“No wonder he gets along with your niece,” Ethan said.
She ignored him and pulled open the door to the tiny bathroom. He noticed two mugs and two plates in the strainer, not enough to sound any alarms, but curious.
He heard Juliet suck in a sharp breath and swear. She backed out of the bathroom, her expression grim, her color off. “Tatro’s here,” she said tightly, on her way to the door.
Ethan checked the bathroom himself. Shaving gear for two men, two toothbrushes and cargo pants and a T-shirt hanging on a hook on the door.
He joined Juliet outside. “Recognized the clothes?”
“It’s what he wears. Whoever helped spring him must have had clothes for him. The pants are the wrong size for Kelleher. And the smell—Tatro has this smell.”
“What do you want me to do?” Ethan asked her quietly.
She fixed her eyes on him and thought a moment. “Check down by the lake. Check my tent. If Tatro knows I spent the night there—” She abandoned that train of thought, too disciplined to let herself spin out of control. “I’ll take my truck and head back to the house. Joshua should be back by now. He needs to know.”
Time to call out the troops, Ethan thought.
“You’re not—are you armed?”
“No. It’s okay, Juliet. Go.” He winked at her. “I’ll be stealthy.”
“There’s a spring—” She held her breath a second, as if pushing back her emotions. “It’s through the woods—you’ll see the path near my tent. There’s a picnic area. It’s one of Wendy’s favorite spots. And if she didn’t bring water with her and got thirsty—”
“I’ll take a look.”
“Kelleher—”
“He said he was going back to work. I saw him head toward the barn, but I didn’t see if he went inside.”
Her gaze focused on him. “Who is he?”
“We’ll find out.” But Ethan thought of Mia O’Farrell, her tips, her fear, and wondered if, somehow, the Longstreets’ recent hire was the reason she was on her last nerve, hanging by a thread.
Juliet had walked over to Kelleher’s truck and raised the hood. “Do you know how to disable a truck? I don’t want this bastard going anywhere.”
“I’ll take care of it. Go on. Go raise the alarm with your family.”
Her eyes shone. “Ethan—damn.”
“It’ll be okay,” he said, although he had no idea whether it would or not, just wanted to cut through her palpable sense of dread. “Wendy handled herself well in New York, and this is her turf.”
“Tatro—” She shut her eyes briefly. “Let him come after me. Not her.”
Ethan kissed her, and she brushed her fingertips along his jaw, their eyes connecting, just for an instant, before she pulled away and headed back down the driveway. But that split second of eye contact was enough, a wire tripped, launching them onto a different plane. It was as if he’d seen into her soul.
She turned, walking backward. “Stay safe, Brooker.”
Then she spun around and trotted down the road, out of sight. He returned to the camper and got a sharp knife from Kelleher’s tool kit.
In less than two minutes, he had the ignition wires on the truck cut.
When he reached the path to the lake, Juliet’s truck was gone—he’d seen her head up the dead-end road, undoubtedly to see if she could spot Wendy before turning around and heading home. He ducked onto the narrow path, noticing the play of light and breeze and shadow on ferns and wildflowers, and tried to think like a seventeen-year-old girl with too much on her mind.
Before leaving that morning, Juliet had zipped her tent up tight. Ethan unzipped it now and crawled inside, thinking that it was small for the two of them. But not, as he recalled, too small. Wendy wasn’t taking a nap atop the sleeping bag, nor did he see any sign that she’d been there. As he crawled back out, he took one of Juliet’s gold-wrapped chocolates with him. Juliet could operate just on caffeine. He needed food.
He walked down to the lake, glistening in the morning sun, the water rippling with a cool, steady breeze.
“Hell.”
The cracker tin. Ethan made his way over to a three-foot boulder just into the woods and took the tin, pulled off the lid. The dog’s ashes were still there.
He carefully replaced the lid and set the tin back on the boulder.
Okay, so Wendy had been there. Where was she now? Hiding? They’d met for only a few seconds in New York—she wouldn’t necessarily recognize him. If he was a teenage girl and saw him marching through the woods, he’d hide, too.
“Wendy? It’s Ethan—Ethan Brooker, your aunt’s friend.”
Nothing, just the rustle of leaves in the breeze.
He’d check the spring. He found the path, less used than the one from the road to Juliet’s clearing, but it was a short walk through the woods to another clearing, with a picnic table, some kind of red-leafed bush, and a wooden sign, which just read, prosaically, Spring.
But no Wendy Longstreet, sitting in the shade with a book of poetry.