Chapter Forty-Three Sloane #2
He was swearing when I ended the call. The dog and I moved through the thicket of tall grass. The trees thinned. Cody paused to hike his leg and pee. He was chill, given the week he’d had. I liked that about him. No drama. Just one foot in front of another.
Ahead I heard the rumble of car tires, so I knelt, pulling Cody with me. “Shh,” I said.
The dog wagged his tail. I fed him a few treats.
A car drove down the dirt road and parked at the barn. Bailey rose out of it. She was dressed in jeans, a simple pullover, and old shoes. She removed dark sunglasses and surveyed the barn.
An older truck pulled up behind Bailey’s car. It was unmarked, but there was no missing Paxton’s bulky form as he emerged from it. Bailey slipped her glasses back on and whirled around, her body stiff.
“Bailey, what are you doing here?” Paxton asked.
“Looking at the property. I hear the land might be for sale. You know me. I love me a good bit of land.”
“You’re trespassing,” Paxton said.
She smiled. “I’m sorry. I just wanted to see the barn. Trying to figure out how expensive it’ll be to tear it down.”
“You going to demolish the barn?”
“Yes. I’ll sell it for parts and scrap.”
Paxton stepped toward her. Even from this distance I could see his body tense as he studied her. “Remember Tristan Fletcher?”
Bailey took a step back. “You been talking to that reporter. She’s dug up all kinds of trouble surrounding the Festival Four.”
“That’s right.”
“What about her?” Bailey walked toward him.
“She’s alive. Sloane found her.”
Bailey laughed. “She’s lying. She’s trying to shake us all up so someone says something stupid.”
“What kind of stupid things would someone say?”
“Something like this. Sloane is trying to spook us.”
“Why us?”
“We were both at the concert. She sees us both as suspects.”
Her hand slipped into her purse, and she pulled out a revolver. Without hesitating, she shot Paxton in the chest. The bullet’s impact knocked him backward, and he fell to the ground. She moved toward Paxton and stood over his still body.
Bailey was a little more bloodthirsty than I’d imagined. But I only underestimated someone once.
“Come on out, Sloane,” Bailey said. “You set this little meeting up, so let’s finish it.”
I wrapped Cody’s leash around a bush and then I rose. My gun pressing in the small of my back, I studied Paxton’s beefy frame. His chest moved very slightly. He’d been wearing his bulletproof vest.
I moved toward her, not daring a look at Paxton.
“When did you figure it out?” Bailey leveled the gun on me.
“Takes one to know one, I suppose. I’ve faked emotions for so long I can spot another faker.
” I’d learned at an early age to smile or cry when my grandmother needed a reaction.
Both achieved the desired effect because I was savvy enough to use my whole body to project the desired emotion.
Bailey’s smiles flashed bright, but they didn’t reach her eyes.
A rookie mistake, as far as I was concerned.
“What was my tell?”
I ignored the question. “Paxton was right. Tristan is alive.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Right.”
“Not joking. And I think you know that.”
“If she was alive, how did you find the bodies? She doesn’t know.”
“Why do you say that?”
Bailey paused. “No one knows where the bodies are.”
“I do.” At least, I was pretty sure I’d figured it out.
“Bullshit.”
“You and Colton must have met during the festival planning.”
Her smile faded. “We did. He came by the house often to meet with Daddy.”
“He’s charming and, back in the day, hot. I could see a teenager falling for him. Did he convince you to help him get the girls?”
She stood still, her stare lingering for several beats. “My goodness, you do have a real good imagination.”
“First Laurie, right? She’d have been easy. She wanted into music so badly he could’ve sold her any story to get her alone. She’d have followed him anywhere.”
“Laurie wanted to sleep with him. I saw the way she was looking at him.”
“Laurie goes to the trailer with Colton. Sex might have been consensual, but he liked to strangle women. Maybe it got out of hand, or maybe he’d planned to kill that night.”
Bailey’s smile faded.
“Then Patty, and Debra. They weren’t as easily lured.
A scream in the woods would’ve sent both running to help.
And then Colton grabbed them. By now, I bet he had a taste for the violence and wanted more.
He got them all except Amy. The one that got away.
Did he try to take Amy in the woods near the tents before or after Patty and Debra? ”
Bailey shook her head. “Poor drunk and battered Amy wandering in the woods. Low-life girls no one would ever have missed.”
Anger clawed inside my chest. “Tristan was high during the festival. It wouldn’t have taken much to lure her into a trailer.”
“But don’t let her fool you,” she said. “She wanted Colton. It wasn’t rape.”
“Because you were standing in the corner watching.”
She smiled. “She liked it.”
I’d sensed Susan had been lying. Did she blame herself for going with Colton all those decades ago? That choice tore her family apart. “Until he strangled her.”
“You got it all figured out.”
“Did you watch Colton rape Patty and Debra?”
Her gaze grew distant, as if staring back into the darkness. “It was oddly hot.”
Disgust coiled in my belly. “You drove the bodies out?”
“What bodies? There are no bodies, right?”
“You must have panicked when you opened the trailer and realized Tristan was missing. And then Colton was arrested.”
“I don’t panic.”
“You lay low. When Colton was arrested, your daddy said he wasn’t sure if he’d be convicted without the bodies. Colton knew that, too. So you kept your mouth shut.”
“Great imagination.”
“Did your father figure this out?” I asked. “Did you shoot him?”
Her smile flickered. “I loved my daddy.”
“But Daddy discovered something, didn’t he?”
“You don’t know anything.”
I shook my head. “What did Daddy figure out five years after the festival? Did he find a few mementos from the other girls in your room?”
She stared at me with a steady gaze that felt more detached than connected.
“He freaked out, didn’t he? I mean, that festival was a disaster for him. I hope you denied it all. Confirming the man’s discovery would have been a final blow for him.”
“You have a lot of answers.” Her flat tone suggested I’d hit a nerve.
“And then what? You spiked his whiskey. Was he barely conscious when you wrapped his hand around the gun and pulled the trigger?”
Silence settled over her.
“Come on. It’s just us girls here.”
“Shut up.”
“Hopefully the poor old man never felt a thing.”
Her eyes glistened.
I kept pressing. “And Taggart? Did he get too close? Did you spike his whiskey?”
She shoved out a breath as she blinked. “He wouldn’t let the case go. He was ready to pull in the FBI and run the forensic tests all over again. He was convinced that new technology would give him more precise information.”
“You drugged him. Shot him.”
Her brow knotted. “He wasn’t a happy man. Haunted, really. It was an act of mercy.”
She might have seen herself as a sympathetic angel, but I saw the demon scratching under her skin. “And Brian Fletcher?”
“I knew Tristan was alive. I figured with you in town, old memories would be resurrected. It was a matter of time before he told someone about her. And I couldn’t trust what she might have remembered.”
She’d been waiting for the last shoe to drop for thirty-one years. “You going to keep shooting people?”
“I just might.”
“You going to toss my body down the mine shaft?”
Her eyes brightened with interest. “You are clever.”
“I like to think so.”
“No one will remember it soon. The barn is falling in on itself, so I’ll buy the land and bulldoze over it all.”
“Sounds almost convincing.”
Cody barked. Big paws thumped through the thicket toward me.
He’d broken free. As he bounded out of the woods, Bailey shifted her gaze.
It was a slight shift, the hint of a hesitation.
But it was enough. I drew my gun from the small of my back and raised it in one smooth move I’d practiced at the shooting range a thousand times before.
My shooting instructors said muscle memory was critical.
Don’t give yourself a chance to think. Just react.
Bailey and I fired at the same time.