He’d opted to wait out here in the open rather than in the lodge. When he’d found the tree across the road and realized it had been sawed down, he hadn’t been surprised. Just a little more anxious. He was finally going to find out who’d killed his brother. Who was trying to frame Charlie.

  On the way up the mountain, walking through the dark of the pines, he’d asked himself why he was doing this. Risking his life. It had started out as vengeance and repentance, finding Josh’s killer, writing a book that would vindicate Augustus T. Riley of any guilt about his brother.

  Then he’d met Charlie, fallen for her like a rock from a cliff. Now more than ever he wanted the killer. He never wanted to see fear on Charlie’s face again—not like he’d seen last night.

  He also wanted to make up for all those years he hadn’t been close to Josh. Had resented his younger half brother.

  He felt no small amount of guilt for being angry at his mother when she’d remarried so soon after his father’s death. Then when she’d become pregnant right away with Josh—

  Gus shook his head, thinking of all the years he’d wasted by being angry. Feeling left out. Not that it helped that Josh had been nothing short of a saint. So different from Gus.

  He shook off the memories, letting his flashlight beam skitter across the road ahead of him. In the distance, he could smell the lake. Where was Jenny? Or had she never planned to come? Had she always planned to send Forest instead?

  He ached to flick on the flashlight, even for an instant, and chase away the darkness. It closed in on him, so thick it seemed to have texture and substance. Just like the silence.

  Then he heard it. The sound of a vehicle grew louder and louder, the rusted-out muffler making a throbbing sound that echoed through the trees. The same pickup he’d heard last night when his brake line was cut?

  The truck stopped in the pines, the engine dying, pitching the lake back into that awful eerie silence.

  Gus listened to the pickup’s door creaking open, then clicking closed. He held his breath, his gun ready.

  A flashlight beam cut through the pines toward the lodge. Whoever it was had known about another road to the lake.

  Gus pushed himself up off the rock and headed toward the bobbing light, hanging back just enough he hoped he wouldn’t be heard. The person with the flashlight headed for the lodge, straight as an arrow. Was it Jenny?

  He thought he heard what sounded like another vehicle coming up the lake road as he walked, but when he stopped he heard only silence. He was almost to the lodge when a limb cracked like a gunshot somewhere behind him, making him jump. Closer, he heard the door to the lodge groan open.

  He could see nothing in the darkness of the trees behind the lodge.

  Through the broken slats of the shutters, a flashlight beamed flickered. If it was Jenny, wouldn’t she call out for him?

  Gus moved closer to the lodge, stumbling in the dark, but determined not to use his flashlight, not to give away his position. Another limb cracked off to his right, behind the lodge. He stopped to listen again, suddenly afraid there was more than one person out there. Worse, one was tracking the other.

  He hoped to hell it was just some small rodent—and not a grizzly looking for a quick meal before hibernation.

  Someone was moving around inside the lodge as if looking for something. The toy that Charlie had found? What other evidence could there be?

  Cautiously, Gus moved closer, wondering if he dared climb the creaky steps to the porch or if he should wait until his visitor came back out to confront whoever it was.

  Forest’s angry voice suddenly shattered the quiet night. “What the hell are you doing here?” Forest demanded. “What the hell—” Gus heard what sounded like scuffling. He rushed the steps, but as he reached the porch, from inside came the thump of something heavy hitting the floorboards. He edged toward the door, half expecting someone to come flying out any moment.

  Silence. The occasional creak of a floorboard. The screech of an owl on the other side of the lake. Then that awful silence again.

  He cautiously pushed open the door and, with the weapon in one hand and the flashlight in the other, he burst in, shining the light ahead of him into the room.

  Forest Simonson was sprawled in a pool of blood on the floor in front of the fireplace. Gus swept the light around the room, his hand shaking. The room was empty. The attacker apparently gone.

  Gus quickly knelt beside Forest, putting down the flashlight as he felt for a pulse. Blood gurgled up through a cut in Forest’s coat at heart level. Forest struggled to speak, his lips moving, but nothing coming out. His fingers clutched at Gus’s coat sleeve, pulling him closer.

  As Gus bent over him, he caught Forest’s whispered last word. “Jenny.” Then the fingers gripping his coat sleeve released and Forest Simonson was gone.

  Gus got to his feet, the hair on the back of his neck standing on end, the cold room suddenly short of oxygen. He shone the flashlight around the lodge again. Whoever had stabbed Forest had escaped.

  But Gus didn’t think the killer had left the lake. Just the lodge.

  He turned off the flashlight and stood in the pitch blackness listening, expecting someone to jump him at any moment and bury the blade in his chest before he could get off a shot. Thank God Charlie was safe back at the house.

  Hurriedly, he turned on his flashlight again. The beam fell on drops of blood a few feet from Forest’s body on the dusty floor along with two sets of footprints. He followed the bloody trail and the tracks to a back entrance to the lodge. The door stood open. There was blood on the steps and drops on the dried pine needles at the head of what appeared to be a trail.

  THE GROUND LEVELED OFF some and Charlie knew she had to be nearing the lodge. She scrambled through the pines along the narrow game trail, climbing over downed trees and around boulders, following the thin insignificant beam of the flashlight up the mountain, the shotgun cumbersome.

  The darkness in the pines felt so close it was suffocating. At times, she stopped to listen, imagining that she was being followed. But those times, she could hear nothing over the pounding of her heart. Even if she hadn’t been half running to reach Gus, her heart would have hammered with the fear and worry she felt. She had to get to him before the killer did. She had to warn him.

  The trail swung off to the right. She knew she was close now. She and Jenny had spent many summers up here at the lake with their parents before that incident in high school, the almost drowning. Charlie had forgotten all the good times with Jenny. Now they came back in a rush and she felt sick with worry that she knew who the killer was.

  She came around a large pine that encroached on the trail and for an instant thought she’d conjured up the image standing in the middle of the trail.

  She stumbled to a stop, heart in her throat as the penlight beam illuminated Jenny’s face.

  “Charlie.” Jenny’s eyes seemed too bright, reminding Charlie of Wayne’s when he was excited or upset. Jenny stood, one arm at her side, the other slightly behind her as if she was holding her side. She looked out of breath and Charlie realized that Jenny could have been running to get ahead of her and cut her off.

  “Jenny, what are you doing here?” The words came out on a hoarse breath.

  “I’m sorry,” Jenny whispered and rubbed her lips with her visible hand as if agitated. She wore no gloves and in the light Charlie could see that her hand was bright red from the cold. “I never meant to hurt anyone.”

  Charlie’s heart leaped to her throat. Be cool. “Who did you hurt, Jenny?” she asked softly.

  Jenny looked dazed as she met Charlie’s gaze. “Quinn.”

  “Quinn?” Charlie thought she must have heard wrong.

  “I went after him that night, you know, on this trail until it came to the road. He stopped when he saw me standing in the middle of the road, waiting for him. He smiled and opened the door for me as if he’d known I’d come after him. As if it was always me he wanted. Not you.”

  Charlie felt her blood run cold. She’d forgotten about the shotgun, heavy in her left hand, and realized she would have to drop the flashlight to fire the weapon. The thought skittered past. She could never shoot Jenny and she knew it. Is that why Jenny hadn’t even seemed to notice the shotgun Charlie carried? Jenny stood not six feet from her. On either side there was nothing but dense trees and underbrush. If Charlie made a run for it, she would have to just bust through the pines and hope for the best.

  “He put his arm around me while he drove.” Jenny smiled, as if lost in the past, but tears spilled down her cheeks and she never took her eyes off Charlie as she talked. “I was so sure everything was going to be all right. I told him about the baby we made that night at the lodge. I thought he’d forgive me for lying about being on the Pill. I loved him so much, I knew I could make him happy. Happier than you ever could.”

  “Oh, Jenny, I never knew,” Charlie whispered, seeing the pain in her once–best friend’s face.

  “You never knew because you were so busy playing hard to get with Quinn,” Jenny snapped. “It’s the only reason he kept chasing you.”

  Charlie felt a chill as she realized the depth of Jenny’s pain and anger.

  Jenny’s demeanor instantly changed. She cocked her head to one side as if she was listening to someone Charlie couldn’t see. “Quinn said horrible things to me,” Jenny said in a childlike voice. “Horrible things. I started hitting him, trying to make him stop. He was yelling at me and driving so fast. He hit me hard. Knocked me across the seat. I felt the car swerve and crash.” Jenny’s eyes were wide, dazed, her voice rising, her words coming faster. “I must have blacked out. Quinn was dead. I crawled out the car window. I walked back up the road to the party. No one even missed me.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Charlie tried to reassure her. “It was an accident.”

  “That’s what Josh said and now he’s dead, too,” Jenny snapped.

  Josh. Oh God, Josh. Charlie felt the air rush from her lungs as if Jenny had hit her. She began to shake, her teeth rattling from the cold, the horror. Dead, too? Who else was dead? Not Gus. Oh, please God, not Gus.

  “Where is Gus?” Charlie asked, her voice cracking.

  Jenny didn’t seem to hear. “Josh thought I was staying with Forest as penance for what I’d done. He thought he could help me.” Jenny leveled her gaze at Charlie. “He wanted me to tell you about Quinn. To free you from the curse of Quinn’s death and free myself from Forest.” She let out a harsh laugh. “Like Forest would ever let me be free. Once he found your locket in Quinn’s car—” She glared at Charlie as if it had all been her fault. “Forest saw me pick it up from the ground where you’d thrown it. He knew.”

  Charlie stared at her, shocked. “Forest blackmailed you into marrying him?” Forest had used his brother’s death to get Jenny and then abuse her, knowing she could never leave him with Quinn’s death hanging over her head. And he’d blamed Charlie all this time when he’d known she hadn’t killed his brother. She felt sick. If only Jenny had told the truth years ago.

  “I begged Josh not to come up here,” Jenny was saying. She was crying now. “Josh thought he could talk some sense into Forest, reason with him. He thought talking was the answer. Him and his stupid help lines. I should never have called. I should never have told him about Quinn, about Forest.”

  Over Jenny’s crying, Charlie heard a car coming up the lake road. Sheriff Bryan Olsen.

  “Listen, Jenny, I’m freezing. Let’s walk on down to the lodge—” She had to find Gus.

  “We can’t go down there,” Jenny said as she swiped at her tears with her free hand and slowly withdrew her other hand out from behind her.

  The blade of the knife she had gripped in her fingers caught in the beam of Charlie’s flashlight. Even from where she stood, Charlie could see the blood on the long slender filet blade. Her heart lunged. No!

  “It’s not safe down there,” Jenny said, holding up the knife. “Ask Forest.”

  Charlie moved without thinking, without feeling. She dived into the pines off to her left, the boughs gouging at her face and clothing as she ran blindly in the direction of the road—and the lodge, the flashlight beam bobbing wildly as she ran. She thought she could hear Jenny behind her, almost feel the sharp blade cut through her coat as she barreled through the trees, jumping over fallen logs and off boulders. At some point, she threw the heavy, cumbersome shotgun off into a small ravine, thick with timber, and kept running.

  She fell once and scrambled to her feet, but didn’t look back for fear she would see Jenny. Not the Jenny who’d once been her best friend, but someone else in Jenny’s body. Jenny had traded the truth and her freedom for her own private hell and now Charlie was at the center of it. Maybe always had been.

  Through a break in the pines, Charlie spotted the road ahead. Just a few more yards.

  She could hear a car, knew it had to be the patrol car. He must have come up one of the old logging roads. The sheriff would have a gun and could use it. Together they would find Gus. Everything was going to be all right now. She knew who the killer was.

  Suddenly Charlie was jerked off her feet. A hand clamped down over her mouth before she could get a scream out and she was dragged back into the trees, struggling with her last breath. The flashlight fell from her fingers and then there was only darkness.

  “Charlie, it’s me—Gus. I’ve got you, baby. It’s okay.”

  She closed her eyes and let the tears come as he released her and she turned to let him take her, never having been so happy in her life as to be in his arms again.

  “Oh, Gus, it’s Jenny,” she cried against his shoulder.

  “I know, I heard everything,” he said, holding her as if he’d never let her go.

  “Gus, I’m scared. She had a knife. It had blood on it.”

  “I know, baby. Forest is dead in the lodge. He was stabbed,” Gus whispered back. “We have to get out of here.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Gus had followed the blood trail from the old lodge until the drops became fewer and fewer and finally ran out. The pines were dense and dark and he had started to turn back when he’d heard Charlie’s voice. He’d started to call to her, but then he’d heard Jenny’s strained words and had frozen in midstep. He’d listened to Jenny’s confession and decided the only reason she was telling Charlie was that she didn’t plan to let Charlie live long enough to tell anyone. Forest was already dead.

  But he didn’t dare try to get closer and he couldn’t see Jenny from where he stood to get off a shot. He knew he couldn’t get to Jenny before she got to Charlie. It was too dangerous to try. He also knew Charlie couldn’t use the shotgun—not against Jenny. So he’d waited, praying Charlie would apply that smart mind of hers. And she had. She’d taken off and he’d come after her.

  “Do you hear that?” he asked next to her ear as the sound of a vehicle grew louder and louder until it was almost to them.

  “It’s the sheriff. I had Helen call him to follow me.”

  Gus didn’t even want to know how she’d gotten away from Helen. Nor was it a good time to lecture her, although he certainly wanted to. He was still shaking at how close she’d come to getting herself killed.

  The lights of the car flickered in the trees as the vehicle drove slowly down to the edge of the lake near the lodge and stopped.

  “How did he and Forest get up the road?” Gus whispered to Charlie. “It was blocked when I came up.”

  “There are some old logging roads, if you know where to find them.”

  “I assume you chucked the shotgun?” he asked, afraid Jenny might now have it.

  “I threw it down a ravine,” she admitted sheepishly. “I couldn’t use it, Gus. And it was too heavy to carry and run…”

  “It’s okay, baby,” he said and pulled her closer.

  Gus hadn’t heard anything in the woods behind him but he couldn’t be sure that Jenny wasn’t out there, waiting to jump them. He didn’t like staying in one place long. It felt safer to keep moving. And once they reached the sheriff—

  He picked up Charlie’s flashlight from the dried pine needles, turned it back on and handed it to her. He could see the road from where they stood. But if they stayed in the pines they could reach the car without exposing themselves to the open road. “Let’s go.”

  They moved through the pines, edging closer to the lake and the car. Off to his right, Gus could see the lodge roof against the lightening sky. The lake shimmering in the gray light of the coming dawn beyond the lodge.

  As they drew closer to the vehicle, Gus hoped to hell it was the sheriff. He doubted Jenny had driven here with Forest, so she had to have her own vehicle.

  In a break in the trees, Gus saw something that made him stop. Charlie’d been right. It was Bryan’s patrol car. The engine was running, the headlights shining out across the silver waters of the lake, the driver’s-side door open, the interior light glowing. But there was no one behind the wheel.

  Gus crouched down, pulling Charlie with him. He motioned for her to be quiet. Had Bryan gotten out? They waited for several long minutes, but there was no sound of someone moving around. It was still too dark to see in the pines.

  Gus edged toward the patrol car with Charlie right behind him. As soon as he reached the side of the patrol car, he saw Sheriff Bryan Olsen sprawled across the seat.

  “No,” Charlie whispered as Gus moved to the cop and felt for a pulse.

  “He’s alive,” Gus said. He turned off the headlights, but left the car running as he moved Bryan so the door would close. The interior light went off. Gray darkness fell over them like a thick blanket. The air was cold and damp.

  Charlie crouched and stayed against the side of the patrol car, the shock starting to set in. Jenny. Tears burned her eyes again, but she refused to break down now. She swallowed back the pain, searching for the anger that would keep her strong.

  Good ol’ trusting Bryan. He would have opened his door to Jenny. Just as Josh must have. And Jenny was still out there.