Chapter 4 #2
Kinsley eventually walked around the fire pit and took the seat next to him. She stared at the ashes in the center of the pit for a long while before she spoke again.
“Someone moved him, Noah. Someone took Gantz’s car and his body out of that lake.”
Noah didn’t respond right away. He sat with the information the way he always did, turning it over in his mind, examining it from every angle before letting himself react.
When he finally spoke, his voice had shifted from shock to something more analytical, the way it did when he was working through a problem.
“Do you understand what that would actually take?” Noah asked, almost to himself.
He rubbed the back of his neck and stared out at the tree line.
“We rolled that car into Terrapin Lake at the deepest point we could find off the north embankment. That section drops off fast, Kin. Fifteen, maybe twenty feet of water, and the bottom is nothing but soft silt and muck. Once that car settled, it would have sunk into the lakebed like a stone pressed into wet clay.”
“I know where we put it,” Kinsley said quietly.
“Then you know that pulling it back out isn’t something a person does on a whim.
” Noah shifted in his chair, leaning his elbows on his knees as the practical side of his brain took over.
“You’d need a heavy-duty winch at minimum.
Industrial grade, the kind rated for several tons.
A standard tow truck winch wouldn’t cut it, not with the weight of a waterlogged sedan buried in silt.
The suction alone from the lakebed would add hundreds of pounds of resistance.
And you’d need something solid to anchor the winch to.
A vehicle heavy enough to handle the load without sliding into the lake itself.
We’re talking a commercial tow rig, maybe a flatbed wrecker with a boom, or a piece of heavy construction equipment. ”
“So not exactly something you pick up at the hardware store,” Kinsley murmured.
“Not even close. And that’s just the extraction.
” Noah held up a finger. “First, whoever did this had to locate the car. Terrapin Lake isn’t small.
You’d need to know the general area where it went in, which means either they watched us that night, or they searched for it over time.
If they searched, they’d need sonar equipment, a fish finder at the very least, something to scan the bottom without sending divers down.
Even then, a car buried under a layer of silt doesn’t exactly show up like a target on a screen.
It takes patience and the right equipment. ”
A cold knot formed in Kinsley’s stomach.
She’d understood on a surface level that moving the car was a significant undertaking, but hearing Noah lay out the logistics step by step made the scope of it feel enormous.
Whoever had done this wasn’t some curious bystander who’d stumbled onto their secret. This was planned.
Deliberate.
Resourced.
“Once they found it and got it hooked up,” Noah continued, his voice low enough that it wouldn’t carry past the fire pit, “they’d have to drag it up that embankment.
The north shore is steep, probably a thirty-degree grade, where we rolled it in.
You’d need to clear a path or at least find a section of shoreline where the terrain is forgiving enough to haul a vehicle up without it getting hung up on rocks or stumps. ”
Kinsley rubbed her eyes, still irritated from her earlier crying bout.
“I have no idea when they moved it, either. It could have been weeks or months ago. The notes started arriving twelve months after I killed Gantz, so whoever this is has known about the body for at least nine months. They could have pulled the car out at any point in that window.”
“Once they’ve got the car out of the water and up the embankment, then what?
They’ve got a waterlogged vehicle with a decomposing body in the trunk, dripping lake water everywhere, probably smelling like something that would make a coroner flinch.
They can’t exactly drive it down the road.
The car has been submerged for over a year.
The engine’s destroyed, the electronics are shot.
It would need to be loaded onto a trailer or a flatbed. ”
“And driven somewhere,” Kinsley added, following his logic. “Somewhere private enough to store a car with a body inside without anyone noticing the smell.”
“Exactly. A barn, a warehouse, an abandoned property with enough seclusion that nobody would come poking around.” Noah rubbed his jaw, the stubble rasping against his palm.
“Kin, we’re not talking about one person with a grudge and a tow rope.
This is someone with access to some serious equipment, knowledge of how to use it, and a private location to store the results. That narrows the field considerably.”
“Or it widens it in ways I don’t even want to think about,” Kinsley said.
“Anyone with money could hire someone to do the extraction. They wouldn’t need to know how to operate the equipment themselves.
They’d just need to know where the car was and have the resources to pay someone to keep their mouth shut. ”
Noah was quiet for a moment, seemingly processing their conversation.
“Which brings us back to the fundamental question. How did they know? How did anyone know the car was there in the first place?”
The question settled between them. Kinsley had been turning it over in her mind all afternoon and hadn’t come any closer to an answer. She and Noah had been alone that night, or at least she’d believed they were. The road had been empty. The lake had been dark and still. They hadn’t told a soul.
“I don’t know,” Kinsley finally admitted. “But it has to be connected to the notes. The person who’s been sending me messages every month on the nineteenth, without fail, since the one-year anniversary of Gantz’s death. Whoever it is knows what happened, and now they’ve taken the evidence.”
“The notes only ever say they know what you did, Kin. There’s never been any demands, so it’s not blackmail in the traditional sense.
Just those cryptic little reminders.” Noah was still working through the logic, and she could practically see the gears turning behind his eyes.
“And here’s the part that doesn’t add up.
If they wanted to turn you in, they had the body.
They had the car. They had everything they needed to walk into a police station and end your life.
But they didn’t do that. Instead, they removed the evidence from the one place law enforcement might eventually look. Moving it only protects you.”
“I used my service weapon,” Kinsley whispered, closing her eyes at the mistake she’d made by not disposing of it properly. “The bullet would still be in him. That ties the body directly to me.”
“Which matters, yes. But evidence that’s been moved and tampered with, pulled from a lake by an unknown party, and then stored in some undisclosed location?
Any halfway decent defense attorney would tear that chain of custody apart.
” Noah waited until he had her full attention before finishing the thought.
“It doesn’t make sense, Kin. Every piece of this, from the extraction to the storage to the timing, points to someone protecting you. But the notes say otherwise.”
“Unless they want to torment me.” The words hung in the air between them, heavy and unresolved. “Maybe this isn’t about money or justice. Maybe it’s about control, about holding it over my head and watching me squirm for as long as they can.”
Noah’s gaze slid past her to the patio door, and she could tell he was calculating how much time they had before Lily or one of the others came outside to join them. He’d apparently reached the same conclusion she had, because he quickly asked one more question.
“Shane?”
“No body, no crime,” Kinsley repeated, and the wry laugh that accompanied the words tasted bitter in her mouth. “He said he wouldn’t pursue it without evidence. That we should stay out of each other’s way.”
“You don’t think he could have—”
“Shane didn’t move that body, Noah,” Kinsley replied with a confidence she felt in her bones.
Whatever else had broken between them, she still knew the kind of man Shane was.
“Let’s just say he would never have made the decision I did that night.
He wouldn’t protect me by tampering with evidence. That’s not how he’s wired.”
“I’m just saying it makes a certain kind of sense,” Noah pressed, though his tone suggested he was thinking out loud rather than arguing. “Someone could have moved the car and the body specifically to protect you.”
“And yet I’m getting monthly reminders of my sin,” Kinsley pointed out, unable to reconcile the contradiction.
Someone who wanted to protect her wouldn’t also want to terrorize her.
The two impulses didn’t belong to the same person, unless there was something far more complicated going on than either of them could envision. “None of it makes any—”
Before she could finish the sentence, the sound of the sliding glass door interrupted them.
Lily bounded out into the yard with the kind of reckless, full-bodied energy that only a ten-year-old could sustain.
She’d gone from eight to ten in the blink of an eye.
Her giggles floated through the evening air, a sound so innocent and pure that it made Kinsley’s chest ache with something she couldn’t name.
Gratitude, maybe.
Or grief for how close she’d come to never hearing it again.
“Grandpa is going to make hotdogs on the grill!” Lily announced, her excitement elevating the statement to the level of world-changing news.
She skipped to a stop beside them and stared at Kinsley with those bright blue eyes that were so much like Noah’s, like all the Aspens.
“Aunt Kin, are you staying for hotdogs?”
That trusting, open face, completely unaware of the darkness that had nearly swallowed her world. In an instant, Kinsley was back on that deserted road with her hand on her service weapon and Gantz’s voice slithering through the darkness like something poisonous.
“Do you think little Lily will cry out for her father or her Auntie Kin?” Calvin tsked, as if he were disappointed in himself. “What am I thinking? Drowning in her own blood will tend to make screaming…difficult. Have a good night, Detective Aspen.”
The memory was so vivid that Kinsley swore she could still smell the gunpowder lingering in the air, feel the cool metal of her weapon against her palm, and hear the echoing silence that had followed the shot.
She had pulled that trigger without hesitation, without remorse, and standing here now staring at Lily’s face, she knew for certain that she would do it again.
Every single time, she would do it again.
“Aunt Kin?” Lily’s voice pulled her back to the present, small fingers tugging at the sleeve of her shirt. “Are you okay?”
“Of course, peanut.” Kinsley forced her lips into a smile, blinking rapidly to dispel the memory before Lily could observe whatever shadow it had left on her face. “And yes, I’ll definitely stay for hotdogs.”
“And s’mores? Will you make s’mores with me after dinner? Please?”
Noah cleared his throat to capture his daughter’s attention before Kinsley could answer.
“That depends on whether Grandpa can get the fire going. Why don’t you go ask him? And tell everyone we’ll be inside soon.”
Lily nodded eagerly and dashed back toward the patio, calling for her grandfather before she’d even reached the door. The sound of her voice faded into the house, and the yard was quiet again.
“You know,” Kinsley said slowly, staring at the empty space where Lily had just been standing, “whoever moved Gantz’s body, whatever their reason, they’ve inadvertently given me more time with all of you.”
She turned back to her brother and held up her hand, waiting for him to take it. When he did, she squeezed his fingers and held on, drawing strength from the contact the way she had when they were children and the world had been simpler.
“This morning, I thought today was the last day I’d ever get to spend with my family.
” Kinsley bit the inside of her cheek to keep the tears at bay.
“And now I get to have hotdogs with my niece and make s’mores by the fire pit.
However long this lasts, whatever comes next, I’m going to enjoy every second of the extra time I’ve been given. ”
Noah squeezed her hand back but said nothing, and for a while they just sat there together in the fading light, listening to the sounds of their family through the open door.
Lily’s laughter rang out again from somewhere inside the house, bright and unbothered and blissfully unaware that her aunt had almost lost everything today.
Kinsley closed her eyes and let the warmth of the evening settle over her.
Tomorrow, she would start trying to figure out who had the resources, the knowledge, and the motive to pull a car from the bottom of Terrapin Lake.
Tomorrow, she would face the questions that had no answers and the fear that came with knowing someone else held the evidence of her worst decision.
But tonight, there were hotdogs to be grilled and s’mores to be made, and she intended to be present for every minute of it.