“I understand. And I’ll make sure everyone else does, too.” He started to go but Amarok called him back.
“It wasn’t Chad Jennings and his brother, was it?” Amarok had sort of wondered that from the beginning. They were only nineteen and twenty and wild enough that they were usually to blame for whatever hell-raising went on in Hilltop.
When Ken said nothing, Amarok came to his feet. “Damn it! Their parents have been through enough.”
“It’s not them,” Ken muttered and hurried out.
Although Ken hadn’t been very convincing, Amarok couldn’t help hoping it wasn’t the Jennings boys. There was no way they’d have the money to make restitution. And if they went to jail, it’d be their parents who suffered. Chad and Tex were paying the bills since their mother had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and their father had quit his job to take care of her.
With a sigh, Amarok sat down and picked up the phone to call Evelyn. Because so many of Hilltop’s residents felt unsure about Hanover House, he thought it would still be wise to hire a security guard for the next few weeks, until the construction crew could get the perimeter fence up and secure the premises. Someone else, someone with more criminal intent than the reckless Jennings boys, could come by for that copper. So he wasn’t going to stop her from establishing some security, but he did want to assure her that the vandalism wasn’t part of a bigger scheme to make sure Hanover House never opened—and that he’d keep a close eye on the people who might’ve done it to be sure they weren’t stupid enough to do anything like that again.
Chapter 9
So this was Hilltop. How was it that Evelyn thought she could tolerate such a place? It wasn’t much more than a trading post. And the people! Nothing but stupid hicks.
He was going to have a field day here, “Andy Smith” decided as he cruised slowly down the main drag. It only lasted for a few blocks. Then he had to turn his rental car around to drive back the other way. He’d spotted one small motel with a chain of twelve rooms at the far end. It wasn’t fancy, but he supposed it sufficed for the hunters and fishermen who came here, so he figured he could get by with it, too. At least there was some place to stay. The farther he drove from Anchorage, the more he’d begun to worry that there would be no lodgings.
While braking at one of the three intersections that heralded the main crossroads of this remote dot on the map, he took a second to check his reflection in the rearview mirror. It was the first time he’d be putting his new face to the test. Well, he supposed returning to the States fifteen years ago had been one sort of test. And flipping Evelyn’s mother off had been another. But instead of mingling with masses of people who may only have seen pictures of his former self on TV or the internet, or flashing his mug to someone in a car, he’d be confronting the one person who knew him better than anyone else. The one person who knew what he was capable of and had lived to tell about it.
Of course, when the time came and he was ready to make his move, he’d wear a ski mask until he could subdue her. These days, he always wore a mask until he’d secured his victim. But he could bump into her by accident before then—maybe at the diner—and he felt certain that if anyone would recognize him despite the surgery, it would be Evelyn.
So coming here raised the stakes considerably. He’d be hiding in plain sight—which was daring but exciting too. He’d been waiting so long to be able to see her up close, to touch her, that he was ready to take the gamble. And he was fairly confident. Not only had the surgeon done his job well, twenty years had passed since they’d been together in that shack. He’d put on a good twenty pounds of muscle and kept his hair dyed brown to cover the blond. The color of his eyes was the only thing he hadn’t been able to change—colored contacts looked so ridiculous they drew more attention rather than less, so he didn’t bother with them.
Besides, most people had brown eyes. He hardly considered that a distinguishing characteristic.