Page 53 of The Missing Couple

“Really?” she demanded.

He held up his hands in surrender. “The PI is trying to locate a photo of his sister wearing that necklace so we can confirm his allegation. Meanwhile, I’ll be interrogating Kerrick next. Right now—no matter how much you want to believe I don’t know how to do my job—I’m letting him stew. I confiscated his rifle because it was clear to me he’d been smoking weed.”

“Well, thanks for that,” she said, not sounding all that thankful. Her heart wouldn’t stop pounding because she knew. She absolutely knew that Kerrick Rogers had something to do with Briana’s and Martin’s disappearances. Not to mention Billie had no reason to lie about the necklace. The whole confirmation thing was just another waste of time.

As a matter of fact, sitting here debating the possibility was a waste of time!

“Charly,” he said with a pointed look at her, “you need to step back and let us do our job.”

“Fine.” She pushed to her feet. “Then let us go home and get on with it.”

He stared at her for a moment. “Deputy Lathan will take you home. I still have some questions for Mr. Jagger. He’ll be here awhile longer.”

And then it will be dark and there will be no more searching. For one moment she almost decided to stay. But there were things she could do before dark if she left now.

“Fine. I want to go home. Now.”

He seemed surprised at her turnaround. She didn’t care as long as she was out of here and could do what she needed.

“Hang on a minute.” He stood, walked around his desk and out the door, closing it behind him.

Less than a minute later Cohen Lathan showed up, opened the door and poked his head in. “Let’s go, Charly.”

She rolled her eyes as she walked out to join him in the corridor. Couldn’t her ride have been provided by anyone else?

He put a hand to her back and guided her to an exit. When they reached the parking lot, he opened the front passenger’s-side door of his cruiser.

She settled into the seat and sat silently while he drove her home. He rambled on about how foolish what she and Billie had done was and that if they were lucky the Rogerses would let it go and not press charges.

She said nothing. Not one word. Not even when she got out at her cabin. He turned the vehicle around and drove away without her uttering a single syllable.

Shelly stood on the porch. “What happened?”

Charly had sent a text to let her know she would be late. “You don’t want to know.” She didn’t have time to explain. “I need your help, Shelly. Can you stay here and see after things until I get back? It might be late. I mean really late.”

She didn’t like leaving the property for long when there were guests.

“Sure.” The concern on her friend’s face warned she had questions, but she didn’t ask. Good friends didn’t.

“I just have to grab a few things.” Before going inside she glanced at the truck Vince had left her, thankful for the first time that he’d made the overture.

Shelly followed her into the kitchen. Charly tossed her shoulder bag onto the table, grabbed a flashlight, a bottle of water and her father’s hunting rifle.

“Charly,” Shelly said, her voice heavy with worry, “what’re you doing?”

“When Billie gets here,” she said without answering the question, “tell him I went back. He’ll know what to do.”

And then she left.

Chapter Fifteen

7:55 p.m.

Finding the cabin was easy this time. She basically walked straight to it. The only real problem Charly had was that it was approaching full-on dark. She had maybe thirty or forty minutes, possibly a little more, before she wouldn’t be able to see without her flashlight.

She had to move fast. But first, she needed to get her bearings, so for a long moment she stood very still and considered where she was relative to the rental cabins on the Rogerses’ property. She pictured north and south in her mind. The front outer boundary of the Lost in the Woods Getaway should be straight ahead of where she was standing. Of course there were acres and acres of woods between her and that front entrance. But it was all about imagining where she was with respect to everything else. Her father had taught her to do that whenever she thought she was lost. The way she had explored when she was little, she had gotten lost in their woods plenty of times.

“Here goes nothing,” she muttered as she set off. The rifle was slung over her shoulder, the leather strap digging into her flesh with the weight of it. She’d tucked the bottle of water into one back pocket and her phone, set to vibrate, in the other. She held the old-fashioned Maglite flashlight in her right hand. It had been her father’s. It was a damned good flashlight and heavy enough to be used as a weapon if needed. She would much prefer using it to aim the rifle at someone.