The Hidden

Scarlet smiled. “Still, I’d like to get back home.”


“And there isn’t much reason for me to be sitting here anymore,” Angus said, evidently listening in. “Horses are much safer—and most of the time much nicer—than people.”

“I’ll walk Scarlet and Angus back to where they need to be, and then head back here to help Clark and Gigi find a hotel,” Brett said.

Diego looked at Scarlet. She seemed surprisingly fine, considering she’d nearly been skewered earlier, but he could see the question in her eyes.

What happens now?

“I won’t be long,” he told her. “We’ll get the guests out and situated, and I’ll be back.”

After she left with Brett and Angus. Lieutenant Gray came over to him and said, “I’ll have men watching their movements. You can leave that to me.”

“Thank you,” Diego said. “Whatever the killer is after, he hasn’t found it yet. Someone will be on the move.”

Gray nodded in agreement.

Ben rose on shaky legs. “What do we do?” he asked. “I’m starting to wonder—should I leave, too? Burn the place to the ground?”

“For tonight, go to sleep,” Diego told him.

“But will we be safe?” Ben asked.

“Meg, Matt, Jane and Adam will all be here,” Diego said.

“Safer than leaving, then,” Ben agreed. He looked up the stairs, where the last of his guests were gathering their things to leave. He shivered suddenly. “Much safer than leaving.”

*

“Are you really okay?” Brett asked Scarlet.

They’d seen Angus safely to the stables. He’d assured them that he would be fine; he had his shotgun, and he was damned good at watching out for vermin.

Then they’d headed to the museum, reset the alarm after entering and called up to Lara, Matt and Meg to let them know that they were downstairs.

But Brett had paused to question her before going up.

“Surprisingly okay,” she assured him. “I just wonder, how could anyone have rigged that moose head? I don’t want to believe Ben is doing this, but it has to be him. He and Trisha bought the heads. It’s their house. He was working in the dining room, painting, today.”

“I’d say this has all been in the works for a long time. Daniel was killed months ago, and we don’t even know for sure that was the beginning. That means any number of people had the chance to rig the moose. Not to mention there’s been nothing resembling security around here until this week, and there’s still no alarm up at the main house. In a way, the fact that so much evidence points at Ben suggests that he’s being set up.” He hesitated.

“What? What else?” she asked him.

“We talked to Will Chan today. He’s still working on your camera, but he thinks someone did mess with it, that they took pictures of pictures in a book and then hacked the workings so they’d be erased two minutes after being viewed. So it’s almost certain that the killer rigged both your camera and the moose head.”

“Actually, that’s a relief,” she told him. “Because I just don’t think Ben could have faked his reaction to those pictures.”

“I agree. We’re moving forward, we really are.”

She studied Brett. “I keep wondering... The pictures on my camera, they were an illusion. Do you think it’s possible that something else is going on here, that it’s all really an illusion? That the murders of Nathan Kendall’s descendants are a smoke screen for something else? I mean, this far down the line, how do we really know who’s descended from Nathan and who’s not? Someone might have fooled around outside of marriage, so there could be descendants who aren’t on record, or supposed descendants who really aren’t. How can we ever know the truth?”

“We can’t, not really. But if the killings are a smoke screen, we still have to figure out for what. I don’t know. Maybe there is something here at the ranch that someone wants. But it’s late now, and none of us will be any good without sleep. Are you ready to head up?”