“What? No. I mean, I’m driving.”
“Your name?”
“Kara McIntyre and I’m on Sawtooth Road and—oh, crap!” The road turned back on itself and she swerved to hit a branch that had snapped and fallen partially in the roadway.
“So you are reporting a murder on Sawtooth Road.”
“Yes! Yes!” Was the woman dense? “I don’t have the address, but it happened in his house. Margrove’s home. It’s . . . it’s located on, oh, what—？” She had no idea of the direction with snow continuing to fall. “Maybe the east end of Sawtooth Road, Merritt Margrove, the dead guy, the victim, he owns the place I think.”
“If you’ll just stay on the line at the scene.”
“I’m not there! Okay? Didn’t you hear me? I’m driving and I’m not going back there. No way!”
“Ms. McIntyre—”
Kara’s mind was racing as she squinted past the windshield that was fogging, wipers on overdrive. “Send help! Just send help!”
“If you’ll please—”
“No!” With that she cut the connection and trod on the accelerator, her tires spinning around the corner, the rumble of the Jeep’s engine barely audible over the jackhammering of her heart. No way would she sit here in the snow, waiting for the cops and EMTs and whomever else to arrive while a dead guy lay in his own blood and a murderer was on the loose. Not again. Not ever!
She thought again of her brother.
This had to be because of Jonas. Had to be.
Because he was now a free man.
Otherwise it was just too damned much of a coincidence.
And where the hell was he? Her fingers tightened over the steering wheel as her pulse pounded.
Why hadn’t he contacted her?
Was he hiding, avoiding the press, or . . . ?
For a split second she thought of the possibility that maybe he’d met with Margrove and somehow things had gone wrong and . . .
“No!” Her denial rang through the interior of her Jeep. She’d always believed in Jonas and wouldn’t stop now. Even though Merritt, like her family, had been murdered with a blade. Someone had gotten close enough to him to slice his throat open.
She swallowed hard.
Someone he knew?
Or . . . someone connected with the murders of her family. Someone who was triggered by Jonas’s release and all of the new publicity, the renewed interest of the press.
Her thoughts tumbled to Marlie.
What had she known that night?
How was she involved?
Why in the world had she spirited Kara up to the attic that night?
The same old questions that had plagued Kara all of her life spun wildly through her mind. She remembered being awakened. Marlie’s clothes folded on her bed. The sound of Christmas music and the grandfather clock chiming off the last seconds of their lives.
Marlie’s words replayed through her mind: “I just have to make sure it’s safe . . . There’s something . . . something really bad, Kara.”
“Where are you?” Kara asked aloud, as if her sister were in the passenger seat. “What happened?” She swallowed the lump in her throat as she remembered the late-night text. Two simple words: She’s alive.
Marlie. Whoever had sent it had meant Marlie. Right?
From the floor her cell phone buzzed, but she ignored it. Kept driving. Hit the main road that had been plowed and finally let out a breath. She drove slowly through the pass and caught up with a white Subaru as it crept along the road that had once been plowed but now was covered in snow again as the damned stuff just kept falling from a gunmetal sky.
Kara was nervous, the road serpentining down the mountain as it followed the natural flow of the river far below. Forested mountains rose on the passenger side of her Jeep, while the oncoming lane, narrower than in summer because of the snow that been plowed and left to freeze on the shoulder. The tops of fir and pine trees poked over the snowbank, deceptive as they grew a hundred feet from the canyon floor.
Her nerves stretched tight as the Subaru’s taillights winked a watery red through the curtain of snow. Her cell rang again and she glanced at the screen on her dash.
Unknown number. But she recognized it as belonging to Detective Thomas. She hit a button on the steering wheel and answered, “Hello.”
“Kara McIntyre? Detective Cole Thomas.”
“Thank God!”
“Where are you?”
“Driving. About an hour—maybe a little more from town.”
“Are you okay?”
Had she ever been?