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“Damn it all to hell!” Kayleigh muttered, hitting her emergency lights and driving like a bat out of hell, heading north on 101. On the way to Edgewater, she called for the deputies to converge on the old cannery.
They’d been wrong.
All wrong!
The thinking had been that Bruce Hollander, currently clinging to life at Seaside Mercy Hospital, was the killer. Not only had he stalked Rachel and tagged her house, but he’d also killed Violet Sperry and Annessa Cooper as some kind of revenge for helping Rachel avoid being convicted of Luke Hollander’s murder. But there had been holes in that theory from the get-go. Kayleigh had checked. Though Hollander hadn’t established an alibi for the night when he was supposed to have killed Annessa Cooper, on the night of Violet Sperry’s death, he’d been at home.
But they’d been wrong. She’d heard enough of the recording on Cade’s phone to know that Hollander, now near death, hadn’t killed anyone . . . except possibly Nathan Moretti, as he was still missing.
“Son of a bitch,” she said to the night at large.
She chewed on her lower lip.
Hollander had been armed, but his pistol had been
a different caliber from the one stolen from the Sperry house.
Now, she presumed, Violet Sperry’s pistol was in the deadly hands of Lucas Ryder. How had they missed the signals? Lucas had never once come up on her radar as a possible suspect.
She had to slow as she cut through Astoria, merging onto Highway 30 winding along the river’s edge. There was little traffic on this stretch, and the few vehicles she came upon quickly moved aside so that she could blow past.
A deputy called, confirming that he was at the cannery and two cars were parked by the gate that had been opened.
No sign of Rachel Ryder.
Apparently she’d overcome her fears and her paranoia, when it came to saving her child.
* * *
She slid her phone into a pocket. Then, tightening her grip on the bolt cutters, the image of Harper’s frightened face seared into her brain, Rachel fought her rising panic. She couldn’t go there. Not now. There was time for breaking down later if she had to, but for now, she had to get past a fear that, in the past, had been paralyzing, a fear that had toyed with the edges of her sanity.
Move, Rachel. Find Harper. You can do this. She needs you!
A quarter moon had risen, stars flickering in the night sky, the single security lamp offering weak light. The river, ever moving, stretched dark and wide with only a few lights visible on the other side of the expanse on the southern shore of Washington State.
The land around the old building was as uneven as or worse than it had been twenty years before, and the huge barn door that she’d slipped through on that fateful night was slightly agape, a sliver of an opening visible.
And the blood was visible: dark splotches on the ground.
You can do this.
She inched her way through the opening and immediately the smell of the moldering cannery hit her, that brackish scent that hinted at dead sea life, and took her back to a time when pellet guns popped, kids laughed and screamed, and death was just around the next corner.
A million memories flooded through her brain. Lila, Violet, Nate, Reva, and Luke, the ringleader, her half brother, the heartthrob to all her friends other than Mercy. It was a lifetime ago. But it felt like yesterday.
And now Harper was here.
Somewhere.
Forced to this menacing edifice by Lucas.
She hurried across the ancient floorboards, hoping that her eyes would adjust to the darkness, that she wouldn’t be forced to use the light from her phone and become a visible target. She reached the midsection of the building, where some of the windows were unbroken, thin light filtering through the grimy glass. She stopped, straining to listen, squinting into the darkness.
Her throat was tight, and her hands were clammy over the handles of the bolt cutters.
Deep in the shadows, something moved, scratched across the planks, little claws scraping as a rat scurried past. She clamped her jaw tight so as not to scream. Of course there were rats and God only knew what else hiding in the corners or lurking on the crossbeams.
She swallowed back her fear.
