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Before Josie could respond, Nicola said, “Why are you apologizing to her? What is going on here?”
Josie sighed. “I believe that Meg was murdered.”
Sandrine used the sleeve of her sweater to wipe away her tears. “And you kept that from us? From all of us?”
“I didn’t want to cause unnecessary panic,” Josie explained.
Brian closed his mouth and swallowed twice, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “Are you sure?”
“As sure as I can be.”
“Someone strangled her,” Alice blurted out.
“Alice—” Josie began but Nicola cut her off again.
“You knew all this time that someone strangled Meg and you didn’t tell any of us? You knew that we were in danger, and you didn’t say anything? I thought you were a police officer. What if Taryn is really dead? Her blood is on your hands.”
The accusation hit Josie right in the chest. An ache bloomed over her heart. Was that true? If Taryn was, in fact, dead, could Josie have prevented her death by telling everyone that Meg had been murdered? Would they all have been more careful? She’d been so worried that the killer was among them and that telling everyone would only escalate the killer’s behavior, putting them all at risk. But if she had told them, would the killer have de-escalated instead? Would Taryn be sitting with them right now, safe and sound? If the killer was somehow not in this room, would he or she have been prevented from picking Taryn off if Josie had told the truth about Meg’s death? Had she made a fatal miscalculation?
Brian rubbed at his scar. “Nic,” he said softly. “Come on.”
Nicola shot out of her seat. “Shut up! It’s true! If she had told us that Meg was murdered, we could have been on guard. We could have stuck together more. Taryn would not have been in her cabin alone.”
“No!” Alice exclaimed. “That’s not true. Josie was trying to protect us. I agreed with her decision. She wanted us to stay calm and focused so we could get off this damn mountain. Why would she have shared that information? For all we know, one of you is the killer!”
“What?” Brian said.
Josie’s head started to pound. Was Nicola right? Was Taryn’s disappearance and potential murder her fault?
Alice kept going, throwing gasoline on the flames. “When we found Meg, I thought maybe her stalker somehow tracked her here and killed her. Then I thought maybe it was Cooper since he never came back, but now with Taryn missing, there’s only one possibility. One of you killed Meg and Taryn! Were we supposed to announce that we knew one of you was a murderer? What if you came after us? That’s probably what happened to Taryn! She figured out one of you was a murderer and you had to kill her to keep her quiet.”
Brian’s nails dug into his scar, drawing blood. “This is crazy. This can’t be happening.”
Could Josie have prevented what happened to Taryn? The ache in her chest felt crushing. She could barely breathe.
Sandrine tugged her fingers through her long hair. “Stop! Stop this instant! We don’t know that Taryn is dead. We simply don’t. While I don’t know why she would choose to hide out from us in this cold, we simply cannot and should not assume that she’s dead.”
Mettner’s ghost voice floated up from the back of Josie’s mind, reminding her of what she had told him many times when they’d worked together, what she told victims’ families.Boss, he said,only killers are responsible for killing. There were only six of them on the mountain, trapped in a relatively small area together. They had rarely been apart since the snow started. Killing Taryn was a huge risk which made Josie think that the killer didn’t much care about the circumstances—he or she would kill no matter what. Still, she couldn’t shake the thought that she might have been able to prevent whatever happened to Taryn.
“If she was hiding, we would have found her,” said Nicola. She stared down at Sandrine. “You killed both of them, didn’t you?”
Sandrine’s eyes widened as she turned her face up to Nicola. Fear flashed across her face. “What? You think I killed Meg and Taryn? You think that I murdered two people? Why would I do such a thing?”
Josie tried to speak but her throat constricted. It still felt hard to breathe.
“You were conveniently alone when Taryn ‘disappeared.’ Just like you were with Meg. You woke us all up to tell us that Meg was gone. You could have easily killed her while we slept and then acted like she disappeared.”
“Just a minute, Nicola. You were also alone when Taryn went missing,” Alice pointed out. “You were in your cabin.”
“No,” said Nicola, gaze switching furiously back and forth between Alice and Sandrine. “I came back before that.”
“How can we know that?” Alice shot back.
Sandrine stood up. “Stop! Stop this! None of us saw Meg leave her cabin. None of us saw Taryn leave this building. We can’t start blaming one another. It’s not going to do any good.”
Nicola leveled a finger at Sandrine. “Don’t try to distract us. Meg left this camp in the middle of the night. She tried to walk off this mountain in a blizzard. Why would she do something like that unless you drove her to it?”
Josie concentrated on getting oxygen to her lungs. But Taryn had asked Meg to come to her cabin that night. Meg had thought Taryn was stalking Sandrine. Perhaps she was fixated on Sandrine but not in the way that Meg suspected. Josie was sure that Taryn had been working with Brian and Nicola. For all Josie knew, Taryn had killed Meg to hide whatever they were trying to do.
