She flung her arms out and shot across the room and into the wall. I quickly emptied her pockets so it looked like a robbery.
“Where are your keys?” I shouted with a plan in mind. I needed the damn keys. “Come on!”
“Hook,” she cried.
I eyed them and made a mental note for later. She wiggled to look at something, and my nerves got the best of me. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
I grabbed her purse and used the pad of my finger to draw a few cards from her wallet before I tossed it under the couch. Her engagement ring caught the light and reminded me that it needed to go. I shimmied it off and poked it into my pocket.
What else? Think!
My mind scrambled as I hopped up with my foot on her back and started to tear through the mantel. It needed to look like I was after something. I needed it to look like it was her son and his junkie dealer.
Glass blew around me, and I noticed she flinched as something caught her eye. What did you see?
Suddenly, the door made a noise, and I froze. “What’s that noise?” I bent down to whisper in her ear.
“It’s…”
“Mom?” His voice made the hairs on my neck stand up.
“Shit!” He was going to ruin everything! You weren’t supposed to be home until tomorrow! I pointed my gun and fired a bullet into him.
“No!” My target tried to get up, and I kicked her in the knee.
“Stay down or I’ll shoot you too.”
I was brought to a screaming halt by the photo next to her head. I picked it up and looked at it closely. Well, shit. How about that? I grabbed my phone and took a photo of it.
“What the hell—” Her husband dropped the suitcase at his feet. “Please take whatever you need.” He glanced at his son and went to make a move.
“Don’t!” I screamed.
At that moment, Molly flipped over and stared me right in the face.
“Hey!” I shouted on reflex as her eyes made the connection to who I was. I whipped the gun forward and squeezed the trigger.
Her husband leapt forward, and I shot him once in the chest. He screamed and fell to the floor.
Two bodies drained, filling the small grooves in the wooden floor. I stood and took a breath and went through my checklist of possible evidence. I was clear. I just needed to fire the gun from the son’s hand to leave gunshot residue then reset the alarm. As I made my way over, I heard a car engine.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I stepped behind the coatrack and waited.
“Mom, I’m here!” Spencer called as she stepped into the house. I waited for the door to close and for her to take in the scene. When she drew a breath to scream, I clocked her in the back of the head with the gun. She fell three feet from her brother. I reset the alarm and closed the door.
I raced into the woods and ran and ran until my lungs burned and my heart nearly gave out.
A moan brought me back to the present, but it wasn’t Spencer. It was the girl I had taken from the running trail. I ran through the snow, grabbed the screwdriver, dropped to my knees, and jammed it into her a second time. This time, she was definitely gone.
Snow started to fall, just as I had hoped. I glanced at my footprints. Any trace of evidence would soon be covered, but just in case, I used a branch to erase my presence.
With a heave, I tossed the dead body over my shoulder and walked the few yards to the water’s edge and dumped her half in the lake. I knew they would question why I dumped the bodies here, and there was really no particular reason except I knew the area well, and I wanted them to be found.
It wasn’t my original plan, but as I’d learned before, shit happened, and this was as good a place as any. I glanced over my shoulder at my other problem. Shit! It wasn’t time yet.
I hurried back into the woods and hauled Spencer over my shoulder, but just as I made it to the clearing, I heard someone running. I tossed her in the ditch, stripped off my jacket, wrapped it around my waist, and pulled a pair of ear buds from my pocket. I started to jog just as the woman came up behind me. I acted like I was totally focused on my exercise and got the hell out of there. I made it to my car before I heard the screams for help.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Blake
I took one last look at the Deana Long’s photo before I tucked the file under my arm.
The door swung open, and I found my only witness to the dory murder sitting at a table, looking like she might pass out. Michelle was thirty-five and worked part-time as a fitness instructor.
“I’m Detective Daniels.” I pulled the back of the chair and took a seat. “First, I want to thank you for coming down here today. I know it’s not easy.”
“Yeah.” She rubbed her face, and the dark circles under her eyes told me she hadn’t slept in a few days.
“Can I get you anything? Coffee, tea—”
“Tequila?” She laughed darkly. “No, thank you. I’m good. But I could use Deana back.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you.” She sniffed on cue, and I dismissed my skeptical hit to the gut.
I flipped open the file in front of me. “So, you work at the gym on Fourth and Marvin?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me what happened that day.”
Her eyes started to water. “Deana was one of my regulars. She came to me because she needed to improve her calf muscle after an injury. We became friends, and we started going for runs together in the mornings. We used the same trail every day, the one that runs right along Whiskey Lake. We chose that way because the city just added the new trail lights.”
I nodded to show I followed along while I scribbled on my pad of paper.
“We never use that trail other than when we run, so to hear that she was found there, and in a boat, no less, just doesn’t feel right to me.”
“Was she dating?”
“No. She has an ex, but he’s actually a really good guy.”
“Name?”
“Nathan Jayson.”
I wrote down his name and cleared my throat so Benny, who was watching on the other side of the glass, would run his name for me. If something came up, I wanted to question her about it while I had her here.
“Do you know if he had a boat?”
“I wouldn’t know.” She reached for the bottle of water in front of her.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I slipped it out and squinted at the message.
Sergeant: I need you to bring in Spencer’s brother. This stays between you and me.
Blake: Everything okay?
Sergeant: No.
What the hell? A slow, cold prickle spread up my arms to the back of my neck.
“Is there a problem?” Michelle broke my thoughts.
“Yeah.” I tried to think straight, but it was a challenge. “So, you’re telling me that Deana Long and you ran the same trail every day, but only that time of day…but you potentially saw her attacker?”
“Yes.”
“Then why were you on the trail four hours later than the suggested time you claimed you always ran?”
The lines around her mouth creased as she frowned like I’d caught her out.
“I was, ah…” she stumbled, and I grew annoyed.