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“Thank you! I’ll be there,” Dani said.
The moment the call ended, Dani leaped out of bed and did a happy dance. This called for that cold drink and one of the cookies in her mini-fridge. She ate while she was going through the numbers on her phone and making notes to herself about what she needed to do tomorrow.
She had already packed everything she owned before leaving for Jubilee and had a moving company on standby. Now all she had to do was call the apartment manager tomorrow, make sure he was still willing to meet the movers to let them in, and then call the utility companies and have her services discontinued.
The little cottage she was getting was adorable, and her furnishings would fit perfectly. She was especially pleased to have the cottage rather than an apartment. That little bit of extra privacy would be welcome. The past year of living in fear and always looking over her shoulder had been hell. Dani needed to feel safe again.
Chapter 5
Nyles Fairchild had a headache of immense proportions, and a crick in his neck from being hit in the back of his head with the damn hiking pack. It made driving miserable, but that misery would go away. Nothing was going to change the fact that he’d killed a kid. He still couldn’t believe what he’d done.
Last week he’d been living a quiet single life, and now he was on the run for murder. He wished to God he’d never seen that journal. He’d gotten wrapped up in the fantasy of finding gold and lost his fucking mind. He just wanted to get home, regroup, and decide what his next best bet would be.
Could he just go back to work and pretend none of this ever happened? Or did he need to disappear?
About two hours from Jubilee, as he was passing through a small town, he stopped long enough to get food from a fast-food drive-through before getting back on the road. He ate as he drove, with the sun setting behind him, and kept moving late into the night before he finally gave out. He had to sleep.
He found a motel in Charleston, West Virginia, andonce inside the room, stripped by the bed, stepped into the shower, and began washing the blond rinse from his hair. The water was cold before it got hot, but he didn’t care. He didn’t think he would ever feel clean again. He shaved off his beard after he got out, and then hacked off his ponytail with his hunting knife. His hair was in shambles, but the man who’d killed a boy was no longer looking back at him from the mirror. Still, he knew divesting himself of his alter ego was only a whitewash. He couldn’t wash away the damage he’d done.
When he finally went to bed, he couldn’t sleep. Every time he closed his eyes, he relived the sight of that boy running out of the woods, the sudden fear on his face, the echo of the gunshot, then the blood pooling beneath his body and seeping into the ground.
The few times he drifted off to sleep, he’d wake abruptly with his heart pounding. He kept breaking out in cold sweats, and the weight of guilt made it hard to breathe. Panic grew to the point of thinking he was having a heart attack, then deciding he didn’t care. Death would end this horror.
But he didn’t die. He just kept falling asleep, killing the boy again, and waking up crying. Finally, he got out of bed, got dressed, and was back on the road at sunrise.
He drove east through the Monongahela National Forest of West Virginia without being conscious of its beauty. The roads were steep and winding, taking all of his attention. When he finally reached Highway 81, heturned north and followed it all the way to the junction of 81 and 66, and took Highway 66 eastbound.
His first glimpse of the Potomac River brought tears to his eyes, but it wasn’t until later, when he saw his apartment building looming on his street, that his panic finally settled. He was home. Nobody from here knew where he’d been, and he looked nothing like the man he’d been in Jubilee. He pulled into the apartment complex and into an empty parking space, then killed the engine. The silence should have been reassuring. But there was a huge black hole before him, waiting to swallow him whole. He closed his eyes, leaned forward until his forehead was resting on the steering wheel, and prayed.
“Please God, I’ll give up everything that makes me happy if you’ll just make this go away.”
Then he leaned back and looked up.
Although his journey was over, his hands were still on the steering wheel. He’d gone as far away as he could from what had happened and had a feeling it would never be far enough.
One glance into the rearview mirror reassured him it was the same brick sidewalks lined with trees he’d known before. The little coffee shop down on the corner. The laundry across the street that did his clothing.
This was it.
Lift off.
Either he got out now, or backed up and kept on driving. But the familiar won. He took the keys fromthe ignition and got out, bagged up all of his trash, and tossed it in a dumpster in the alley, then went inside the building and down the hall into his apartment.
It was the quiet, the picture of his parents hanging in the hall, and the sight of all his things that finally broke him.
He began to shake, and then dropped to his knees and burst into tears. He was home. But by his actions, he’d forever destroyed what it meant and what he thought he knew about himself.
He didn’t know how to be.
What to do.
His first mistake had been curiosity—finding that journal and taking it home to read. The old saying “Curiosity killed the cat” kept going through his head. But his curiosity didn’t kill a cat. It killed a boy. And for the first time in his life, the thought of suicide was real.
He went from tears to nausea as he staggered to his bathroom. He threw up until his throat was raw, then dragged himself to the sink to wash his face. His eyes were swollen. His cheeks red and splotchy. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d cried. Maybe when he buried his mother. Then he frowned. That haircut he’d given himself was a mess.
Shit. I didn’t know crying made me look this ugly.
He dried his face and hands, then went back outside and began emptying his car, carrying in his luggage, stuffing everything back into his backpack that he’d tossed in after he fell, then took the metal detector andthe shovel into his apartment. It took two trips to get it all back inside and he still had to return the rental car.
