Blair flashed him a sympathetic smile as she positioned herself on the end of the dining bench. As a military wife, she knew only too well what it was like to live in a state of limbo, never sure of how much time you might have left together, making every moment count.
She cast a quick glance around the room full of strangers. You never really knew who was closest to the end of their life. Logan and Whitney were the youngest among them. But sometimes the young died first. That thought had plagued her every day of Matt’s deployment. She took a hasty sip of her coffee, shaking her head free of her morbid thoughts. "Do you think Sam's okay?" she ventured. "Maybe I should go over there and check on him."
Matt leaned back against the countertop, arms folded in front of him. "If he doesn’t show up in the next minute or two, I’ll go over there. He's probably sorting his dog out."
He’d barely uttered the words before the door rattled and a half-drowned Sam stumbled through. "Sorry," he gasped. "The thunder freaked Duke out. I couldn’t get him settled." He sank down on the other side of the dining table opposite Blair.
"Coffee?" she asked.
He shook his head. "I'm good, thanks."
Blair reached for her mug and cradled it in her hands. Sam’s face and hair were drenched from the rain, but his eyes looked red-rimmed from crying. She had a hunch it wasn’t Duke who had held him up. Coming across the body earlier had likely reignited the trauma of finding his friend’s battered body at the bottom of the mountain. Matt was right—they had inadvertently ended up at a campground full of damaged people.
Matt cleared his throat and raised his voice to drown out the incessant drumming of rain on the roof. "All right, I’ll get right to it. The reason we called this meeting is because Sam discovered a man’s body on the hiking trail going up to the lake when he was out walking his dog earlier this morning."
Whitney's eyes grew large as pools. She snuggled closer to Logan on the couch, tucking her manicured fingers around his arm.
Harvey drew his shaggy brows together. "Any ID on him?"
Matt shook his head. "Negative. He looks to be in his seventies."
Harvey blinked and interlaced his fingers in his lap, digesting the information.
"Did he fall or something?" Logan asked, darting a confused look around the room.
Matt and Hazel exchanged the briefest of glances.
"Stab wound to the stomach," Matt answered. "Blair took some pictures as evidence, in case animals get to the body before forensics."
Whitney let out a tiny yelp like a puppy in distress.
Logan jerked his knee up and down in an irritated fashion. "So what does this have to do with us?"
"We need to notify law enforcement, for starters," Hazel said.
"It's storming like crazy out there," Logan scoffed. "The whole sky lit up while we were walking over here. And the campground’s swimming in water. How are we supposed to get out to notify the police?"
Matt raised a hand to placate him. "Nobody’s going anywhere until the storm abates. Once it does, I’ll take my truck and blaze a trail to the nearest town while the rest of you wait here."
Logan narrowed his eyes to calculating slits. "Whitney and I can’t hang around. As soon as the weather clears, we're out of here. We need to get back for work. We were supposed to leave this afternoon."
"I thought you were on your honeymoon," Blair said.
Whitney shot Logan a loaded look.
"We’re on the tail end of it," Logan responded with a smug smile. "We don’t have unlimited time off to cruise around at our leisure. Some of us have jobs to get back to."
Matt tapped a finger to his jaw, studying him. "Like it or not, we’re all caught up in this now. You can’t leave until the police clear you. None of us can."
For a moment no one spoke. The torrential rain on the roof above them grew ever more insistent.
"What do you mean clear us?" Logan demanded, an ugly snarl forming on his face. "Are you suggesting one of us had something to do with this?"
"I'm not suggesting anything," Matt replied. "I’m telling you we're all suspects in the eyes of the law simply by way of being here."
"That may be, but some of us have obligations," Harvey piped up. "It's not like the police can't interview us back home." He lifted his chin in Logan's direction. "He’s got work and I’ve got a sick wife. Sandy’s been going downhill in the last forty-eight hours. I need to get her to a hospital."
"The road back to the highway’s too treacherous to drive your RV on in these conditions. As soon as the storm clears, I’ll head out," Matt said. "Worst case scenario, I’ll leave first thing in the morning. As soon as I get a signal, I’ll call 911 for police and an ambulance. Until then, everyone needs to stay put."
"If none of us killed him," Whitney said, looking around the room questioningly, "then who did?"
"My guess is one of the hunters up by the lake," Logan replied. "They probably got into a fight or something."
"I could hike up there and find out if they know anything," Sam offered.
"Are you crazy?" Whitney arched a plucked brow at him. "We should be talking about how we’re going to stay safe here overnight."
"She’s right," Hazel said. "If there’s a killer prowling around out there, I don’t want to be taken by surprise in the middle—"
Her voice trailed off at the sound of someone rattling the handle on the trailer door. A collective gasp reverberated around the room. Matt darted to the window and peered cautiously around the blind. "It’s a woman. She’s holding a coat over her head."
"How do we know the killer’s not a woman?" Whitney wailed.
Matt shot Harvey a questioning look. "Is that your wife?"
"What? Don't tell me she ventured out in this weather," Harvey exclaimed, jumping to his feet. He peered over Matt’s shoulder. "Yeah, it's her all right."
Matt immediately wrenched open the door and helped the soaked woman inside.
Blair pulled out a blanket and draped it around Sandy’s shoulders. Matt escorted the frail, shivering woman over to the captain's chair Harvey had vacated and pushed her gently down in it. A soft sigh escaped her lips and her head lolled forward.
"What were you thinking coming out in this rain?" Harvey scolded, as he adjusted the blanket around her. "We need to get you back to bed."
Sandy’s feverish eyes darted around the group assembled in the trailer, and then lit on Blair, a hint of desperation emanating from them. "What’s … going on here?"
Blair silently acknowledged the subtle shake of Harvey’s head. Understandably, he didn’t want her upsetting his wife with the news of the body. She was distressed enough already and seemed disoriented from her medication.
"Your husband’s right," Blair said softly. "It’s best if you go back to bed, Sandy. We were just discussing the storm. Matt was discouraging anyone from trying to leave until it’s over."
She peered down at her coffee and pretended to take a sip. She hated lying to the woman, but it was up to Harvey whether to tell his wife about the body they’d discovered—he knew best whether she could handle the news or not.
"I’m going to take Sandy back to our RV," Harvey announced, hoisting his wife to her feet. "She needs to rest."
Sandy started to say something, but quickly dissolved into a harsh coughing fit.
Harvey threw a helpless look around the room. "She really shouldn’t be out of bed." He helped her hobble toward the door, but she struggled to keep her balance.
"I’ll come with you." Hazel jumped up and grabbed Sandy’s other arm. "I might have something in my trailer for that cough."
"That won't be necessary," Harvey said, sounding miffed. "I can handle her medication."
"At least let me help you walk her back," Hazel insisted.
When the door shut behind them, Logan let out a long, low whistle. "Good riddance. Spewing her germs all around."
Blair threw him a reproving look. "It’s not contagious. She’s got cancer. By the sound o
f it, she might be dying of it."
Logan stood and stretched. "Yeah, well, we could all be dead by tomorrow the way things are going. If we’re done here, Whitney and I are going to head back."
He helped his young wife into her coat, and they disappeared, arm-in-arm, into the rain, letting the door slam unceremoniously behind them.
"He’s a piece of work," Sam said as he got to his feet. "I should get back to Duke."
Matt nodded. "I don’t foresee being able to drive out of here any time soon. We can talk later about each of us taking a shift tonight to keep an eye on things—just in case we have a prowler at Bird Creek."
After Sam exited the trailer, Matt locked the door and checked it fastidiously.
"Why didn’t you tell the others the man was strangled?" Blair asked when Matt sank down on the couch next to her. "I saw you and Hazel exchange a look."
He furrowed his brow. "You keep acting like we can trust everybody. It's always good to keep some details on the QT that only the killer would know. Obviously Hazel and Sam know the truth, but there’s nothing we can do about that, unfortunately."
"What do you mean unfortunately? It was a good thing Hazel came with us. She spotted the injuries on the man’s neck."
Matt twisted his lips. "Which is why I’m not buying the whole holistic-book-writing retired nurse story. Did you hear her? She sounded like a crime scene investigator if you ask me. There’s more to her than meets the eye."
"You’re making wild assumptions. This whole incident has everyone on edge."
"You’d better believe it," Matt retorted. "We’re talking about murder here. Don’t mention anything to the others about the man being strangled until the police get here."
Blair shot him a skeptical look. "You don't seriously think a pair of honeymooners, or an elderly couple wrestling with a cancer diagnosis had anything to do with killing him, do you?"
Matt rubbed his thumb over the stubble on his jaw. "There's only a small pool of possibilities. It’s too soon to rule out anybody."
5
By late afternoon, the storm had worked itself into a violent tempest buffeting the trailer so hard that Blair feared it would rip the roof off. The road circling through the campground was a churned-up mess of mud and downed branches, and visibility was close to zero. There was no chance of driving a vehicle out of Bird Creek any time soon.
"I'm going to take one of our radios over to Sam and see about setting up some kind of shift to keep watch tonight," Matt said, shoving his feet into his damp boots. "We need to make sure there’s someone awake at all times in the event the killer makes an appearance."
"Highly unlikely in this weather, don’t you think?" Blair said.
Matt shrugged as he exited the trailer. "I’m not taking any chances. We need to be prepared. No one else is coming to our rescue."
Twenty minutes later, he returned, soaked through and shivering, barely able to make it up the steps to the trailer without being blown sideways.
"It’s evil out there. I’ve never seen anything like it," he said, pulling off his boots.
"Did you get some kind of rotation worked out with Sam?" Blair asked.
"Yeah, I’m taking the first shift from ten until two, and then Sam will trade off with me."
"I hope Hazel will be all right on her own.”
"She’ll be fine as long as she stays put. She has a solid rig, and it’s new, so it won’t have any leaks." Matt peeled off his damp socks and hung them up in the bathroom. "I’m starving. What do we have to eat for dinner?"
After surveying the contents of the refrigerator, Blair settled on making some turkey and cheese sandwiches and heating up some soup. Afterward, they whiled away the remainder of the evening playing Monopoly, Scrabble, and various card games, but it was impossible to focus on anything other than the growling monster outside. Every time a crack of lightning split the sky, Matt flinched as if it were a gunshot. At nine-thirty, they abandoned any attempt to make the evening more bearable and packed up the games. Blair decided to turn in while Matt checked his radio and settled in for the first shift of the night.
After tossing and turning for what seemed like forever, Blair finally drifted off against a backdrop of banshee gusts and yammering rain.
She woke with a start in the early hours to a low rumbling, the grinding of boulders shifting like gears, the cracking and snapping of trees—matchsticks in the hands of giants. Vicious and violent sounds that ripped away the fog of sleep. A sense of impending doom filled her, triggering a sudden surge of adrenaline. Foggy with sleep, her first delirious thought was that a train was rumbling through the campground. She unzipped her sleeping bag and shook Matt, awake.
"Get up!" she screamed in his ear as he rubbed his eyes in sluggish confusion. "Something’s wrong!"
Matt groaned. "I only got to bed a couple of hours ago."
Blair prodded him urgently in the chest. "Do you hear that? That rumbling—what is it?"
He yawned and swung his legs resignedly over the edge of the bed.
All of a sudden, a thunderous noise unlike anything Blair had ever heard before shook the trailer—the sound of the earth’s innards being ripped apart. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up.
"What’s happening?" she shrieked as she threw back the covers. "Is it an earthquake?"
Matt leaped into action, grabbing his sweatpants and hoodie. "I don’t know. Stay here." He dashed across to the door, pulled on his boots, and reached for the high beam flashlight clipped to the wall.
"Where are you going?" Blair yelled. "You can’t go out there. It’s too dangerous."
"I’m only going to take a quick look. Get the emergency pack ready, just in case."
"In case what?" Blair called after him. The door slammed shut on her unanswered question. She hurriedly pulled on the clothes she’d abandoned in a pile next to the bed, her brain firing in several different directions at once. What if their campground was swallowed up in the quake? Should they check on the others? Hazel was on her own and Sandy was sick. Should they gather together in one trailer so they could help each other, or was it safer for them all to stay put? She wished with all her heart that they’d kept going to Black Rock and never made the fateful decision to turn off the highway and overnight in this nightmarish place.
Fully clothed, she opened the closet and began rummaging around beneath their clothes for the emergency pack. She was sure Matt had tossed it in here to make space for his iPad and walkie talkies in the cabinet near the driver’s seat. Her panic mounted when she remembered moving it into a plastic storage tub of miscellaneous items that Matt had loaded into one of the compartments beneath the trailer, never thinking they might actually need it. She had no choice but to brave the elements to retrieve it. Digging around in the kitchen drawer, she found the small flashlight she’d stashed there for emergencies. To her frustration, the batteries were dead. She slammed the drawer shut and reached for her phone instead—the built-in flashlight would have to suffice.
After gearing up in her boots and jacket, she darted to the door of their camping trailer and wrenched it open, gasping at the force of the wind that blew her backward. "Matt! Are you out here?" She waited, heart thumping, but couldn’t hear anything above the howling of the storm and pneumatic pounding of the rain on their truck and trailer. Doggedly, she staggered down the steps and then froze, staring in horror at the hillside beyond their campsite. Her heart hammered out a frenzied rhythm. The mountain backing up to the campground was seething and rippling beneath the steely eye of a watchful moon, as though birthing some monster from the deep. One by one, towering pine trees toppled forward, prostrate in the wake of a ponderous torrent of mud, truck-sized granite boulders and debris snaking down the slopes in an ever-widening swathe. Blistering fear prickled her skin. Had the earthquake shifted the whole mountain? "Matt!" she shouted helplessly into the wind. Her throat felt like it had closed over with fear. Where was he?
Cautiously, she felt her way along the
body of the trailer to the storage compartment. She turned the knob on the hatch and reached inside for the plastic tub, trying to make sure the wind didn’t rip the hatch off in the process. Tugging the tub toward her, she flipped open the lid, and then froze at the spine-tingling realization that someone was standing directly behind her.
The violence of the storm seemed to fade into the background as the thundering of her heart took over her senses. Before she could react, a hand gripped her shoulder and she instinctively let out a blood-curdling scream. Letting go of the tub, she spun around to see Sam staring at her, hair plastered across his forehead, water streaming down his face. Nerves taut with fear, her thoughts tumbled over themselves in quick succession. What was he doing out here? How long had he been standing there?
"Are you all right, Blair?" he asked, his eyes crinkling with concern.
At that moment, Matt came running up to them, saving her from having to formulate a response. "Everything all right?" His eyes darted uncertainly from her to Sam and back. "I heard you cry out.”
"Yes … I … was looking for the emergency pack," Blair stammered. "Sam spooked me."
"I saw the light outside the trailer," he explained. "I wanted to make sure you guys were okay."
"Let’s go inside," Matt said. "We need to talk."
Blair swiftly retrieved the emergency pack before shoving the tub back into the compartment and closing up the hatch.
Back inside the trailer they convened at the dining table, shaking the water out of their hair like dogs attempting to dry off.
Blair pinned an anxious gaze on Matt. "Did you see anything? It looked like the mountain was moving."
"It sounded like an earthquake," Sam added.
Matt swiped at the water dripping from the end of his nose. "It’s too dark to say for sure, but I think it was a mudslide. I’m guessing the deluge of rain was too much for the burned sections of the mountains. The force of the water must have washed everything down."
You Will Never Leave: A psychological suspense thriller Page 4