“Cain denies it.”
“Of course he denies it. He’s lying. They both were. God, I hate them. I’ll hate them till the day I die.”
A tear slipped down Karen’s cheek. John had asked her to marry him only yesterday. How could one mistake, one mistake twelve years ago, destroy everything he’d ever felt for her?
“So…if you’re not together, why’d she come here?” Robert asked.
“That’s what I want to know.” Someone, probably John, pushed the garage door opener and the gears began to grind. “Her car hasn’t been moved.”
“Maybe she left on foot.”
“Must have.”
“What’s this?” Robert had come into the garage.
Karen held her breath, knowing instinctively what Robert had found, but John wasn’t paying attention. “She’ll be back.”
“Look here,” Robert said. “Where’d this ski mask come from?”
That got a reaction. There was some more movement; John, when he spoke, sounded as if he was just on the other side of the Sheetrock wall. “Where’d you get that?” he asked Robert.
“It was hanging out of her purse.”
No response.
“That’s weird, isn’t it?” Robert probed. “That she’d be carrying a ski mask in the middle of summer?”
“Maybe she was trying to get rid of it for Cain.”
There was a moment of shocked silence before Robert reacted. “Whoa! You really think so?”
“You know the kind of effect he has on women,” John said. “They’d do anything for him.”
Sheridan found Cain’s house dark and locked. The dogs were gone, and so was his truck.
She sat out on his porch for almost an hour, wondering whether or not to head into town, but decided to see if she could get inside instead. She knew he wouldn’t mind. He was the guardian of this forest, taking care of anything sick, injured or frightened.
She missed him and his care.
Hanging his tie, which she’d retrieved from the tree at the church, on the front doorknob, she walked around the place. Several windows were open to catch the breeze. But she didn’t want to ruin any screens by trying to get in through a window, and the back door was as tightly locked as the front. She thought she might find a spare key at the clinic, but it was locked, too. The windows there weren’t even open.
Disappointed that she’d made the trip for nothing, she got back in her car. But just as she drove out of the clearing, she remembered Cain’s old cabin. He’d said he used it on occasion. Maybe he’d be there. And even if he wasn’t, she figured it was about time she examined the scene where that rifle had been found.
Karen stayed where she was for at least fifteen minutes after John and Robert had left. They’d lowered the automatic garage door and flipped off the light, so she was crouched in darkness, but that shovel was only three feet away. Positive that it’d been used to dig Sheridan’s grave, she was too terrified to emerge. John had the ski mask—he knew she’d found it. And Robert believed it had come out of her purse. With all the prejudice and suspicion surrounding Cain, and the string of women who’d fallen so hard for him, how was she ever going to convince Ned that she’d discovered the mask in John’s garage? John would claim she’d been planting it for her lover, as he’d suggested to Robert—that she was striking out because he’d broken up with her.
And Robert would be right there to back him up. No doubt they’d say the same thing about the shovel. Even if it originally belonged to John, there was nothing to prove that he was the only one who’d ever touched it. Cain could have used it. He’d grown up in this house and definitely had access to it.
Think! She had to devise a plan before John remembered that shovel, came back to remove it and found her cowering in his work shed.
But she was too nervous and scared to form much of a plan. She trusted the evidence—still quaked with fear, having experienced John’s violent rage last night—but she loved the man she’d thought he was. There were moments she felt sure she was crazy, assuming such terrible things.
That doubt could get her killed. She had to leave and get ahold of Cain or Sheridan, someone who’d believe her.
Grabbing that shovel, she moved cautiously, trying to keep quiet as she made her way through the mess. She was tempted to pause long enough to search for her phone and her wallet, but because there were no windows in the garage, it was far too dark to see such small items. She was better off leaving them behind, for now.
The backyard appeared to be empty. She waited at the open side door, listening for sound or movement, but heard nothing. Stepping out into the late-afternoon sun, almost blinding after the darkness, she squinted against the glare and put her head down. She couldn’t go to her car. She no longer had the keys. They were lying on the garage floor somewhere, or John had taken them. She suspected the latter. It was going to be tricky, but she had to get down the street to Sheridan’s house before John or Robert could spot her.
It was only a few doors away. She could do it, she told herself, and opened the gate. But no sooner had she passed through than a hand darted out to grab her elbow. And she knew that touch so well she didn’t even have to look up to realize it was John.
The old cabin was locked up, too, but there was only a piece of plastic covering a window that’d been broken at some earlier time. Sheridan easily pried the tape away, then rolled a log close to the building so she could climb in without cutting herself. She fell on her butt but was pretty proud of herself for sustaining no injuries.
Dusting off her hands, she got up and looked around. She’d landed in the living room on a wood floor not far from a potbellied stove. The kitchen was part of the same room. A quick peek in the back revealed two bedrooms and a bathroom. Both bedrooms were being used for storage.
As she’d expected, this cabin was smaller and more primitive than Cain’s new house, but it had a futon couch that folded into a bed, a bucket of wood by the stove, and some matches and a jug for water on the counter. Not a bad place to camp out, she decided, and started looking for access to the cellar, where Cain had told her the rifle was found. She’d searched for outdoor access already and found nothing.
A small door off the kitchen led into a sort of lean-to designed to keep the extra wood dry. She poked her head into it, figured there were probably more rats and spiders in that pile than she wanted to deal with, and almost went back inside—until she spotted the outline of a small door with a latch. Kicking aside the few logs that’d tumbled off the main pile, she unlatched it and opened the door so that it rested against the house.