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“They found Aaron’s car.”
Jared had been sitting with his eyes closed. At that answer, he jackknifed to attention and leaned in. “Where?”
Geography didn’t matter to her. She had bigger questions. Ones that might end in answers that kept her in this building far longer than she wanted. “Like abandoned or was he in it?”
“I don’t have a lot of details. It sounds—”
His voice cut off, and Lila knew why. The sight of Ginny stalking down the main room with her raincoat open and flapping with each determined step proved impossible to ignore. She frowned as she dropped an envelope on a desk and kept marching. Right for their room.
“This is bad.” Lila hadn’t meant to say the words out loud. She thought she’d whispered until Ginny’s gaze locked with hers coming through the doorway. “Your poker face needs work.”
“I’m not trying to hide anything.”
Ginny’s voice carried a mix of exhaustion and an emotion Lila couldn’t identify. Her shoulders slumped, and cloak of sadness seemed to be draped over her.
“So, what are we looking at?” Tobias asked, jumping them all to the deep end of the conversation.
“We used the GPS to locate Aaron’s car.” Ginny sat down. She had a thin file in her hands and placed it on the table in front of her but didn’t open it. “It was parked in a barn at a cabin outside a small town called Logan’s Gorge.”
Jared snorted. “What?”
“Where’s that?” Lila asked at the same time.
“North and remote. It’s near the Canadian border but not too close to it to be on a well-traveled road. The closest thing you might know is the camping area, Moose River Plains.”
Jared shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
A wince came and went on Ginny’s face before she started talking again. “The SUV was on a wooded lot, and Aaron was in it. In the back, Jared.” She laid her palms flat against the file. “It looks like he was stabbed, rolled up in a blanket, and left there until we found the body.”
Stabbed.The word punched into Lila.
Not alive. Killed, and not by her.
Jared’s mouth opened as he fell against the back of his chair, almost boneless. “He’s dead?”
Ginny nodded. “Yes, I’m sorry.”
“Stabbed?” That meant... Lila didn’t know what the hell that meant.
With her original plan, she’d anticipated feeling nothingwhen Aaron’s body was found. The videos would show why. There would be corroboration. She had a plan for that, too, but it turned to dust when Aaron’s body went missing.
Every day since, her thoughts had ping-ponged between believing he was alive and tormenting her with the idea of an accomplice who’d stepped in to make her pay. She feared being found out and not having her carefully constructed story stick. She worried the girls at school wouldn’t get justice.
Knowing he was gone but in some violent way she hadn’t expected left her reeling. Shock churned inside her. Someone had killed or stabbed him at some point, and it wasn’t her, which left a wide-open field of terrifying possibilities. The sensation of being hunted and watched, dissected and terrorized, hit her full force.
“Are you familiar with a cabin in Logan’s Gorge?” Ginny wrapped her fingers around the top edge of the file. “I know he likes hiking and tough trails. He might have rented it or—”
“Not there. We went to one about thirty miles from my house. Nowhere near Canada or whatever this moose thing is.”
Jared shifted around in his chair and drew out his cell. His fingers shook as he pressed the buttons. When he turned the screen around for Ginny to see, it showed a map and pinpoints around the lake indicating her house, and Jared’s, and the rental cabin.
Tobias cleared his throat. “Where is Logan’s Gorge exactly?”
“Almost three hours away. The GPS on his phone suggests he’d been there recently. We’re trying to access older records.” Ginny lifted the edge of the file but didn’t open it.
Lila tried to get a peek at what Ginny found so important that she kept it close. Held on to it. The movements could be nervous fidgeting, but that sort of uncontrolled response didn’t fit with the Ginny she’d been verbally battling in the case so far.
“Why would he go there?” Jared’s voice faded in and out as if he was having trouble breathing. “When?”
