A Deadly Reunion (16 page)

“
Of course. I’m not in any... real danger,
am I? Thorne’s right, yeah? This is just a misunderstanding? Just
some dumb joke? None of the others received threats, did they?” it
was a real struggle forcing out my jumbled thoughts, but I managed
it. It was even more of a struggle considering both Scott brothers
were looking at me intently, both as moody as the other.

“No,” Thorne said.

“I don’t know,” Denver spoke over him.
“We’ll play this by the book. So far all three suspected murders
have been people attending the reunion.”

“Sorry, three? What do you mean three
suspected murders? Has there been another one?” I spluttered.

Denver looked pissed off at himself for a
moment and even shook his head.

“Smooth,” Thorne muttered.

“It doesn’t matter; it’ll come out in the
papers soon enough. And god knows we can’t stop people in a small
town like this from chatting.” Denver thumbed his nose as he spoke
gruffly.

“This has something to do with Nancy’s room,
doesn’t it? What did you find in there? And what happened to
her?”

Neither of the Scotts answered me, instead
choosing to face me with virtually the same stiff-lipped
silence.

This was driving me mad.

I put a hand up quickly and forced my
fingernails hard into my palm. “Fine, I get it. I’ll just go home
and wait on the couch until this hits the news or I get a knock on
the door from a guy with a gun.”

“That isn’t going to happen,” Thorne
began.

“You’ll be monitored,” Denver spoke over the
top of him.

Well shit.

Fine.

I took a sharp breath.

My stay in Wetlake was over. No more
tempting brushes with Denver in motels, and no more home-cooked
breakfasts with Thorne up in the mountains.

Which was probably a good thing. If the
threat of possibly maybe impending murder weren’t enough, the
animosity between these too would drive me nuts.

I took a sharp step forward and headed for
the door, scratching my neck hard with my nails as I went. “I’ll
give my statement and go.”

Though Denver reluctantly got out of my way,
he gave me one of the most conflicted looks I’d ever seen –
half-angry, half-worried, and all messed up.

I tried to ignore what it did to my stomach
and nerves, and headed straight out to my car.

“Hey, I’ll be right behind you,” Thorne said
quickly, “just let me get dressed.”

I waved in reply as I listened to the front
door close.

Before it did, I heard the two brothers
exchange some highly charged words.

Christ, anymore of this and there’d be two
more murders in Wetlake; Thorne and Denver would kill each other
and likely take the house down with them.

Walking over to my car, I quickly heard that
someone was following me.

Denver.

Shit.

I reached my car and grabbed my keys from my
bag.

I wasn’t quick enough to open the door,
start the ignition, and speed off though; he reached me.

He didn’t clear his throat, and neither did
he ask me to stop; he placed a hand on my shoulder.

It wasn’t aggressive, and his fingers didn’t
weigh down heavily into the flesh and muscle.

But damn did it send all the wrong kinds of
tingles through my stomach and up my back. It was like electricity
blasting through my veins.

Letting out possibly the most pathetic noise
in the history of utterances, I fought the urge to duck forward and
shelter in my car.

I couldn’t keep on trying to hide from this
guy while he was right there.

Finally I mustered the courage to turn.

Though he let his hand drop as I shifted,
that didn’t change the fact he was right there, barely a half meter
away, close enough so that I could see the exact expression playing
through his eyes.

“Denver?” I shook a little as I said his
name.

I was usually far more confident than this.
Then again, my life had never been this complex. My usual dates did
not involve murder, intrigue, and a double crush on the world’s
moodiest brothers.

“What happened last night?” he asked
directly.

I had to snort at that. Really? Did he think
he’d known me long enough to be that direct? While something had
almost happened with us in the motel room, the operative word there
was almost.

We were not together, and he had no real
right to inquire what I’d done last night.

He didn’t ask again; he simply locked me in
the same damn deep and questioning look until I snorted and gave
up. “Though it’s none of your business, nothing happened. I went
back to my room and there I stayed until Thorne came around to tell
me what had happened – though he didn’t end up telling me much at
all. When I told him I’d had jack of this town and what was
happening here, and that I wanted to drive home, he tried to stop
me. He told me it was safer to leave in the morning, and me being
the complicit and sensible girl that I am, I believed him. When I
told him I couldn’t bear the thought of staying at the motel, he
said I could crash in his house while he was at work. I woke up
approximately half an hour ago and I ate eggs with fresh dill at
his kitchen table. And then you showed up and started asking all
your damn personal questions, as usual,” I blurted out my long
account, voice harsh and quick.

I wanted Denver to know he had no right to
be a) inquiring about me, and b) judging what I’d done.

Denver’s gaze did not change. He did not
look relieved and neither did he look moved in any way. “That’s not
what I meant. But thank you for that rather long and tiresome tale
nonetheless.”

“Excuse me? Where the hell do you get off
being such a jerk? And what exactly were you asking then?”

“I wanted to know—” he began slowly, clearly
thinking of an excuse.

“Bullshit,” I interrupted in a snap, “you
wanted to know if I’d slept with your brother. Well the answer
there is no. But once again, that’s none of your business. Now I’m
going to the police station, and then I’m going to leave this
frigging town behind me.”

I said town, but we both knew I meant
him.

Grabbing my keys, I yanked my door open and
sat down with a thump.

He took a step back from the car, but that’s
it. He didn’t try to stop me, and neither did he say a single
word.

He just watched me key the ignition,
reverse, and drive off.

Damn him. Damn him.

Hitting the road, I turned onto it in a
screech of tires, not exactly slowing down as much as I should.
Then I slammed my foot on the accelerator as I sped up, enjoying
the hum of the engine as the computer changed gears.

“Goddamn asshole,” I spat as I glared at the
trees lining the road and thought only of one man.

Just where did Denver Scott get off being
so... insensitive?

Okay, so maybe he’d been legitimately
shocked to see me in his brother’s house. Yet when I’d explained
myself, that hadn’t dampened his holy and vengeful fire in the
least.

The guy had a chip on his shoulder, and I
was sick of standing underneath its shadow.

Realizing it was a seriously bad idea to
drive angry along roads I barely knew, I quickly slowed down.

I was going to head to town, but as I drove
those tight, winding roads, it took me a while to realize that just
maybe I was driving in the wrong direction.

“Oh fuck,” I swore as I slowed the car down,
pulling over to the side of the road.

I let the engine run idle as I grabbed my
phone from my bag. I had every intention of checking the GPS map
and every hope that the darn thing wouldn’t tell me I was in the
middle of a field or a lake.

There was a problem though – my phone was
out of charge. What with murder and the distraction of those Scott
boys, I’d forgotten to charge it for a day and a half.

I swore again, even louder than before.

Turning off the engine, I rooted around in
my bag, looking for my car charger. Unable to find it, I let out
the tersest breath you could imagine as I got out of the front and
grabbed my luggage roughly from my trunk. I tore through it looking
for the car charger, but I couldn’t find it.

Goddamn.

Great.

No phone. This was brilliant.

Now I had no option but to turn around and
try to make my way back to Thorne’s house.

Getting back in the front seat, I indulged
in striking the steering wheel several times with the base of my
palm.

Then I started the ignition – or at least I
tried to.

I turned the key to on, but nothing
happened.

My eyes grew wide in disbelief.

I tried the engine over and over again.

It didn’t work.

Holy crap. No phone. No car. No idea which
direction town was.

Had I really just stormed out on Denver and
Thorne only to wind up lost, alone, and in trouble?

I sat there for a few minutes, trying to
calm myself down. All I had to do was walk back in the direction
I’d come. I could find Thorne’s house on foot. And if I was
seriously lucky, I’d run into the guy on his way to town.

Okay, it was a plan. But I was kind of
forgetting something here.

There was a serial killer on the loose in
Wetlake.

Now was not a good time to be stranded on
the side of the road, surrounded by such dark and menacing
woods.

“
Oh... god,” I managed.

Then I forced myself to get out of my
car.

I grabbed my bag, I hooked it over my
shoulder, and I locked the car behind me.

Then I turned around, and I started to
walk.

It wasn’t a particularly chilly day, but I
shivered with every step. It was a combination of the dark, dank
woods and the cold realization I was now on my own.

Willing myself to believe that I wasn’t in
any real danger and everything was in my mind, I diligently took
one step after another.

It was at moments like these that you
realized just how wild forests were. The sounds and smells were
completely different to the smog and car horns of the city.

Grating my teeth together, I tried
desperately hard not to jump at every bump and scrape filtering in
from the tall trees above and the dark dips and valleys below.

It took me a long time until I heard a car,
and though at first my heart leapt, it quickly sank fast.

When I’d first driven into town, long before
anyone had been murdered, I’d expressed a real fear of getting lost
in the woods only to come across some friendly psychopath all too
ready to torture me to death in their abandoned cabin.

Well, now my imagination wasn’t just getting
the better of me – it caused sweat to race over my brow as my blood
practically froze with fear.

Jerking my head to the side, I genuinely
thought about jumping over a slim section of metal railing
protecting the edge of the road from a sheer drop off that led all
the way down to a winding section of river far below.

It was dumb, it was dangerous, but that did
not stop me from scooting over to the railing and groping at it
with sweaty hands as I tried to hook a leg over it.

Before I could manage to vault over, the car
came into view.

My heart could have popped as so much
adrenaline rushed through me that I started to quake like an
animal.

The car was a station wagon. Long and
rigidly square, it was from the “70s or “80s and had that
atrociously bad fake wood paneling over the side.

Definitely a serial killer’s car, my mind
screamed at me.

The car started to slow down.

Fuck. I tried to continue my suicidal
attempt at jumping over the railing that led down to a long fall
and almost certain death.

The car reached me.

The car stopped.

I could have died from fright as the driver
wound down their passenger window and leaned out.

“Patti?”

I blinked hard.

I knew that voice.

It was sweet, it was genuine, and it sure as
shit didn’t belong to a man with a foot-long beard and a penchant
for carving up women in the woods.

I relaxed, letting out the biggest breath of
air I could.

“Annabelle?”

“What are you doing trying to climb over
that railing, sweetie? There’s a sheer cliff behind. You’ll do
yourself an injury.”

I started laughing, because seriously, I was
a complete idiot. Foot-long beards and axes? It was freaking
Annabelle Shaw, possibly the nicest person to have ever graduated
from Wetlake High and certainly the most sociable. Though I
couldn’t say her reunion had been a hit – though several people had
been hit – even I could appreciate why she’d organized it.

Personalities like Annabelle wanted to bring
people together.

They also wanted to help. Right now I could
do with a whole bucket of help.

Straightening up and pulling myself back
over the railing, I let out another brief laugh at how stupid I’d
been. “Yep, Annabelle, that’s a very good point. Look, I’ve kind of
run into a bit of car trouble—”

“I saw a gray little hatchback thing pulled
off to the side of the road a few miles back. Is that yours,
honey?”

I nodded.

“But why are you trying to climb over that
railing? It’s a long way down to the river, and you can’t exactly
swim the thing back to town; she’s full of rocks, boulders, and the
occasional bear going for a fish. You need a lift instead?”

I smiled widely.

Yes, I needed a lift. I also needed a head
examination. Had I really worked myself up so much that jumping
over a freaking steep cliff had sounded like a good idea?

Firmly tucking my tail between my legs, I
nodded and gingerly walked up to her car. “I’m really sorry to
bother you, but thank you so much for your offer. And as for why I
was climbing over the railing,” I let out a nervous but thankful
burst of laughter as I opened her passenger door and climbed in,
“well, this is going to sounds nuts, but what with all the
murders,” my tone dropped and tightened, “I...” I trailed off,
breathless.