70. Wolf
Chapter 70
Wolf
I was driving too fast for the weather, rocketing through the darkness, rain covering the windshield faster than the wipers could clear it. There were moments when I couldn’t see a thing, when I was driving on nothing but a hope and a prayer, hoping that in the seconds when the windshield was wiped clean I wouldn’t be staring at a brick wall or an oncoming semi-truck.
The road was slippery in places, the temperatures plummeting in the night, creating treacherous icy patches that would have slowed me down in any other situation. Now all I could think about was Daisy, alone with Otis at the house, Piers Cantwell clearly playing some kind of fucking game.
Because it wasn’t an accident that he was back in Blackwell Falls. It couldn’t be. And it wasn’t a coincidence that he was building a resort there, that he’d hired Daisy — Nory’s daughter — to work for him.
I kept seeing the yearbook picture, the one where Mac and Nory had looked so happy, a universe of two, while Arlo and Michael looked on, both outsiders.
And that was other thing that worried me. If Michael and Arlo had been extra tight — and they probably had been since they were foster brothers — then where the fuck was Arlo in all of this? Had Michael aka Piers done something to April Hedges, the girl who’d gone missing at Wharton? If so, had he come back to Blackwell Falls to exact some kind of revenge for the years when he’d been a chubby foster kid, on the outside of Mac and Nory’s world looking in?
I didn’t dare take my eyes off the road, but I had to think Jace was asking himself the same questions. It was all a jumble, my mind too focused on getting home to Daisy to connect any of the dots.
My heart skipped a beat when the phone finally rang, but it wasn’t Daisy and it wasn’t Otis.
It was Aloha.
I tapped the screen to answer the call. “What’s up?”
“Finally got into Blake’s email,” Aloha said. “Got a report for you on his activity in the weeks before you killed him.”
Jesus. Just come out and say it, why don’t you?
“Cool,” I said. “Anything jump out at you?”
“I can send the report to your email,” he said.
“Definitely do that, but we’ve got some new info on our end. Wondering if you noticed anything unusual.”
“Hard to say without the big picture, but there was one place Blake went to more than ten times leading up to his death,” Aloha said.
“Where was it?” I felt Jace tense in the passenger seat as he waited for the answer.
“Shitty bar about a half hour from town. Place called Mo’s.”