“Oh, my God.”
“Kat? What is it?”
“Something his mother said to Ingrid. The weekend we went to Wild Horse. The weekend your car was keyed. She said Wade was up north hunting, and he came home in a foul mood. I didn’t put it together. It didn’t even occur to me at the time.”
“Okay, first, did Flathead mean anything to him? Like, was it a favorite place?”
Katrin nodded. “I don’t know about favorite, but he had a friend in college who had a fishing cabin on Flathead Lake. He went up a few times to fish and hunt.”
“Okay…so, if he was up there, it’s possible he saw you.”
“No, Erik.” She thought of the angry key marks on her side of Erik’s car. “I think he saw us.”
“Right. And that would get him good and mad.” Erik nodded thoughtfully. “Okay. So, let’s see. You’ve left Choteau. He’s frustrated. He goes up to Flathead Lake to do some hunting with a college buddy and he sees us together in the parking lot. Sees us kissing, right? So, he waits until we get on the boat and he keys my car. Then he probably notices the DOJ sticker, gets freaked out and speeds home, afraid he might have been seen by someone and he’ll get caught.”
Katrin nodded. “It totally makes sense. Wade’s leery of cops. He’s been arrested enough times, mostly for misdemeanors, but he always knew if he was charged with a felony he wouldn’t be able to teach again. So, he would have been freaked out when he realized you were a cop.”
“Okay. So, he leaves Flathead, but he’s pissed now. He gets home and goes on a bender, ending up a day later—Monday night, right?—on Ingrid’s lawn yelling about horses, probably because he wanted to know where you were, but he was too drunk to make any sense. Anyway, Ing and Kris have him arrested, where he stews in jail for several days before getting out, still wanting to know where you were. That’s what I don’t get. How did he find out where you were?”
“I have no id—oh, wait. Oh, no,” Katrin murmured, her face collapsing. “I sent my mother a postcard. It had a picture of Skidoo Bay on the front. She never got it.”
Erik inhaled, then blew out through his mouth, nodding. “That had to be it. He intercepted it. Okay. So, you sent your mom a postcard. After Flathead?”
“I put it in my mailbox for pick-up the same day. Sunday.” She shook her head, tears filling her eyes. “How could I have been so stupid?”
“No, stop. No, Kat, don’t do that to yourself. You were just being a normal person. Normal people don’t over-think sending a postcard. Stop.” He leaned down and kissed her gently as tears spilled over her eyes and he used his knuckles to swipe them softly away.
“So, you sent a postcard to your mom, he intercepted it, and then he knew where you were. But, he was running out of time. He had to be back in Choteau to go to rehab on Monday, or Ing and Kris wouldn’t drop the charges. So, he went up to see you on Sunday probably, right? What were you doing that Sunday before I picked you up? He was parked across the street. You didn’t see him?”
“I wasn’t at home. I was barely home all day. Paca and I went to church, then out for crepes and coffee. Then I got my hair and nails done. I was gone all day. I got home twenty minutes before you picked me up.”
“So Wade finally sees you come home from the beauty salon and decides to make his move. He’s standing in front of the clinic, about to knock on the door, and then I show up and ruin it for him. He knew who I was. He had seen me at Flathead Lake and knew I was a cop. So, he shoved the flowers at me and drove home to go to rehab in the morning. I ruined his only chance to see you.”
“It all makes sense, Erik. It fits together.”
“He probably waited for you for hours across the street while you were out getting your hair done. Must have been pretty frustrated to miss seeing you.”
“How did he seem?”
“Like a nervous kid about to give a girl flowers.”
“Wade’s pretty disarming. He has a baby face.”
“He didn’t wait for us to come home,” Erik mused.
“He couldn’t. For all he knew, I was going to be with you all night, and he couldn’t risk seeing us together. You didn’t know who he was, but if he confronted me in front of you, you would have arrested him.”
“So, he waited all that time, then turned around and went home?”
Katrin shrugged, shaking her head, tears of fear and frustration burning her eyes. “He didn’t have another choice. Erik, you’re the only reason he didn’t…you’re the only reason he didn’t get to me…he said he’d kill me if I moved on…”
She was breathing so fast, she felt dizzy, even standing in Erik’s strong arms. Her body felt so cold, trembling, realizing how close she came to being confronted by Wade. Erik was the only reason Wade had run home.
She rubbed her forehead, feeling frightened and despairing. “This isn’t over yet. It’s not. I know it. What am I going to do?”
Erik looked down at her, the tenderness in his eyes balanced by
