by Jeff Shelby
Because if Tim didn’t kill Miranda, who had?
“Tim,” I said, snapping my fingers to get his attention. His eyes flew open. “I need you to think.”
He wiped at his eyes and nodded, listening.
“Can you think of anyone who might have done this? Did she have any enemies?” I thought of the conversation Mack had had with her at the hotel bar. “Any old boyfriends?”
Tim shook his head. “Everyone liked Miranda.”
A loud thump sounded behind us and I whirled around.
James McIntire was standing three feet behind me, in a crouched position, just underneath the open hatch.
And he was holding a gun.
“You’re wrong, brother,” he said, the gun steady in his hands. “Not everyone liked Miranda.”
FORTY FIVE
I took a giant step backwards. My heart threatened to pound right out of my chest.
James McIntire was in the shelter with a gun leveled at his brother. And because the space was so small, so compact, it was pretty much pointed at me, too.
Tim stared at his brother, his mouth agape. “What? What are you talking about?”
“Not everyone liked that girlfriend of yours,” he repeated.
“What are you talking about?” Tim repeated, his voice trembling.
“She was holding you back,” James said, his eyes glinting. “Holding you back from getting out of this place.”
Tim’s face screwed up in confusion. “I don’t understand. Get out of what place?”
“This,” James growled, waving the gun around at the shelter we were standing in. “This ridiculous obsession of yours.”
“You’re wrong,” Tim told him. “She had no interest in this. None.” A look of horror filled his eyes and the color drained from his face. “Did you...?” His swallow was audible. “Did you kill her?”
James chuckled. “Not intentionally.” There was no remorse, no regret, in his voice.
I gasped, and this brought his attention back to me.
He sneered at me. “Ah, the wannabe private eye. Bet you didn’t quite put the pieces together the right way, did you?”
I stared at him, paralyzed with fear. This man was holding a gun, and based on what he was telling us, I didn’t think he’d be afraid to use it. Especially since it looked as though he was the one responsible for Miranda’s death.
I knew my voice would be shaky but I spoke up anyway. “Why did you kill her?”
“Why do you care?” he shot back. “You’re not part of this, you have no vested interest in my brother or me, or anyone in this town.”
He was right about one thing: I didn’t particularly care what happened to him. But I did care about the people of Latney, and I did care about what had happened to Miranda, and I had newfound concern for the innocent man standing next to me, the man whose brother was holding him at gunpoint.
“Were you jealous?” I asked. “Did you have a thing for her?”
James actually laughed. “Miranda?” He rolled his eyes. “Please. There’s no way some broad from around here would interest me.”
“Then why?” I asked. I didn’t know where my persistence in questioning him was coming from. If anyone had asked me how I might respond to having a gun pointed at me, and by someone not afraid to use it, I didn’t think it would be what I was doing now: standing firm, asking questions, not backing down.
“You wanna know why?” he said, his voice thick with disgust. “I’ll tell you why. Because Tim was stuck here. Stuck. And Miranda was the reason he wouldn’t leave.”
He waved the gun around and Tim involuntarily ducked. “Look at all this crap,” James seethed. “All his doomsday junk. This is all he thinks about. This, and that woman. I knew the only way I could convince him to leave would be to get her out of the picture.”
I stared at him in disbelief. “So you killed her?”
“That part was an accident,” James admitted. “I wanted her gone, away from Winslow. Figured if she was permanently out of the picture, I’d have a better chance of convincing Tim to pack up and leave.”
“I’m not following...” I said.
He smiled derisively. “Of course you aren’t. Because you aren’t nearly as smart as you think you are.”
I bristled but kept my mouth shut. After all, he had a weapon and I didn’t.
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll spell it out for you. Since I’m gonna have to kill you anyway.”
Tim gasped. “What?”
“Oh, shut up,” James spat. “You’re the one who ruined all of this by bringing that stupid car back. If you hadn’t found it, none of this would have happened. None!”
I watched the exchange, my pulse racing, my mind swimming as I tried to untangle the threads he was dropping.
“I don’t understand,” Tim said, his voice barely a whisper.
“You are so dense,” James snapped. “Look, I wanted Miranda out of the picture. When you said you had broken up, I thought you’d finally come to your senses. But then you mentioned the two of you were talking again. Maybe reconciling. And I knew that couldn’t happen, not if I wanted you to stop with all of this nonsense.”
Tim was staring at his brother. I was, too.
“So I decided to see if I could spook her a little, give her a reason to leave town.”
“You stalked her,” I said, thinking of what Miranda had told Mack and what Margaret had found in Miranda’s journal.
He glanced at me in surprise. “Yeah, I did. Made some phone calls, left some voicemails. I thought she might get creeped out and decide to move or something.”
This sounded like a monumentally stupid way to get someone to leave town, especially a woman who had grown up in a sleepy little city like Winslow, who had a job and a home, and who probably had never lived anywhere else.
“But that didn’t work,” he said, frowning. “And I knew I needed to up the ante.”
“By killing her?” Tim asked.
“I told you that was an accident,” James said, rolling his eyes. “I meant to kidnap her. Scare her a little, just enough to get her to leave town. It couldn’t have been more perfect. The abandoned car on the side of the road. It was too easy. I could drive to her place, kidnap her, scare the living daylights out of her, and she’d move. Away from you.”
“Except it didn’t quite work out that way, did it?” I murmured.
James gaze shot back to me. “No,” he said flatly. “Because she died. In the trunk.” For the first time, his voice wavered and he looked a little nervous. “I don’t know what happened, if she suffocated or had a heart attack or died from the cold.”
Tim made a whimpering sound and my heart ached for him. I couldn’t imagine how hard it was for him to hear this.
“I opened the trunk about twenty miles outside of town and found her like that,” James said. “And I panicked. Figured the best thing to do would be to drive the car back to where I found it. There was no way anyone could trace it to me. If anything, the owner of the car would be the number one suspect.” His eyes narrowed as they zeroed in on his brother. “But then you had to go and bring it back to the camper!”
Tim looked visibly shaken. “I didn’t know...”
“Of course you didn’t know,” James growled. “But it all went downhill from there, didn’t it? Because all of the sudden, the sheriff was involved, and she was, too.”
He pointed his gun at me and I went still.
Because I knew what was coming.
He wasn’t telling us all of this to get it off of his chest. He wasn’t confessing with any intention of releasing us.
He was telling us as one final act.
Before he killed us.
FORTY SIX
There wasn’t a soul in the world less equipped to deal with this scenario than me.
A man was pointing a gun at me. In an underground shelter, with only one entrance point, the one he was blocking. He’d just confessed his crimes to me. And, unlike the other person trapp
ed inside of the shelter with us, he had absolutely no ties to me, no real emotions to consider before squeezing the trigger and sending a bullet into my chest.
But I had to try something.
“You don’t have to do this,” I said.
“Do what?” James asked.
I didn’t want to actually speak the words.
“You have options,” I said instead. “What happened to Miranda was an accident. We can explain that to the sheriff. There are tests they can run that will show cause of death, if she died of hypothermia or from a heart attack or something...that will show up. It won’t be murder.”
James shook his head. “Do you think I’m stupid? I might not have meant to kill her, but that’s first-degree murder. Premeditated. They’ll still get me on manslaughter, maybe even second-degree murder. And kidnapping charges. I’ll be put away for years.”
“Hurting someone else will just make the situation worse,” I told him.
He smiled. “Only if someone finds out.” He looked around the shelter. “I don’t know about you, but I think this place is pretty hard to find. Might take someone years to locate this, especially if they don’t know what they’re looking for.”
I tried to take a breath but I could feel myself beginning to hyperventilate. He was right. If he killed me and left me out here, no one would know where to look for me. And part of me questioned whether or not anyone would even take the time to look. If I went missing, people would notice. Of that, I was sure. But would they look for me? Would Sheriff Lewis send out search parties? Would Gunnar or Declan, or Sophia or Vivian, or Mikey or Martin, spend time looking for me? I wouldn’t put it past James to come up with a story, something he could tell someone that would quickly find its way to the town’s gossip mill.
“Yeah, I saw that Rainy woman the other day,” he might say, sipping a beer on one of the barstools at the Wicked Wich. “She said something about leaving town for a while, needing a break.”
People would believe it. They’d cluck their tongues and murmur to themselves that they’d expected nothing less from the city girl who’d tried—and failed—at small town life.
A tiny flicker of hope blossomed inside of me.
Mack.
Mack knew I was out here. He would look for me.
But as quickly as my hopes rose, they deflated. Because James would know that Mack would be searching...and I had no doubt he’d find a way to silence him, too. If he was willing to kidnap Miranda and kill me, it stood to reason that he would go after Mack with the same determination. He was willing to protect himself, no matter the cost.
I took a step backward, closer to Tim. He was standing next to the half-eaten plate of bacon, his head hung low, his shoulders stooped. He looked defeated.
I didn’t blame him.
“James, please,” I said. I knew I sounded desperate, but I didn’t care. “Let’s talk this through. There are options.”
“No, there aren’t,” he said, shaking his head.
He stepped forward, the gun raised and pointed squarely at my chest. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to do this. But I don’t have any other choice.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, the tears leaking through my lashes and onto my cheeks. I thought about Luke, and Laura. About Gunnar and Declan. About all of the things I still wanted to do. Mack’s words from the other night came back to haunt me, about choices and decisions and deadlines.
I was in a situation where I didn’t have a choice, where someone was making a decision for me.
I was helpless. Powerless.
Someone else was deciding my fate for me. Right there, right then.
A loud crash sounded and I braced for impact, my chest tightening, a whoosh of air escaping from my mouth as I crumpled to the floor.
I lay there for a few seconds, my eyes wide open, staring at the corrugated ceiling of the shipping container. There was no pain, and I wondered if I was in shock.
But then someone spoke, and it was a voice I wasn’t expecting.
“Ouch,” Mack said, half groaning. “What is this place?”
I closed my eyes.
Maybe I wasn’t in shock.
Maybe I’d already died.
FORTY SEVEN
I blinked a couple of times, then put my hand to my chest.
It came back dry. No blood.
I sat up and looked around.
Mack was sprawled out on the floor of the bunker, his rear end on James’s calves. Margaret was hanging from the hatch, her boots dangling just above Mack’s head.
I jumped to my feet, just as James did, too. He lunged for the gun and his fingers closed around it.
“What is going on?” Mack said, rubbing his head.
James stepped into a corner, away from Mack and me, away from his brother. He swept the gun from side to side, his eyes wild. “Stay where you are, all of you!”
Mack shot a look in my direction. His eyes were wide, his mouth slack, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing.
“Can someone help me?” Margaret said from above. She was clearly oblivious as to what was happening beneath her.
No one moved, and her legs kicked and swung as she searched for footing. The table used as a stepstool had shifted across the floor when Mack fell through the hatch, just out of reach of her feet.
James groaned. “This is unbelievable. I can’t believe I have to kill all of you.”
Mack stiffened. “What?” He turned to me. “What is going on?”
It didn’t feel like the right time to launch into James’s confession. Not while he held us at gunpoint, anyway.
I didn’t have to worry. James was more than happy to fill him in. I guess he needed to offer an explanation, maybe as a way to justify to himself why he was going to commit a multiple homicide.
While Margaret dangled above, James told Mack everything. Mack listened intently, his eyes never leaving the gun positioned in James’s hands.
I knew what Mack was doing. He was buying time, trying to figure out some way to incapacitate James or distract him so he could make a move for the weapon. The problem was, though, that James was locked in. There was nowhere to maneuver to, and nothing to distract him. Not in this small space, and not when he was so clear in his purpose as to what he needed to do.
I took a tiny, almost imperceptible step backward, inching closer to Tim. He was frozen in place; if anyone looked to be in shock, it was him.
“Sounds like you’re in a bit of a pickle,” Mack remarked when James finished talking.
“Me?” James said with a smile. “I’m the one with the gun, remember? I’d say all of you are the ones in a pickle.”
“Sure,” Mack said, nodding. “We’re pretty much all dead. No doubt about that. But how are you gonna hide three murders?” He looked up. “Four if you count her. Because I’m thinking she’s going to be dropping in any second. Literally.”
As if on cue, Margaret lost her grip on the hatch door and fell into the bunker.
And I made my move.
The guns and knives Tim had on the shelves were out of reach. I wouldn’t know how to use them, anyway.
So I grabbed the first thing I could find that might serve as a weapon.
I picked up the griddle and hurled it toward James. The pan hit him squarely in the head and the grease, although cooled, must have still been hot because he squealed as the liquid dripped down his face. The gun he was holding clattered to the floor and Mack dove for it.
Margaret stared at us in horror: at me heaving in one corner of the room, at Mack holding a gun, and at the man holding his aching head, his face covered in grease and bacon drippings.
“Um...what is going on down here?” she asked in a timid voice.
Mack smiled. “We almost died.” He glanced at me. “Until Rainy saved the day.”
FORTY EIGHT
It took Sheriff Lewis over an hour to find the bunker in the woods.
Tim had quickly snapped out of his trance-like state, providing
rope to Mack so he could tie James to a table leg while we waited for the sheriff to arrive.
And it was Tim who provided GPS coordinates to Sheriff Lewis—and who instructed him how to use them—so that he could zero in on our location.
We heard the sheriff’s footsteps on the outside of the bunker before we saw him.
He peered through the open hatch. “What in tarnation is going on in here?”
It wasn’t like we hadn’t told him. Mack had explained, calmly, that we had found the perpetrator in Miranda’s death, and that we had him contained. And then, when the sheriff had become agitated over how to find us, he’d handed the phone to Tim to provide directions and guidance on how to find us.
Sheriff Lewis took our statements, jotting down notes on his notepad while James squirmed against the ropes securing him to the table.
“You’re sure he was working alone?” Sheriff Lewis said to Mack. “No accomplices.”
“None that I know of,” Mack said. Tim had cooked up another slab of bacon and Mack was working his way through the plate of cooked strips. “And none that he mentioned.”
The sheriff darted a glance in my direction. I’d collapsed into one of the folding chairs, pulled far away from the table where James was tied up, sulking and silent. I was still trying to recover from my near-death experience. “He wasn’t working with her?”
Mack stared at the sheriff. “What?”
The sheriff pointed at me. “Her. She wasn’t involved in any of this?”
“No, no. She was.”
The sheriff’s expression brightened and he poised his pen over his notepad, eager to write down whatever it was Mack was going to tell him.
Mack looked in my direction before turning his attention back to the sheriff. “She’s the reason we’re alive.”
Sheriff Lewis frowned. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me,” Mack said with a smile. He crunched another piece of bacon. “She saved us. All of us. Without her, we’d all be dead.”
The sheriff glowered at me, his bushy eyebrows drawn together in a dark frown. “Hmm,” he groused.