“Let me know if you need anything?” Emily glanced up as she fiddled with the basket in her hands. She seemed tired, or bored. Beth’s face felt hot and she was beginning to second-guess her entire mission. How could she ask a stranger something so personal?
Then Emily took another look at her. “Are you new in town?”
“I’m Beth.” She came closer to the counter. “Amber Chevalier was my sister.”
“Oh.” Emily’s eyes widened. “I’m sorry.” Her expression was changing from surprise to confusion. Next would be suspicion. Beth needed a smoother opening.
“She always talked so nicely about this town. I wanted to see it myself.” Beth looked around the shop, admiring. “She mentioned a blueberry farm she loved.”
“Really? I don’t remember her coming here.”
“Did you know her?”
“I saw her around.” She pushed a basket of blueberries across the counter. “Here—on the house.” She reached for a small bottle of sanitizer by the cash register, squeezed a few drops into her palm. Beth caught a glimpse of the label. Blood Orange. The spicy orange scent Hailey had mentioned. So, it must have been Emily in Vaughn’s truck.
“Thanks.” Beth rested her hand on top of the basket but didn’t move toward the door. She couldn’t leave until she found out what Emily knew about Vaughn, but she wasn’t sure how to open up the conversation. The anger that had driven her here didn’t come with instructions.
“I also wanted to talk to you.…” She looked into Emily’s eyes, trying to use hers to somehow express urgency and also understanding. “Vaughn is creeping on me.”
“Yeah?” Emily crossed her arms across her chest, instantly wary. “What’s that got to do with me?”
“I heard he did the same to you.”
“Who told you that?”
“Friend of a friend.”
“They were lying.” She looked at Beth’s purse on the counter. “Are you recording this?”
“No. I don’t have my phone.” She opened her purse. “Check for yourself. I’m not here to cause you trouble. I just want to stop Vaughn before he picks up another girl on the highway.”
“You think he picked up Amber?”
“She would have trusted him.” Emily looked so shocked that Beth wondered if it had been a mistake to share that part. She didn’t want her warning Vaughn.
“You shouldn’t go around saying stuff like that.”
“Are you scared of him?”
“Everyone is scared of Vaughn.”
“Yeah, but you have better reason. He took photos of you.” It was a chance for Emily to deny it again, but her expression shifted. The wariness turned to anger.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I won’t tell anyone—I swear. But I need to figure out if he’s the killer, and if you don’t help me, then another girl is going to die.” It was a guilt trip, but desperate times called for dirty tricks, and she’d dig into an entire bag of them to catch Vaughn.
Emily held her gaze for a few beats. Now Beth saw the tough side of her. There wasn’t fear in her face, or any sort of embarrassment. She was weighing her decision.
“My grandparents need me. I’m the only one who can help on the farm.”
“Okay.…” Beth waited. This was going somewhere.
“I don’t make much money. I get it other ways.” Emily paused, one eyebrow raised, but Beth still wasn’t fitting the pieces together.
“You mean selling marijuana? I know about that.”
“I sell a lot of things.” Emily held her hand out. “Pay up.”
“You’re blackmailing me?”
Emily rolled her eyes. “If you want to know about Vaughn, it will cost you.”
“I don’t have a lot.…” Beth pulled out all her tips, dropped them on the counter. Emily counted the bills and tucked them into her pocket. Then she looked at Beth’s bracelet.
“What about that?”
“No. That’s special.” Beth hesitated, then tugged off her ring, an emerald surrounded by diamonds. “The diamonds are small, but real.” Her parents would be upset. The ring was a graduation gift. But if Beth could use it to solve her sister’s murder? They’d have to understand.
Emily took the ring and slid it on her finger, held her hand up to the sun coming through the window, then turned back to Beth. “If you tell anyone we spoke, I’ll deny everything and say that you’re lying. I won’t make any official reports against Vaughn. Understand?”
That wasn’t good news. Beth wouldn’t be able to back up her evidence if she went to the police, but maybe they would have other ways to get Emily to share what she knew.
“A couple of years ago, he caught me being friendly with one of the truck drivers in his rig.…” She gave Beth a look. Right. Emily hadn’t been playing Scrabble. “I figured it was Mason who told him I was working the area. He’d seen me around when he was delivering takeout.”
Beth nodded, thinking about all the times she’d seen Mason leave with a brown paper bag full of food for a hungry driver who had to hit the road again. Mason never sent any of the girls to the truck stop because of the highway killer. “Did Vaughn arrest you?”
“No. It was weird. He let me go with a warning. Then he picked me up walking one day and said he wanted to talk to me. He drove me out to a place across from the lake and told me that he had a better way for me to make money—if I stopped hanging out at the truck stop.”
“Photos?”
“Yeah, but it wasn’t a big deal. The photos never showed my face. I just had to lie on the ground and pose like I was sleeping.” Beth felt a sick wave of fear. Didn’t Emily understand? Vaughn had wanted her to lie still. Like a body.
“Did he ever do anything…?”
“He never touched me. Honestly, I didn’t get why he wanted the photos, because he didn’t seem turned on. Maybe he used them later.” She shrugged. “Then I guess he got bored of that, so he started paying me for other stuff. Like information on who was partying where and with who.”
“Are you still doing that?”
Emily shrugged again and reached for the sanitizer and rubbed it over her hands and in between her fingers. It was like she was literally trying to cleanse herself of guilt.
“Sometimes. Once he wanted me to put a hidden camera in the women’s change room at the pool.” Beth had been working really hard not to pass judgment, but she couldn’t keep her mouth shut about that one.
“You helped him?”
“None of my business what he did with that camera.” She returned Beth’s look with a hostile one of her own. “He gave me a lot of money—it helped pay for a new well on the farm.”
“Does he know that you sell drugs?”
“He likes that I can tell him who’s buying. But he doesn’t want me at the truck stop. He caught me once last fall and he told me he’d arrest me if he saw me there again.”
Beth felt anger coating her throat like she’d eaten something vile, but she couldn’t spit it out. If everything Emily had said was true, then Vaughn was more than capable of being a killer.
Beth wondered when he’d set his sights on Amber. Had he offered her money in exchange for photos too? Would Amber have done it? Beth didn’t know what was worse—the idea of Amber posing for him, or that she thought it was a possibility.
“You really won’t make a report? Thompson seems like a good cop.”
“Are you kidding me?” Emily dropped her arms, her pixie face twisting with anger. “Did you listen to anything I said? I’ll never testify against Vaughn. He didn’t make me do anything I didn’t want to do, and that money helped me. I’m not staying in this town forever.”
“Okay, okay. Sorry.”
Emily came around the counter, brushed past her, leaving behind the faint scent of orange musk, and walked to the door. She flipped the OPEN sign.
“We’re closed.”
Beth stopped on the other side of the door. “If you change your mind…”
Fear had returned, pinching Emily’s mouth until there was a white line etched around her lips. “Don’t come back. I’ll call him next time.” She closed the door.
Beth heard the quiet snick of a lock. Somehow, she’d become the dangerous one.
CHAPTER 29
Hailey
Wolf leapt down from the back of my bike and loped ahead, taking shortcuts, then appearing suddenly, his tongue lolling. I pumped my legs. Sweat soaked through my shirt, the band of my baseball cap. I rubbed at my face with my arm, and tasted blood. I’d reopened the cut on my lip.
Jonny would be leaving for work soon. I rounded a corner, sailed over a jump, and landed on the lower part of the trail with a thud that pushed my breath out in a painful whoosh. My ribs still hurt. So did my pride. When I made it back to my dirt bike last night, I couldn’t loosen the clutch cable. On top of that, air had leaked out of my front tire. I’d missed the puncture when I checked it over the first time.
I slowed my pace, coasting down the bank behind Jonny’s property and weaving through the edge of the forest. The slam of metal. His truck door. Now his engine roared to life. I stopped by the fence and watched through the trees as his truck disappeared down his driveway. I tossed my bike to the ground and grimaced as my ribs compressed. I rubbed at the bindings. I’d have to wait. I was too sore to go anywhere else, and I needed him to buy a patch kit for me.
Wolf and I settled into the shade of a tree and tore into one of the bags of chips I found last night, shared a cold hot dog. Wolf rested his head across my legs. I dozed but jolted awake when Wolf lifted his head, ears flicking as he stared at the road. A vehicle. Jonny hadn’t been gone long, maybe thirty minutes at the most. I got to my knees, ready to run if it was Vaughn.
The noise was louder. Jonny’s truck flashed silver along the road. He was speeding. The pitch of his engine slowed to make the turn into his driveway, but he was still going fast. I glanced up the road. No one was following. Why was he driving so crazy? Jonny hit the brakes in front of his house, and the tires slid. Dust blew up in a soft cloud. He leapt out and disappeared into his shop. Wolf looked at me. I shook my head and gave him a signal to stay. Jonny was acting strange, and I wasn’t moving until I knew it was safe.
The workshop’s big doors opened. Jonny rolled his dirt bike out and started it up, heading straight for the trail at the back of his property, the small locked gate. He never looked up at the road. He wasn’t trying to outrun someone. He was going to search for me.
The dirt bike stopped. The metal clink of the gate lock. Then a minute later Jonny’s blue helmet came into view. He was standing on the bike pedals, arms flexing as he navigated the bike up the narrow trail. I motioned to Wolf and he trotted out of the shadows and sat in the middle of the trail where Jonny would see him. Jonny stopped the bike, got off, and removed his helmet.
“Wolf? What are you doing, buddy? Where is she?” He gave our whistle and looked around the woods. I stepped into the sunlight. His eyes widened. “What happened to your face?”
“I wiped out on my bike, then I stole a clutch lever and got caught.”
“That was you? That was really stupid, Hailey.”
“Telling Beth about the silver mine was stupid.”
“I told her a story about how you helped me. I had no idea that she’d try to find you. I’m upset too, okay? I’m supposed to go by the campground tonight so we can talk.” He did look worried, but I wasn’t sure if it was because she’d gone looking for me without telling him, or because he liked her.
“You shouldn’t have gotten involved with her.”
“That’s between me and her.” He crossed his arms over his chest.
“Dude, she’s not your type. She didn’t even know how to light a barbecue.”
“So what?” He narrowed his eyes. “Did you take her cell?”
“I didn’t want her to call the cops.”
“Give it back. She would have called the cops already if she was going to do that. It’s time you got off the mountain anyway. You promised.”
“I said after the summer.”
“You could have been seriously injured wiping out on your bike, and then this?” He pointed to my face. “Vaughn is going to figure it out—someone is going to figure it out.”
“Not if your girlfriend backs off.”
“She’s trying to find out what happened to her sister.”
“And I’m trying to make sure the same thing doesn’t happen to her.”
“You should talk to Thompson again.”
“Why? He didn’t do anything after I told him about Vaughn going into Beth’s motel room. Cops stick together.”
He fumbled with his helmet, let out a long sigh. “What parts do you need?”
“A patch kit for my tire, and I can’t fix the clutch alone.”
“You could stay in the workshop.”
I shook my head. “Too risky. I’m not leaving the woods.”
“Fine, but I have to work late at the farm. I’ll try to get back before dark. Stay close. We’ll ride up and fix your bike. Then I’ll go see Beth. Give me her phone back.”
“It’s with my bike and my gear.”
“She’s not safe without it.”
“She’s got a gun.”
“Right.” He thought it over. “We’ll get it tonight.” He stepped forward, grabbed me for a rough hug that pulled me off my feet, and scraped my face against the stubble on his chin.
He pulled away. “Keep out of the campsite. Meet me back here later.”
* * *
I found a gulley near Jonny’s house and spent most of the day catching up on sleep. A few times I opened my eyes and spotted Wolf sitting on the bank, looking over the forest, guarding me. Some crows fighting in a nearby tree woke me up. Wolf padded over and nudged me, letting me know he was glad I was finally awake. I rubbed his head, then pulled Beth’s phone out of my pack and slowly scrolled through the photos of Amber that I hadn’t seen before on Facebook or Instagram. I looked up at the sky. Now I could give Beth back her phone.
When the sun set, I made my way closer to Jonny’s house. He should be done with work by now, but there were no lights on in his house and his truck wasn’t in his driveway.
The battery on my burner phone had died. I checked Beth’s phone. Dead too. I calculated the risk. I hadn’t seen any movement on the road or in the surrounding woods. Wolf would know if Vaughn was sneaking around. I’d go into Jonny’s house and use his landline.
I punched in his security codes and kept the house lights off. I’d made it into the kitchen when headlights flashed up on the road. I turned, ready to meet Jonny at the door, and glanced one more time out the window, expecting him to be heading up the driveway. The headlights had stopped moving—red and blue flashing ones were now behind him. He’d been pulled over.
Wolf grumbled when he realized I was leaving him in the house and tried to push past my legs. I stopped him with a quick hand motion, then snuck out the back door, and dashed across the gravel and into the woods that blocked the view of the house from the road.
A few yards in front of me, Jonny’s shape was outlined in Vaughn’s headlights as he stood against the driver’s-side front panel of his truck. His back was to me, so I couldn’t see his face, but I felt his fear. His hands and legs were spread while Vaughn patted him down.
“Don’t fucking move.” Vaughn pushed Jonny’s head down so that his cheek was pressed against the hood—even though Jonny hadn’t spoken and wasn’t resisting. “Stand there.”
Vaughn circled the truck and lifted the cover on the back. He shone his flashlight around. There were sounds of metal scraping against metal as he dragged something closer.
He whistled. “Nice tools. Expensive. Did you pay for all these?”
“Yeah.”
“I bet you don’t have receipts.”
Jonny remained silent. I crept closer, climbing the bank. I stepped on a stick and froze. Vaughn came around the front and pointed
his flashlight at Jonny.
“You think you can make a run for it?”
“I didn’t move.”
Vaughn walked toward him with his hand on his sidearm and I tensed, ready to rush out, but he had stopped at the driver’s door, which he opened to continue his inspection. He found Jonny’s helmet and took it out, let it roll off his hand and hit the gravel while he stared at Jonny.
Jonny’s face looked flushed even in the dark, his mouth twisted in anger, but he didn’t say anything. Vaughn set his boot down on top of the helmet and ground it into the gravel with a smirk. I could hear the crunch of the sharp gravel against the paint—the blue flames we’d spent hours designing.
Vaughn left the helmet on the ground and turned back to the truck. He searched through the glove box, yanked out papers, checked the console and under the front seat.
“Well, look what I found.” He stepped away from the door, holding up a small bag of white powder—his flashlight shining on it. “You’ve upgraded yourself to drug dealer.”
“That’s not mine!” Jonny’s head lifted off the hood. “You put that in my truck.”
Vaughn strode back to him and smashed his head down on the hood. Jonny’s legs sagged but he stayed upright.
“I told you not to move. You’re a little pissant. Nothing but white trash. You even smell like shit.” He leaned over and sniffed Jonny’s hair. “Just like I thought.”
I pulled my knife free, held it in my hand, but I didn’t know what to do. If I threw it and missed, Vaughn would come after me. If I succeeded, then I’d killed a cop—major bad news.
A rock. I’d try that first. I found one by my feet and heaved it into the woods. Vaughn drew his gun and spun in that direction. He waited, tense and quiet. The only sound was Jonny’s ragged breath. Vaughn took a couple of steps toward where the rock had landed.
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