“Mmm…” She snuggled closer. “Maybe.”
“But I missed dinner. And sex makes me hungry,” he said.
Although her lips curved into a smile, she didn’t open her eyes. “Then you must be starving.”
“I am. And I’m not interested in the granola I put in my pack. What about you?”
“Sex makes me tired.”
He carefully eased himself out from beneath her. “Fine. You stay here and sleep while I run home and make us something to eat. By the time you wake up, I’ll have a picnic ready.”
“Sounds good,” she mumbled.
He went back to the cellar and brought up their clothes. Then he dressed and covered her with the blanket that had been folded at their feet. “Where’re your keys? It’ll be faster if I drive.”
“I left them in the car. I wasn’t planning to stay long.”
“See you soon.” He started for the door, then turned back to look at her. He was going to marry her. Even a few days ago—certainly a few weeks ago—the idea of marriage would have panicked him. But he’d made the decision in a moment of clarity during which he realized he’d never felt this way about another woman.
It didn’t matter how quickly he’d made the decision. Or whether or not she was pregnant. He wasn’t frightened at all. The only thing that scared him was the thought of not being with her.
“He’s gone,” John told Robert as he hung up the phone.
“Is he coming back?”
John didn’t think so. “He’s looking for Karen.”
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know.” It didn’t make sense that she’d jump out of Owen’s truck and run into the trees. But nothing made sense anymore. Not since last night. “It’s Cain. It has to be Cain,” he muttered.
Robert frowned at his bank of monitors. “I’m not so sure. I’m the one who first found that rifle, Dad.”
John’s muscles bunched with tension. “What are you talking about?”
“I didn’t know it was the gun that killed Jason. All I saw was a rifle in Grandpa’s storage. And I didn’t see any point in letting it sit there and rust. I thought I’d use it for some target shooting now and then. So I took it and put it in my trunk.”
“How’d it wind up in Cain’s old cabin?”
“I was as surprised as anybody. It just disappeared one day. That’s another reason I put up the security system—to prove when I was home and when I wasn’t. I was scared to death someone would use that gun and I’d be blamed because my fingerprints were all over it. I never dreamed Owen had taken it.”
“You think he’s the one who hid it in Cain’s cabin?”
“That’s right. And he wiped it clean. When those kids came across it, there were no prints—except for theirs.”
“How does that prove Owen put that gun in the cabin?”
“Cain came to me a little while ago to ask where I’d gotten it in the first place. He said Owen told him he’d found it in my trunk, recognized it as the one that’d belonged to Bailey Watts and hidden it in the cabin. But the police hadn’t tested the rifle yet, Dad. Only the person who’d used it would know to get rid of it right away—would know for sure that it was the gun that killed Jason.”
John didn’t want to hear this. He was tempted to walk out. But he couldn’t. He’d craved the truth for too long. “No! That rifle went missing before Jason was shot with the same type of weapon. This town isn’t so big that rifles go missing every day. Owen guessed, that’s all.”
“Then why didn’t he say anything to me when he found it?”
“He was probably afraid you were to blame,” he said, grasping for an explanation. “So he got rid of it.” Owen wasn’t the type to hurt anybody. He didn’t have Cain’s temper, Cain’s confidence or Cain’s strength.
“But after that I found a picture of Sheridan stuffed under the seat of Owen’s truck.”
“That doesn’t mean anything, either.”
“It was taken not long ago, through the window of her uncle’s house. He was watching her, and she didn’t know it.”
“So? She’s a beautiful woman, someone he knew in high school. Sometimes a marriage can begin to feel…confining. Everyone fantasizes now and then.”
“But someone had stabbed a pen through her face—then crumpled the photograph. You wouldn’t do that unless you hated the person. But Owen’s always said he liked Sheridan.”
John felt as if he were falling, spiraling down into a bottomless pit. “Maybe he’s not the one who defaced the picture.”
“Then who did? Lucy never drives his truck.”
“Doesn’t mean anything,” he said numbly.
“I’ve been telling myself that, too.” Robert let go of an audible sigh. “But there’s something else.”
This was it. John could sense it coming. “What?” he said, his voice cracking as he forced the word out.
“The footprint they got from that tennis shoe?”
“Owen’s not the only size ten in Whiterock.”
“But today at the funeral, I asked Lucy what she had planned for the rest of the afternoon. She said Owen had to work but she was going shopping in Nashville.”
“Go on,” John said, bracing for the worst.
“I asked her what she was looking for.” He took a deep breath. “And she said ‘Owen lost his tennis shoes. He asked me to pick up a new pair.’”
John could feel the sweat running down his back. “How does a grown man lose his tennis shoes?”
“Exactly.”
Cain’s dogs were milling around the yard as the sun set, waiting for him. “Too tired to come back for me, eh?”
Quixote barked and trotted over, and Cain scratched his ears, which brought the others. He spent a few minutes giving them the attention they demanded, then stood. “I suppose you’re all hungry.”
Their tails wagged at the mention of food.
Cain fed them and put them in their pen. He was pretty sure he and Sheridan would be staying at the old cabin, and he’d rather not worry about the dogs taking off after a raccoon.
“Rest up,” he told them, then found his tie on the doorknob and chuckled as he went in.
His phone rang while he cooked, but he ignored it. There was no one he wanted to talk to. And he was enjoying the anticipation of presenting his meal to Sheridan.