cutting through dense stands of fir and pine. Only a series of ruts and a faded, iced-over sign indicated where what had once been an old logging road intersected with the county road. Visibility was difficult, the flurries of fat flakes turning into a near-blizzard as she’d driven ever higher into the mountains.
A lap blanket was tossed over her legs as the damned heater had given up and she hadn’t yet bothered to fix it. Now she was paying the price as the defroster, blowing cold air, couldn’t keep up with the condensation constantly building on the inside of the windshield.
Swiping at the fogged glass with her gloved hand, she tried to find Merritt’s place. A mobile home, Celeste had said.
Creeping along the tire tracks, she squinted, searching through the veil for mailboxes or names on the cabins hidden deep within the trees and undergrowth. A sparse few came into view, all appearing to be uninhabited. No vehicles parked close by, no recently broken paths in the snow, no smoke curling from chimneys, just old cottages, stark and dreary, windows shuttered, snow drifting on forgotten woodpiles.
A good place to get lost, she thought as the wind picked up, high-pitched, keening slicing through the branches. Kara felt her nerves tighten.