Chapter 6 #2
Harper studied the photo. The name meant nothing to her. But she memorized the face, the way he stood with easy authority between men who clearly deferred to him.
Harper studied the photo. Montgomery. The same silver-haired man from the supper club.
The one who'd looked at her a beat too long.
Here he was again, twenty years younger, standing between Sattler and the mayor with the easy authority of a man who was used to being the most important person in the room.
"What's his connection to Sattler?"
"I don't know exactly. But every time something happens in this town—a major property transfer, someone who was causing problems suddenly going quiet—Montgomery shows up within a few weeks.
Charity event, business meeting, just passing through.
He never stays long." Geri turned another page, revealing more clippings, more photos. "The timing is never coincidental."
Harper reached for the album, then stopped herself. "Can I take this?"
"Take it." Geri pushed it toward her. "I've been waiting thirty years for someone to ask."
Harper lifted the album. It was heavier than it looked—the weight of three decades pressed between cardboard covers. Three decades of secrets. Three decades of silence.
"Why did you keep this? If you were so afraid?"
"Because my mother deserved someone to remember what happened to her. Because Nova deserved it. Because Daniel Bennett deserved this. Because all those people who were silenced deserved to have someone write it down, even if no one ever read it."
"Who is Daniel Bennett? I haven't heard his name mentioned before."
Geri took a deep breath; her chest rose and fell noticeably.
"Daniel Bennett was the local surveyor. He noticed the discrepancies and was also killed for it.
Warren Caldwell was sentenced for his part in it.
But it's too much of a coincidence that his death would mirror others in town, and only Warren was accused and sentenced for it. "
Harper's hand tightened on the album. Bennett.
Harper stood, the album clutched against her chest. Something was burning behind her ribs—grief, maybe, or rage, or the terrible recognition of a pattern she was now part of.
Isak had died for this. Margaret Crane had died for this.
Nova Boone, Daniel Bennett, and God knew how many others, all of them silenced because they'd seen too much, asked too much, known too much.
And now Geri had handed her the evidence of thirty years of murder, and Harper was going to walk out the front door carrying it.
"Will you be safe?" she asked.
"I've been safe for thirty years by being invisible." Geri walked her to the door, her movements stiff. "Maybe I'll get another thirty. Or maybe this is the thing that finally catches up with me."
"Geri—"
"Don't." The older woman's voice was firm. "Don't make me promises you can't keep. Just take that album and do something with it. Make it matter."
She opened the door. The night air rushed in, warm and heavy.
"Be careful," Geri said. "Douglas finds out everything. That's what makes him dangerous."
Harper stepped onto the porch. Behind her, the door closed, and the deadbolt clicked into place.
She was halfway to her car when she realized she was being followed.
Not a sound. Not a shadow. Just a feeling—the primitive awareness of eyes on her back, the animal instinct that had kept her alive for fourteen months of running.
She kept walking. Same pace. Same direction. The album pressed against her chest like a shield.
The parking lot was just ahead, her rental car alone under a flickering streetlight. She was reaching for her keys when she saw it.
A black SUV. Parked where it hadn't been before, tucked into the shadow at the far end of the lot. Engine running.
Harper's hand found the panic button in her pocket. Three seconds to activate. Backup in five minutes. But five minutes was a lifetime when someone wanted you dead.
She didn't go to her car. Instead, she cut left, toward the inlet, toward the walking path that curved along the water. If they were watching her car, she wouldn't give them an easy target.
Behind her, tires crunched on gravel.
Harper walked faster. The path was dark, barely visible in the thin moonlight. Trees pressed close on either side, Spanish moss hanging like curtains. Her breath came quick and shallow. The album's weight made her arms ache.
Headlights swept across the inlet road, parallel to the path. Moving slowly. Hunting.
She broke into a run.
Branches caught at her clothes, her hair.
The path curved, and she followed it blind, trusting her feet to find the ground.
Her lungs burned. Her heart slammed against her ribs.
The album slipped in her sweating hands, and she clutched it tighter, willing herself not to drop it, not to lose thirty years of evidence in the dark.
The SUV's engine grew louder. They'd found the access road. They were trying to cut her off.
Harper veered into the trees, crashing through underbrush, no longer caring about noise. Palmetto fronds slashed at her legs. A root caught her foot, and she stumbled, nearly went down, caught herself on a tree trunk, and kept moving.
The main road had to be close. Caleb was out there somewhere, watching, waiting.
She burst through a line of bushes and found herself on pavement. The road stretched in both directions, empty.
Headlights appeared to her right. The SUV, rounding the curve.
Harper pressed the panic button.
And then, from the left, another car. Smaller. Moving fast.
Caleb's rental screeched to a stop in front of her, the passenger door flying open before the wheels stopped turning.
She threw herself inside, yanked the door closed. Caleb hit the gas before she had her seatbelt on, the car lurching forward with a scream of tires.
In the mirror, she saw the SUV hesitate at the intersection—then turn the other way, melting back into the darkness it had come from.
"You're okay." Caleb's voice was steady, but his knuckles were white on the steering wheel. "You're okay. I've got you."
Harper couldn't speak. Her chest heaved. Her hands shook. The album was still clutched against her, its corners digging into her arms.
Caleb took a circuitous route back toward town, checking the mirrors every few seconds, taking turns at random. The SUV didn't reappear.
Finally, when they were back on familiar streets, the lights of Main Square visible in the distance, Harper found her voice.
"They were watching her house. They knew I was there."
"I know."
"They'll go back. Geri—"
"I already made a call." His voice was tight. "We'll figure out protection. Right now, I need to get you somewhere safe. We have a safe house."
Harper looked down at the album in her lap. Thirty years of evidence. Names, dates, photographs. A roadmap to everything Geri Crane had seen and never dared to speak.
She thought of Isak, bleeding out in a parking garage with the truth still locked in his head.
She thought of Margaret Crane, dropping dead in her kitchen a week before she could report what she'd found.
She thought of Nova Boone, falling down stairs she'd climbed a hundred times. And Daniel Bennett.
All of them silenced. All of them erased.
Not this time.
"I got it," she said quietly. "Everything Geri collected. Thirty years of proof that these people have been killing anyone who gets close to the truth."
Caleb glanced at her, then back at the road.
"Then we make sure it wasn't for nothing."
Harper held the album against her chest and watched the dark road unspool in the headlights.
Behind them, the SUV was reporting back to whoever had sent it.
Ahead, the safe house waited. And between the two—this car, this man, this fragile alliance held together by shared purpose and something neither of them had named yet—was the only thing standing between her and the people who wanted her dead.