Page 85 of Glimmer in the Darkness

She pushed away from his chest. “We need to—”

“I know. I know.” He stepped away. “Ella is still out there.”

She leaned against the car, worked to shift mental gears. “But where? The kidnapper knows we found his hideout. Surely he’s long gone by now.” She tapped the back window where he’d stowed his stuff. “You seem to have a plan.”

“Come on.” James rounded the car and climbed in the passenger seat.

She settled in beside him. “Catch me up. It was a cop at the door, right?”

“Yeah. Did you recognize his voice?”

“Why would I have?”

“Vince was new to the force when we were in high school. He was the guy who gave the Don’t do drugs talks. Whenever there was a problem, he was there. I just thought…”

She was shaking her head. “I vaguely remember who you’re talking about. I paid even less attention in those stupid assemblies than I did in class. I doubt I could pick him out of a lineup. And anyway, the door muffled his voice.”

James told her what happened after she climbed from his window. That he’d been questioned. Arrested. Arraigned, because of her.

She buried her face in her hands. “I’m so sorry. It’s all my fault.”

Gently, he urged her hands down. “I could’ve turned you in. I could’ve sent you away. I didn’t do those things, and not for your sake. I did them because I wanted to find Ella.”

“But we didn’t. And you’re saying the police searched the cave and the surrounding area and found no sign of her.” She dug her hand in her pocket and came out with the hair tie. “I found this and stuck it in my pocket right before I was shot. I remembered this morning.”

James took it from her. “It looks like something she’d wear. She was there.”

“She’d definitely been there, but now she’s gone. And we have no way of knowing where. Eugene was the one who stole our food?”

“I never got confirmation of that.”

“Do you think he shot at us? Or the father—”

“Wilson.”

“Yeah. Maybe… maybe he did it, and Eugene told him we were up there, and he went up the next day.”

James was nodding. “Or, if Eugene didn’t do it, what if Wilson thinks he did? What if he’s trying to protect his son.”

“That makes sense.”

“Except they reported having seen you. Why do that if they planned to kill you? Eugene was at the police station yesterday around noon. He’d have to have left there, driven up the mountain, hiked to the cave, and been there to shoot at us. I think it was around one, right?”

Cassidy thought back. “It’s all so fuzzy now.”

“It could be either one of them.” James’s tone, though—devoid of the anger she would expect—told her he didn’t think his neighbors were the culprits.

“Or it’s somebody else entirely.” Though the thought that they could still be so far from knowing the real killer made her sick to her stomach. “It could be somebody not on our radar. I wonder if Eugene told anybody besides the police he’d seen us.”

“Eugene keeps to himself,” James said, “but he told Wilson. I guess Wilson could’ve told someone.”

“Or the killer saw us. He obviously knows the mountain as well as anybody. Maybe he saw us in time to get Ella out of there, and the fact that Eugene saw us on the mountain is unrelated.”

“Possible.” James faced forward, took a long breath and blew it out. “Truth is, I have an idea, but I’m not sure. I have zero proof, zero evidence. Really, zero reason to believe it’s true except a gut feeling.”

“What is it?”

“We need to check the cave again.”