“Muscle head?”
She bent her arm, made a fist. “Like when it’s warm enough out to show off your arm muscles.”
He couldn’t help but feel disappointed. “That’s got to be one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard.”
“Agreed,” she said, and he turned to go and started the long, hot walk home. He would head for the RV—regroup. He’d take a run at everything again.
Sure, they’d erased the shooting.
They’d erased eleven years.
But he still had his inked skin.
He still had his trained eye.
It had to be the thing that would help him prove he was innocent and that they’d gotten it all wrong.
Maybe Sashor and Chambers were onto something with regard to why. But the more important thing, the thing that had always mattered most to Lucas, was who?
Nothing had changed.
AVERY
In her father’s office, she sat at the computer and rooted around through his e-mail and figured out where the audio files were and started to listen to every call that had been recorded since the tip line went live. After a while she started to recognize the voice of the “nutjob” her father had been referring to.
“He didn’t do it. You have to dig deeper. It’s not over.”
“How do you know this? Who are you?” the tip-line guy asked.
“I’m a dead man.”
Click. Gone.
Later, the same voice again: “It was only supposed to be for a few hours, you see.”
And again later,
“I was only there once. I don’t know where it was, but it wasn’t that place.”
“Sir, can you be more specific?”
“I can’t. They’re probably watching me. They’re probably listening.”
And the last one:
“They were going to pin it all on me if I talked. They buried him in my backyard, for Chrissake.”
Maybe everyone was right.
The guy was just crazy.
Or he wasn’t.
She had to go back to the drawing board.
With Lucas in jail, she’d have the RV all to herself.
Scarlett
Drove like a lunatic, then pounded on the door until her fists hurt.
Lucas still hadn’t responded to the texts she’d sent from Anchor Beach. And that had been several hours ago.
She’d forwarded the sketch of Miranda.
Wrote, This is the girl Sarah says was with us.
Then, On my way to you from Anchor Beach.
“Is Lucas here?” she asked when Ryan answered.
“No,” Ryan said, sounding annoyed. “We had a fight after I bailed him out of jail.”
“Is Miranda here?”
“She was.” A look of confusion. “But she ran home to get some stuff she needed. Why?”
“Sarah said she remembered another girl being with us. She sent me a picture she drew of her.” She pulled the picture up on her phone and held it out.
Ryan shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
“Have they ever met? Miranda and Sarah?”
“I don’t think so. But if Miranda’s . . . that would mean . . .” Ryan sat down, dropped his head. “That she targeted me?”
It was the conclusion Scarlett had come to on her drive, as well. “How did you meet her?”
“She came into the hotel where I work one night with some friends.”
“She could have known who you were before she turned up.” Scarlett’s thoughts were in sharp focus. “It means they knew they were going to let us go . . . because when was that?”
“A few months ago.”
“They wanted someone here in place to watch him . . . or us.”
What if there were more like her?
What if someone closer to her was also watching her?
What if they all had someone watching?
How long had her mother known Steve again?
How long had Adam’s family had that housekeeper?
What if Kristen’s hypnotist was somehow . . . ?
“The other day,” Ryan said. “Wow. When we were looking at photos. She knew our dog’s name but I couldn’t think of a time I’d ever told her we’d even had a dog.”
“I’m so sorry, Ryan.”
“She called him Luke the other day, too. He didn’t seem to notice, but—it seemed weird.” Ryan got up and took off down the hall. “She keeps some stuff here.”
Scarlett followed him, but by the time she got down to the door of his bedroom, he was already coming back out.
“She’s gone.” He ran his hands through his hair and let out a guttur al moan. “All her stuff is gone.”
The phone on the coffee table buzzed.
“Is that yours?” she asked when he didn’t move for it.
“Lucas’s. He left it in my car.”
She slid down onto the couch under the weight of exhaustion. “She saw my texts. She knows we know.”
Lucas
He’d fallen asleep against his will and now struggled to rouse himself in the bedroom compartment. Then heard movement in the RV’s main room and grabbed an empty bottle by the neck. Moving quietly toward the hallway, he then burst into the other room with a loud “Who’s there?”