She angled herself and pretended to drop a glove. She didn’t want to draw any attention.
But just as she bent over, Bradford stood.
Olive knew the opportunity had passed—she couldn’t look now.
Instead, she forced herself to keep walking, heart pounding, pretending to adjust her gloves.
Not now. Too many eyes.
But as she reached the door where Jason waited, she risked one last glance over her shoulder.
Rachel was watching her.
The woman flashed a smile, and Olive let her guard down some.
Maybe she was seeing guilt when there was none there. But the fact remained that someone in this house was a killer.
However, Rachel and Bradford had arrived after JJ had been killed. And Rachel was pregnant.
Olive just needed to take a deep breath.
She stepped out into the cold, the door closing softly behind her.
Whatever was in that bag—it wasn’t a change of clothes.
She wanted to know what it was.
The cold hit Olive’s face the moment she and Jason stepped outside.
The wind had died down since they were last outside, leaving behind a fragile stillness broken only by the distant groan of trees under their heavy coats of snow.
“Aren’t we lucky?” Olive started. “We keep getting tagged whenever someone needs to go outside.”
“It’s fine by me,” Jason said. “I feel like I’m suffocating inside. I’ll take the cold to the oppressiveness.”
“Can you believe Rex kept this from us?” Olive asked.
“It’s his prerogative,” Jason murmured as they continued across the snow.
The sky was a dull gray, morning trying to push through the storm’s last remnants. Snowflakes drifted lazily now, soft and harmless compared to only an hour earlier.
They started around the side of the inn, their boots crunching through the crust of snow as smoke curled upward from the chimney.
“The truth is that I don’t know who to trust anymore,” Olive said.
“I get that.” Jason paused in the snow and turned toward her. “But you always know you can trust me, right?”
Her lips twitched despite the weight in her chest. “Of course. But beyond that?” She shook her head. “Everything about this feels wrong. JJ, Warren, Michael, Rex’s secret . . . it’s like we’re missing something that’s been right in front of us the whole time.”
Jason was quiet a moment, his expression thoughtful. Then he reached out and brushed a bit of snow from her hair, his fingers lingering just long enough to make her chest ache.
“Whatever it is,” he said quietly, “we’ll find it. Together.”
The warmth in his voice steadied her more than she wanted to admit.
She smiled faintly. “Thank you. This isn’t how I pictured the retreat going.”
Jason chuckled under his breath. “Mandatory rest and review? Yeah. I was picturing hot cocoa, not homicide.”
