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As she kept to the side of the road, her eyes ever searching the darkness, Nikki guessed that Ashley, freaked that Owen had died at his own hand, had contacted someone and they had decided to meet out here in the middle of nowhere.
So who?
She thought of Jacob Channing and Tyson Beaumont, both of whom had dated Ashley, and the friends who had made up her clique at school, an elite group who had allowed Holly Duval to be a part of it. Andrea Clancy, Maxie Kendall and Brit Sully. Were they involved?
What about Baxter or Connie-Sue Beaumont?
The names and people kept running through her mind. Who was so damned important she meet that Ashley dropped everything, tore out of her driveway and drove straight here?
Nikki couldn’t wait to find out. Anticipation fired her blood.
Hey! Don’t get ahead of yourself. This could be dangerous.
People have died, Nikki. Think of Bronco. Of Owen. Of the Duval sisters.
She didn’t break stride. No matter what the danger, she had to know, and those who had died deserved, no, demanded justice. Twenty years had passed and in that time the murderer had run free. While two of the Duval sisters had been hidden away in a secret tomb.
But no longer.
She felt it in her bones.
Tonight, come hell or high water, Nikki was going to uncover the truth.
* * *
Reed knew the interview with Margaret Duval would be difficult, and he’d expected her to break down at the news of her son’s death, but he hadn’t expected her to blame him.
“How could you let this happen?” Margaret demanded. Against her better judgment, she’d allowed Reed into her home only at the urging of her husband, who now sat beside her on the couch, holding one of her hands in his. But she was far from comforted. Her lips trembled, her eyes red rimmed, her free hand fiddling with the tiny cross held on a fragile chain around her neck.
Reed, sitting in a chair opposite, said, “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Losses,” she snapped, tears tracking down her face. “Losses. They’re all gone now! Every last one of my children!” She was beginning to sob, her shoulders shaking. “Why am I being punished?”
Her husband tried to comfort her. “No, Margie, you know—”
“Don’t say it was God’s will,” she warned. “Don’t.”
“We all have sorrow and—”
“No,” she argued. “No, ‘we’ all don’t!” Blinking, she stood suddenly, sniffing and scowling, her mind turned inward. “Was I so bad?”
“Of course not,” the reverend said gently. “Oh, honey, you’re not bad.”
“But I sinned. You know it, Ezra.” Margaret was nodding quickly, agreeing with herself as she fussed with the chain around her throat.
“You and God.”
“Honey, none of us is perfect,” he said a little nervously.
“But God is punishing me.” She stopped fidgeting to stare at her husband, her gaze locking with his. “That’s what’s happening. It wasn’t enough to have the girls gone, oh, no. That horrible not knowing, the waiting and wondering, the long nights of despair and fear, that wasn’t enough punishment for what I’ve done. Now He wants me to know that they died and how they died. Were murdered! And now . . . now Owen, as well.” Her face twisted into a knot of pain, as if she were being physically tortured.
“No, Margie, that’s not—”
“Don’t placate me, Ezra,” she ordered, tears springing from her eyes again. “Don’t!” She sniffed loudly. “I’d thought that Rose was still alive, and I prayed that the woman who came forward, the one you, Detective, said was a fraud, was her. But now you’re telling me that it was all false hope.”
Reed nodded. “Her name is Greta Kemp. She and her husband are con artists.”
“Who would be so cruel?” she asked. “And the body you found at Black Bear Lake? Thank God that wasn’t my Rosie. Though it’s someone’s daughter.”
