Page 99 of Glimmer in the Darkness

“Stay where you are, Cassidy. I can shoot him as easily as he can shoot me.”

“I’ll stay where I am,” she said.

“Seems we have some time.” Vince leaned against the stone wall behind him. “Why are you so sure it’s me? Your girlfriend tell you that?”

“She didn’t know. I didn’t either, not until just now. But I suspected.”

Vince’s lips curled at the corners. Not a smile as much as a sneer. “Why’s that?”

“You were in charge of the search for this place ten years ago yet swore you couldn’t find it. You told me a few nights ago you’d continued searching. For ten long years, you searched. It took Cassidy and me less than twenty-four hours. Tells me you weren’t trying that hard, or you were lying.”

“It’s not like it’s easy to find.”

“And you called it a cave. The other night at Teresa’s, you were emphatic when you said it. ‘There are no caves.’”

“So what?”

“Cassidy said she was careful never to call it a cave. She said she always called it a rock formation, which is what it is. But it feels like a cave.” He didn’t look around, kept his focus on the man, the gun. But Vince’s gaze flicked to the stone walls surrounding them.

“That doesn’t mean anything. She described it like a cave.”

James shrugged. The gun was getting heavy in his hand, but he didn’t shift it. “Not proof. I never had proof. Only suspicion. Like the fact that you were the first to show up when that family reported finding Hallie’s body. The rest of the town cops were elsewhere, making calls, knocking on doors. But you were on this side of the lake, Johnny-on-the-spot. Because you knew where Cassidy and Hallie had last been seen. Not at the rest stop near Concord. Not in town. Nope. They’d still been on this mountain.”

“The search took us all over.”

“Yesterday, you showed up at my house alone. You said it was because you trusted me, but that’s not why. You showed up alone because you wanted to catch Cassidy without cops nearby to witness it. You need her dead.”

“You really think I’d have killed your girlfriend in cold blood?”

James’s lack of response to the question was all the answer he planned to give. “Lorelei still out of town?” James asked, referring to Vince’s girlfriend. “She was last month when Addison went missing too, wasn’t she? Convenient.”

Vince’s expression gave away nothing.

James continued. “One of my biggest questions all along has been about the ten-year gap in kidnappings. Assuming they were related, nobody could explain why the killer would take ten years off. Something had to happen in the killer’s life to get him started again. Something drastic. Like, say, for instance… his mother’s death.”

Now, Vince flinched as if James had wounded him.

“And then there’s the fact that Eugene and Wilson reported having seen us on the mountain two nights ago, and the next day, the killer had emptied this place out. How would he know to do that? How would he know to be prepared for us?”

“Word gets around.”

“After I was arrested, sure, the stories got out. But before that? When you were still theoretically trying to catch a killer? Surely the department keeps such things a little closer to the vest.”

“Rumors.” Vince shrugged. “Leaks. They’re the bane of our existence.”

“More circumstantial evidence. It’s possible word got out that we’d been seen up here, the killer heard, ran up to the mountain, hid Ella and all this gear somewhere, and then waited to try to kill Cassidy, the only person who could recognize him. But it feels unlikely.

“And then there’s the other question, the one that’s been nagging us. Why didn’t the killer shoot us both yesterday? Why let us go after Cassidy was shot?”

“He probably ran. Stayed with the kid.”

“I think he wanted to kill Cassidy, but he didn’t want to kill his friend.”

Vince’s gaze hardened. “He didn’t want to, but he will.”

“Problem is, Vince, I’m not the only one who knows. Before we started this morning, I left a message for Reid. I don’t know if he’s listened to it yet. Considering how ticked at me he was”—the reminder had James wanting to rub his jaw that still hurt—“I wouldn’t be surprised if it took him a day or two. But if I turn up missing or dead, he’ll listen. I laid out for him all the reasons why I think you might be the guy. It’s circumstantial, like you say, but I’m sure his uncle, your boss, would take it seriously. Especially if I’m dead.”

For the first time, Vince had no answer. No defense. No argument.