“Yes. I know her name. But so does every person in a hundred-mile radius of Derby Reach. And you saw my driver’s license, so you know that’s where I’m from.”
“True enough. Holly Henderson was killed four years ago,” Calloway said. “Big news in Derby Reach. And you’re right, everyone did hear about it. But for some reason, I think it’s a little fresher in your mind. When was the last time you heard the name, Keira?”
Without meaning to, she flicked her eyes toward the corner of the room. Toward the box full of incriminating news articles. Immediately, she regretted the slip. Calloway’s gaze followed hers. And when he looked back in her direction, his face was dark.
Not with guilt, Keira noted. Regret, yes. Sorrow, absolutely. And hurt. Yes, there was that, too.
And it managed to cut through her apprehension and froze her tongue to the roof of her mouth. Before she could regain the ability to speak, Calloway was on his feet, moving toward her. He reached down, grabbed the rope she’d all but forgotten about and looped it around her wrists. He cinched it just shy of too-tight and fastened her there. Lastly, he snapped up the box, gave Keira a furious, achingly heartbreaking glare and stormed out of the cabin.
Damn, damn, damn.
For several long minutes, she stared at the door. Her heart was still beating at double time, and she was sure he was going to come running back any second and offer an explanation.
What was his connection to Holly? For some reason, she was sure—so sure—that he wasn’t responsible for her death.
But the door stayed shut, and the cabin stayed distinctly quiet, and she had to resign herself to the fact that he wasn’t returning anytime soon. And she wanted to get free.
Keira followed the length of rope with her eyes.
It disappeared at the edge of the bed, so she shimmied toward the end. She still couldn’t see where it was tied, but sliding to the edge of the mattress gave her enough slack to move a little more. She inched forward so that her whole head hung off the bed.
Aha!
There it was. The rope went from her wrists to the woven metal frame underneath the mattress. As Keira leaned down a little farther in search of a possible way to free herself, she lost her balance and toppled to the wood floor.
She decided to take advantage of her new position.
She worked her way under the bed, ignoring both the few slivers that found their way into her back and the fact that the frame was low enough to the ground that it dug into her chest.
She brought her fingers to the knot on the bed frame. It was as solid as the one on her hands. But a warped piece on the metal bed frame caught Keira’s eye.
If she could twist it, even just a little bit, she might be able to create a gap wide enough to slip the rope through.
She began to work the metal. It hurt a bit. The fibers of the robe rubbed unpleasantly against her skin, and she jabbed herself twice on the metal, hard enough the second time to draw blood.
C’mon, c’mon.
When she finally saw some progress—a tiny space between the bits of metal—tears of relief pricked at her eyes.
With an unladylike grunt, she twisted the already bent piece of metal frame as hard as she could while shoving the rope forward at the same time. It sprung free.
“Yes!” she crowed, and propelled herself out from under the bed.
She crossed the room quickly, but paused at the spot that had housed the cardboard box.
Knowing it probably wasn’t the best idea, but unable to resist an urge to do it anyway, Keira made her way to the front door. She cracked it open and a blast of chilly air slammed into her.
Too cold.
She snapped up the Gore-Tex jacket from its hook just inside, put Calloway’s too-big boots back on and stepped onto the patio.
She limped down the stairs and into the yard, holding her arms tightly against her chest to fend off the cold.
How Calloway was able to stand it with no coat was beyond her.
Where had the man gone to anyway?
There were plenty of footprints at the base of the stairs and along the edge of the cabin, but no distinct ones that led away from the cabin.
She scanned the tree line. It was so thick that, had it not been for the tracks in the snow, Keira wouldn’t have been able to tell where Dave, Calloway’s not-so-friendly friend, had come in on his snowmobile. There was no evidence of a footpath in, either. But there had to be a way out. Didn’t there?
She had the uneasy suspicion that if she climbed up one of the very tall trees surrounding her and looked out, she would see nothing but even more trees for miles on end.
Keira shivered, a renewed niggling of doubt brought in by the yawning forest before her. Her stomach churned nervously, too, and she had to look away from the suddenly oppressive view of the woods.
Trying to distract herself, she turned back to the cabin and planted her feet in the snow at the bottom of the stairs so she could give the wooden structure a thorough once-over. It was old. She’d noted it in the dark the night before. The logs were all worn smooth, and the roof sagged in some places.
But it wasn’t falling down at all.
In fact, it looked like someone had made an effort to keep it looking rough while in fact reinforcing it. Near the top of a particularly high snowdrift, several strips of fresh wood had been nailed over top of one area, presumably to fix a hole. Even though the porch was covered in leaves and debris, it was actually quite new, with no sign of rot. The window from which Keira had watched Calloway argue with the armed man had a new frame, too. The front door was marked with pitting and the hinges looked rusty. But Keira knew that it was solid on the inside. The whole interior was airtight.
To the casual observer, the cabin appeared run-down. Not worth a second glance. But examining it closely, knowing what was on the inside...
“He’s not just hiding something,” Keira murmured. “He’s hiding himself.”
She took one more step back. And bumped right into Calloway.
Chapter Thirteen
When Keira stumbled, Graham’s hand came up automatically to steady her, then stayed on her elbow.
“For almost four years,” he said, his voice full of poorly disguised emotion.
She twisted a little in his grip, but not to get away. Just to face him.
“Since just around when Holly Henderson and her son were killed,” Keira stated softly.
He met her gaze. What had she seen inside that box? What had she read and then believed? And why the hell did what she thought matter so much more to him than the fact that she’d had a peek into his darkest secrets?
“Calloway?” she prodded.
Graham’s heart burned a little inside his chest as he replied. “Yes. You’re right. Since they were killed.”
“She was your wife, wasn’t she?” Keira asked gently.
Graham closed his eyes. “Yes.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me, too.”
There was a brief pause, and Graham wondered if his agreement had seemed like a confession. An apology. It wouldn’t be the first time. But her next words, spoken in a devastated voice, refuted the idea.
“And the little boy...”
“Not my biological son.” He opened his eyes again and saw that the pain on her face was genuine. “But I loved him like one. Every day for the last four years, I’ve ask myself if I could’ve done something differently. Something to save him.”
“Four years...” Keira said. “And you’ve been on the run ever since.”
“Not on the run,” Graham corrected bitterly. “Running implies forward movement. I’ve been hiding, just like you said.”
More than hiding.
Graham was stagnant. Stuck in the woods, surrounded by nothing but
his own haunted thoughts.
When had he gone from using the cabin as a headquarters to using it as a home? He’d never meant for it to be permanent. Just a place to stay while he hung back as the details sorted themselves out. As Dave Stark did the legwork and searched for the man responsible for Holly’s and Sam’s deaths.
Graham had wanted to feel useful. He’d started collecting the newspaper articles, brought in by Dave, and made the scrapbook to keep things linear. He was so sure something in those stories would spark something in him, and set off a chain of events that would lead to proving he had nothing to gain from his wife’s death.
A motive.
That’s what he’d been looking for, hidden under the piles of half-truths.
Instead, the perpetual hounding, the mudslinging, all of the ignorant hatred directed Graham’s way, laid out in black and white—and sometimes color, too—left him with the feeling that he would never become a free man. Not truly. How could he, with the details of every mistake he’d ever made on display for the whole world to see?
The collection of articles had the opposite effect that it should have anyway. The finger pointers seemed right instead of wrong. Graham understood why they hounded him, why the accusations came hurling his way. His and Holly’s unhappiness was well documented. Hell, sometimes it was on public display. Some of it was on paper. If Graham had been on their end, he would be giving himself the exact same scrutiny.
Insurmountable.
That word was tossed around a lot and it stood out to Graham particularly. It’s what the evidence had become. It’s what his circumstances had become. The reason he felt it was better to stay here, locked behind his cabin door, rather than face a jury and tell a story that seemed unlikely, even to him.
When Graham realized just how desperate—how insurmountable—his situation had become, he’d tossed everything into that damned box and pushed it into a corner.
Before long, the media attention died off, and with the waning interest in the murder, the clippings became few and far between. There was a little resurgence on the anniversary date each year, but aside from that, Graham had nothing to add to his collection.
Ignoring the box had become easy.
Except he couldn’t ignore it anymore. Keira had opened it. Now she was staring at him, worry and curiosity plain on her face.
“Just ask me,” Graham commanded gruffly.
“Ask you what?”
“The same question that every person who ever heard the story, who ever saw the news, who ever read an article in that box has asked me.”
Graham braced himself for her version of it.
Did you kill them? Were you angry? In a fight? Was it an accident, maybe?
Instead, she looked him square in the face and said, “I don’t think it’s my turn, actually.”
Graham couldn’t keep the surprise from his reply. “Your turn?”
Was she kidding? Deliberately misleading him?
“I wasn’t really counting anymore,” she told him, her voice serious. “But I think I owe you at least one.”
He thought for just a minute. She wasn’t the only one who could throw a curveball.
“Are you still a six out of ten?”
“Is that what you really want to know?”
“Right this second...yes.”
Keira pursed her lips as if she was really considering it. “Still a six.”
Graham frowned. “I don’t know if it’s better than a six or worse than a six, but I know you’re lying again.”
“You sound awfully sure of that.”
“I am awfully sure of it,” he countered and took a step closer to her so he could run a thumb over her cheekbone. “When you lie, you get a little spot of red right here.”
“I do not.”
“You do.”
The color bloomed further, covering the rest of her cheeks. He didn’t release her face, and she didn’t pull away. Graham stroked the curve of crimson. His palm cupped her cheek, the tips of his long fingers reaching just above her delicate brow and his wrist at her chin.
A perfect fit.
“Ask me something real, Calloway,” she said. “Something you really want to know.”
“Did you know I was up here, when you came?” Graham replied. “Did someone tell you where to find me?”
Keira’s eyes widened. “No! Why would I... No.”
The blush drained from her face, and Graham knew she was telling the truth. He released her face with a sigh. The realization disappointed him—no, not disappointed. That wasn’t the right description. It sent a swarm of angry wasps beating through his chest, and he couldn’t pinpoint the reason.
“Let me show you something,” he said.
Graham didn’t give her a chance to respond. He slid his hand down her shoulder, then her arm, then threaded his fingers through hers. He guided her gently to the back of the house, following an unnamed compulsion.
The box of newspaper clippings sat just where he’d tossed it, right between his wood bin and the rear of the cabin. Graham ignored it.
“Right there,” he stated.
He let go of Keira’s hand and pointed at a snow-free, almost perfectly circular patch in the snow at the bottom of the cabin. It wasn’t huge and only seemed out of place when looking directly at it. Anyone walking by wouldn’t even notice the anomaly.
Graham watched as Keira’s stare traveled upward and landed on a narrow spigot, sticking out from between two of the log beams. A nearly indiscernible puff of steam floated from the metal cylinder, then dissipated into nothing.
“You could put your hand right into that and it wouldn’t even burn,” Graham told her.
“What is it?”
“It’s what you don’t see up on the roof,” Graham replied.
Her eyes widened with immediate understanding. “That little bit of steam comes from that big fire in the stove?”
“That. Or from out here.”
Graham bent down and lifted up a large, flat stone, revealing a hidden, in-ground fire pit.
“Oh!” Keira exclaimed.
Still not 100 percent certain why he was doing any of it, Graham snapped up the cardboard box and moved it a little closer to the pit.
It was high time he got rid of them. They’d never done him any good anyway. Only served as a reminder of how very little had been done in solving the case.
He slipped the lid off and reached inside for a stack of newspaper. Then he tossed it into the pit.
“I modified the woodstove into a rocket stove with a heating component. So I feed the fire—from inside or from outside—and the fire exhausts into a specialized section of wall, where it then helps to heat the house. It cools significantly before it’s finally filtered out, and by the time it gets here, it’s not much more than vapor,” he explained as he grabbed some more paper. “It took a year to do it, and it was worth the time.”
Graham reached into the box once more, and as he did, his hand hit something cool and metal. He shoved his hand into the mess a little farther and yanked out a familiar container.
The flask was silver. Real silver, trimmed with real gold.
A little shake told Graham it was still full.
He disregarded the nagging voice in his head that pointed out that it was barely even noon, twisted off the cap and downed a healthy gulp of the amber liquid inside.
The Macallan.
It was a Scotch Graham would never choose for himself. Just like the flask, the drink inside was a gift from his wealthy father-in-law, a man who had never tired of putting Graham into his lower place on the evolutionary scale. A man who perpetuated the witch hunt that drove him underground.
Even the smooth flavor couldn’t quite drive away the bitterness that came with it. Which w
as the very reason he’d dumped it into the box in the first place. To stash away the memories.
He took another swig, then offered it to Keira.
“If that’s what you gave me the night before last,” she said, “count me out. I don’t want to wind up drunk and tied to another bed.”
Graham managed to smile through his beard. “I’m afraid I only have the one bed. My alternatives are a wooden chair and a closet full of flannel.”
He meant it as a joke, but Keira shot him a serious, searching look. “Or not tying me up at all.”
“That would require a certain level of trust.”
She didn’t avert her gaze. “Does it look like I’m going anywhere?”
And Graham suddenly realized what he was showing her. What he was telling her. Why it made him wish she hadn’t found him by accident.
Because it means I really am the one putting her in danger.
“Does it look like I’m offering to let you leave?”
Her eyes went a little wider as she caught the underlying darkness in his voice. He held out the flask again.
“This is plain old whiskey. Liquid courage.” He sloshed it around.
“Do I need to be courageous?” Her question made her sound anything but.
“Always,” Graham told her firmly.
Keira took the whiskey. Graham waited until she took a sip before he spoke again.
“My great-grandfather built the cabin here for its inaccessibility. He told no one but his son—who told my dad, who told me—it was here. And as close as the resort is, to get to this spot, you need an ATV in the summer or a snowmobile in the winter. Or you need to crash in, I guess, like you did. And who wants to make that kind of effort? So no one knows it’s here. No one knows I’m here.”
“No one except for the man with the gun,” Keira pointed out.
He met her eyes. “Him. And now you. Which is a bad combination, I think.”
“A bad combination?” Keira parroted.
Graham nodded. “They found what was left of your car.”
Fear crossed her face, and he knew she was thinking about the consequences of being found. But she covered it quickly. “Who did?”
Trusting a Stranger Page 9
