Never Tell Them

by N L Hinkens

  Ray let out a heavy sigh. ”Thank you. I know it’s a huge ask, but if you could just tell the police what you told me—about Tom being a hothead—it might help my case.”

  Buck mumbled something incoherent and began pacing back-and-forth across the floor. “I’m not going to tell them anything.”

  “What? Aren’t you going to turn me in?”

  Buck threw him a cutting glance. “Mountain folks handle their own affairs.”

  “So what do I do now?” Ray asked, his voice tapering off into a quiver.

  “The only thing you can do,” Buck replied, a stoic expression on his face. “Bury the body, and keep your mouth shut.”

  Ray gawked at him. “But someone’s bound to report him missing.”

  Buck grunted in disdain. “You disappear in these parts, folks reckon you either got taken out by a bear, or you disappeared because you wanted to.”

  Ray silently digested Buck’s words. What he said might hold true in this isolated neck of the woods, but, in the real world, it was a crime to dispose of a body improperly, especially someone you had murdered.

  Buck reached for a coil of rope hanging on a hook by the door, then walked over to the storage bench and pulled out a blanket. “Best get to it. No sense delaying what needs to be done.”

  Ray gulped, his legs trembling beneath him at the thought of putting Tom’s body in the ground. Could he really do this? If it weren’t for Buck, he would head straight back to his truck and turn himself in at the nearest police station. “Why are you helping me?” He choked out.

  Buck tossed the blanket and rope next to Tom’s body and pressed his lips tightly together. ”I’m going to help you under one condition. You take Tom’s kid and you raise that boy as your own. He’s your blood—he’s your responsibility now.”

  Ray stared at Buck, jaw askew, as the weight of his words sank in. Was he serious? How would he ever be able to look Henry in the eyes and lie to him about what had happened to his father? Besides, he wasn’t ready to be a father himself—he might never be ready. Even after years of therapy, he’d never been able to form a deep bond with anyone, much less a child. But he could hardly refuse Buck’s demand given the circumstances he found himself in.

  “Do we have a deal?” Buck asked.

  Ray gave what he hoped was a convincing nod. “Yes, of course. I’m indebted to you for doing this.”

  Buck waved off his thanks. ”Quit rambling. Go outside and fetch a shovel. You’ll find one leaning up against the back wall of the cabin.

  By the time Ray returned, Buck had already dragged Tom’s body onto the blanket. “You might want to search his pockets before I wrap him up,” he said, gruffly. “No sense wasting a good knife or a pipe.”

  Ray swallowed back his trepidation as he approached Tom’s body. He still couldn’t come to terms with the fact that he’d killed his brother. His chest ached at the thought of how differently this could have played out. They might have been able to establish a real relationship going forward. He would have had a nephew to take fishing—to buy presents for at Christmas. Instead, with one punch, he’d become a criminal, and a father, and now the rest of his life was about to become one big lie.

  He knelt at Tom’s side and dug around in the outer pockets of his hunting jacket, retrieving a fishing lure and an Irish tin whistle. He stared at the whistle, suddenly overwhelmed by sadness that he’d never heard his brother play it. A part of him wanted to keep it, but it was too dangerous. It was evidence of what he’d done.

  After replacing it, he reluctantly slid a hand along the inside pocket of Tom’s jacket. His fingers closed over a small piece of plastic. He pulled out a driver’s license and stared at it curiously. His heart began to race. Could this be Henry’s mother? She looked so young. What was she doing with someone like Tom? He read the name, Katie Lambert, repeating it under his breath. It sounded vaguely familiar. His mind raced through the catalog of articles he’d written over the years, searching for a story buried in the recesses of his brain.

  And then a headline hit him.

  Seventeen-year-old Booneville girl believed to be abducted.

  28

  PRESENT DAY

  “What … what are you doing here?” Sonia choked out. “I don’t understand—” She broke off, blinking up through the rain at Finn in disbelief. Was she seeing things, disoriented after her fall? It made no sense.

  “I’m home on leave,” he muttered in a low, urgent tone, crouching down next to her. “I’ve been keeping an eye on you and Jessica. I put a tracker on your car. But never mind that now. We’ve got to get out of here before Ray returns. He’s dangerous, Sonia. There’s a lot you don’t know about him. I had a buddy in the army look into him after Jessica told me some disturbing things about him. Trust me, you have no idea who you’re dealing with.”

  Sonia clutched his arm. “Finn, I think he abducted her … Katie Lambert … that girl who went missing from Booneville five years ago. I found her driver’s license in my car. It fell out of Ray’s backpack.”

  Finn set his jaw in grim determination. “I told you he was a psycho, but you wouldn’t listen to me! What if he’d taken Jessica? Do you have it—the license?”

  Sonia shook her head. “It’s in my car, at the Deep Creek Campground. I ran the battery down. Where are you parked?”

  “Down by the main road,” Finn replied. “I couldn’t risk Ray realizing he was being followed. But we need to go back and get that license first. It’s the only evidence we have against him to take to the police. We need to get that creep locked up before he does anything else.” He smacked a fist into his palm. “I won’t stand for him living next door to my daughter one more day.”

  Sonia bit her bottom lip to keep it from trembling. ”What … what if he comes back to the car while we’re there?”

  Finn opened his jacket to reveal a gun strapped to his chest, and then held out a hand to help her to her feet. ”I was trained for this. Has it really been so long that you’ve forgotten?”

  Feeling somewhat self-conscious, Sonia placed her hand in his. As his calloused fingers closed around hers, it struck her that she hadn’t touched him in seven years—scarcely set eyes on him, for that matter. She winced as she stood and forced her blistered heel into her shoe. “I hurt my hip when I fell.”

  ”Lean on me if you need to,” Finn offered, slipping his arm under hers for support. “Which way?”

  “Follow the road,” Sonia answered. “Although, we should probably try and stay out of view, just in case Ray’s discovered I’m not in the car.”

  They set off for the campground, hugging the edge of the dirt road, allowing themselves the option of diving for cover behind a screen of trees, if need be. Sonia was far from thrilled at the prospect of going back to retrieve the license, but she couldn’t argue with Finn’s reasoning—it was a crucial piece of evidence. His military training and years of special ops experience gave her some measure of comfort. If it came down to it, he wouldn’t hesitate to take Ray out, and he wouldn’t be easily ambushed either.

  “Jessica didn’t say anything about you coming home on leave,” Sonia said between breaths.

  Finn gave a disgruntled shrug. ”I didn’t tell her. I figured you wouldn’t want me stopping by, and I didn’t want to disappoint her.”

  Sonia bit back the assortment of sarcastic responses that came to mind. He hadn’t cared one iota about disappointing her up until now—that’s pretty much all he’d done her entire life. The odd phone call here and there hardly equated to being a father. But this wasn’t the time to get into a spitting contest with Finn. For once, he had come through for her. And for that she was grateful.

  They could talk about him coming by to visit Jessica once they’d retrieved the license and Ray was safely behind bars. Despite Finn’s lengthy record of broken promises, Sonia wasn’t about to deprive her daughter of the chance to see her father when he was home on leave—no matter how little he deserved it. It would mean the world to Jess�
�she was still too young to understand what a flakey father he really was.

  When the Deep Creek Campground came into view, Finn motioned for Sonia to stay out of sight behind a nearby cluster of trees. ”Give me the keys and I’ll grab the license.”

  Sonia pressed the key fob into his palm. “It’s in the console.”

  “Be right back,” Finn muttered. ”Stay out of sight.”

  Breath on pause, Sonia watched as he moved stealthily toward the car and slowly cracked the door open. Moments later, he returned and hunkered down next to her. He examined the driver’s license and then shook his head sadly. ”She looks so young.”

  “She used to work at The Busy Bean,” Sonia said. “She was always so friendly and helpful to everyone.”

  Finn quirked a wry grin. “Kind of like you, huh? Except this time you picked the wrong person to help. Ray Jenkins is a dangerous man. He’s messed up in the head.”

  ”I realize that now,” Sonia said. “He told me about his abusive childhood, but I had no idea it had left him so screwed up.” She threw a fearful glance over her shoulder. ”We should get out of here before he shows back up.”

  Finn gave a hesitant nod, clenching and unclenching his fist, but made no attempt to move.

  “What’s wrong?” Sonia asked, picking up on his agitation.

  He locked a worried gaze on her. ”What if … she’s still alive—that girl, I mean? What if Ray went back up there to finish her off and get rid of the evidence?”

  Quivering in fear, Sonia let the picture sit in her mind for a moment. The sounds of the forest grew faint as the thumping of her heart increased. Everything in her railed against spending one more minute here. But her compassionate nature wouldn’t allow her off the hook so easily. Finn was right. If Ray was keeping Katie Lambert prisoner somewhere on this mountain, they had to make every effort to find her. Much as she hated to admit it, Finn was well equipped to handle a situation like this. She’d asked him once if he ever got scared on missions. He’d shrugged and told her courage was being scared and doing it anyway. Now was as good a time as any to prove that to herself.

  ”I have the coordinates to his brother’s cabin,” she squeaked out. She fished her phone from her purse and pulled up the photo she’d snapped of the map.

  Finn frowned. ”Where did you get this?”

  She hesitated, loathe to admit she’d been snooping around in Ray’s closet. ”I saw the map on his kitchen counter. I knew he was hiding something, so I took a picture of the coordinates. I meant to look them up later.”

  Finn grunted as he punched them into his GPS. “I wish you’d stayed away from him to begin with, but, as it turns out, you might have done Katie Lambert’s grandparents a favor. Let’s go.”

  Sonia’s heart bobbed in her throat as they hiked up through the damp forest in the direction of Tom’s cabin. She flinched at every rustle of branches, every startled squirrel that scurried up a tree, every critter that scampered across the mulched leaves on the forest floor. She was still trying to wrap her head around the fact that Finn, of all people, had come to her rescue. Why couldn’t he have been there all those times when she’d needed him in the past?

  A part of her was furious at him for putting a tracker on her car. Surely that was illegal. But another part of her was grateful that he’d had the gumption to insert himself into the situation, alerted by the red flags she had ignored. Jessica would be ecstatic to see him, and for once she had something to be proud of her father for. But Sonia wasn’t going to lead Finn on. If he thought a single, heroic act would be enough to right all past wrongs, he was sorely mistaken. She had no intention of letting him back into her life.

  The throbbing in her hip grew worse as they climbed higher, the pain crowding out the questions about Ray she was toying with in her mind. She had lost all track of time when Finn suddenly motioned to her to be quiet.

  “What is it?” she whispered, her empty stomach churning up acid.

  “I can see a cabin up ahead.”

  “Any sign of movement?”

  Finn didn’t answer. Instead, he pulled out a small pair of binoculars and stared silently through them for several minutes.

  Sonia couldn’t help thinking about the many covert missions he’d been on over the years and how often she’d accused him of putting the military before his family. Maybe she’d been too hard on him for the sacrifices he’d made. It was what he loved to do, after all. And now, he was using his training to protect his family and rid them of the threat next-door. For the first time, she allowed herself to envision how the situation might play out. If Ray came at them with a weapon, Finn would have little choice but to shoot him. And she would have to serve as a witness for the defense. The last time they had gone to court, she had fought him with everything she had, but this time she would have his back.

  Finn lowered the binoculars. ”I’m going to circle round and approach the cabin from the back. Stay right behind me and try not to make a sound.”

  Sonia’s throat felt torched with fear as they crept quietly through the trees around to the rear of the cabin. Suddenly, Finn came to an abrupt halt and held up a hand.

  “What is it? Do you see him?” Sonia whispered.

  Finn knelt and gestured to something on the ground in front of him. Sonia leaned over his shoulder, her eyes widening when she caught a glimpse of what he was pointing at.

  “Tripwire,” he said in a grim tone. “It must trigger some kind of primitive alarm system.”

  Sonia sucked in a sharp breath. ”I can’t believe you spotted it!”

  He threw her a bemused look. ”Bet you’re glad I do this kind of thing for a living now, huh? I’ve been scanning our environment every step of the way. The stakes are a lot higher when it’s IED’s you’re trying to avoid.”

  “Finn,” Sonia stammered. ”I know I made it hard for you to choose between the military and your family. Even though things didn’t work out between us, I want you to know I appreciate what you do every day for our country.”

  A flicker of sadness crossed his face before he turned away. ”Make sure you don’t touch the wire when you step over it.”

  Gingerly, they made their way up to the cabin. Finn peered through a filthy window. ”He’s not in the main living area. Looks like there’s another smaller room. Wait here.”

  Sonia darted several nervous glances into the trees while Finn crept around the perimeter of the cabin. She let out a relieved sigh when he reappeared a few minutes later.

  “Ray’s not here,” he said. “We should go inside and search the place anyway. Maybe we’ll find something to prove Katie Lambert was here.”

  Sonia pressed her lips together, reluctant to delay their return any longer. ”What if he’s watching us from the cover of the trees—waiting on us to go inside? What if it’s a trap? He set up a tripwire, after all.”

  “He’s not here. I would know if he’d been following us,” Finn said. He padded quietly over to the front door and nudged it slowly inward, sweeping the room with the barrel of his gun. “It’s clear,” he confirmed, motioning for Sonia to follow him.

  She stepped inside, blinking around the shadowy interior. The cabin was surprisingly orderly, a pair of boots lined up neatly by the fireplace, kitchen utensils dangling from hooks in perfect symmetry, a blanket meticulously folded and hanging over the back of a chair. The minimalistic interior was a far cry from Celia’s cluttered house where he was currently living. She held her breath as Finn tiptoed across the floor and cracked open the door to the smaller room. ”He’s not in here.” He lowered his weapon. “No sign of the girl either.”

  ”Maybe he took her somewhere,” Sonia said. She couldn’t bring herself to voice her worst fear—that he’d taken her into the woods to dispose of her.

  “I’ll take a look around outside and see if I can find any recent footprints,” Finn said.

  “Be careful,” Sonia warned him, wrapping her arms around herself as he disappeared out the door.

&nbs
p; She glanced around the cabin with an air of apprehension. Despite Finn’s reassurance that Ray wasn’t here, she could feel an ominous presence. Maybe there was some kind of hiding spot in the cabin that Finn had overlooked. Frowning, she picked up one of the boots by the fireplace and examined it more closely. They were too big to be Ray’s. He wasn’t a large man, a good six inches shorter than Finn. Her mind went back to the day Ray had told her about finding his way to his brother’s cabin, and the burly stranger who had helped him, a mountain man called Buck. Was it possible they were at the wrong cabin?

  The minute Finn reappeared, she blurted out her suspicions. “Finn, take a look at these boots, they’re size thirteen. I’m fairly sure Ray’s feet are smaller than that. I think we’re at the wrong cabin. This might be his neighbor’s place. He told me about this mountain man who gave him directions. He called himself—“

  “Buck,” Finn said, his lips curling into a smile. “I know who he is.”

  29

  “How do you … “ Sonia’s voice trailed off at the strange look in Finn’s eyes. A swirling mass of confusion invaded her head, muddying her thoughts. “I … don’t understand. How do you know Buck?”

  Finn threw back his head and laughed, a caustic laugh that dragged a sack of memories back to the surface she’d sooner forget. The ridicule, the intimidation, the threats like low-lying clouds constantly hanging over her head.

  ”Sonia, Sonia, Sonia. Ever the trusting, helpful, kindhearted woman to everyone around her.” His cold eyes raked her face. ”Except me. You didn’t extend the same kindness to me when you shoved those divorce papers under my nose, did you?”

  “Stop it, Finn! This isn’t about us. Ray’s still out there somewhere, and he might have Katie with him. Maybe Buck can help us track him down. How do you know him anyway? Is he military?”

  Finn laughed again in an overly casual manner that didn’t jive with the danger they were in. “He was—up until his dishonorable discharge six years ago when he lost his benefits and moved up into the mountains.”