I latched the gate shut behind me and moved down the tracks. Sabrina had already made her way to the police tape and was waiting for me.
“Well, was that worth the danger?” she asked when I rejoined her.
“I think so.”
She made a face. “How can you possibly believe that? We didn’t find anything except some rubber boot you were excited to see. What’s so exciting about the boot?”
“I don’t know yet. I need to think.”
“Does that mean we’re done here?”
“Yeah. For now.”
“Where to next?”
“I don’t know.”
She waited, staring at me.
“What?” I asked after a beat. “I need to think.”
“But you’re Avery Shaw. You’re supposed to know everything. At least ... that’s what I was led to believe.”
“Well, I don’t know everything. I don’t even know half the things. I usually have to muddle through.”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
Before I could respond, the sound of a vehicle door slamming caught my attention. When I glanced at the nearby parking lot, I cringed. There, standing next to the driver’s side door of his Navigator, was Jake ... and he didn’t look happy.
“Do you want to tell me what you’re doing here?”
Well, crap. Any answer I gave him was bound to be met with annoyance. “I’m waiting for you,” I lied, forcing a grin. “I figured you would show up eventually and tell me what it is you’re hiding.”
“Oh, you’re so full of it.” He obviously wasn’t in the mood to participate in witty repartee. “The only reason I’m here is because I’m looking for you. Eliot suggested I might find you here.”
“Remind me to kill Eliot next time I see him.”
“He was reluctant to share the information,” Jake shot back. “He’s not a squealer, and you know it. When he couldn’t get you on your phone, he gave in and told me where you were.”
Uh-oh. I dug my phone out of my pocket and frowned when I realized I’d missed ten straight calls, eight from Eliot and two from Jake. “I had my phone on silent.”
“That’s brilliant. You were supposed to text your boyfriend every ten minutes.”
The fact that Eliot had let even that much slip told me he was probably furious. “I’ll call him as soon as you’re done yelling at me.”
“Don’t bother. I already texted him when I saw your sidekick. He knows I found you.”
“I’ll call him anyway. I believe that’s a rule or something when you’re dating. You’re supposed to check in.”
I couldn’t be sure, but I was almost positive Jake broke into a brief smile before he went back to scowling. “That’s between you and Eliot. I want to talk about you and me.”
I almost fell over as I cast a worried look toward Sabrina. “Um ...?” He couldn’t possibly have tracked me down here to talk about Eliot’s proposal plans. He wasn’t going to say something stupid, was he? Oh, geez. How was I supposed to live through this on top of everything else?
“We need to come to a meeting of the minds here, Avery,” Jake stressed. “You keep digging into my case and I’m sick of it.”
“Oh, that.” I was relieved.
The look he shot me was peculiar. “What did you think I wanted to talk about?”
“Um ... nothing. I knew you wanted to talk about the dead Santas. Are you ready to release the rest of the names?”
“No.” He eyed me with the sort of aggravation only people who were completely comfortable with one another could muster. “We’ve already talked about that. The other thing. I meant what I said. Stop freaking yourself out.”
Sabrina stirred. “What did you talk about?”
“Nothing,” we responded in unison, eyeing each other.
“Why are you out here, Jake?” I asked, keeping my voice even. “What do you want?”
“You were at Ruth Shepperly’s house today.”
It wasn’t a question, so I merely waited.
“You put it together that she was Cal’s wife. She admitted what she told you when she called.”
Well, that was mildly disappointing. “She called you to narc on us?”
“After you left, she worried that you would approach her daughter.”
“I told her I wouldn’t.”
“That doesn’t explain how you found her in the first place.”
“We don’t have to reveal our sources,” Sabrina fired back. “We’ll die before we tell you.”
It was an interesting tack, one I wasn’t interested in backing up. “Sabrina went to high school with the daughter. She figured it out.”
“I can’t believe you just told him that,” she shrieked.
I waved off her complaints. “It’s fine. It doesn’t matter.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Jake agreed. “It’s annoying and something I couldn’t have seen coming, but it definitely doesn’t matter.”
“So ... is that it?” I was hopeful right up until he shook his head.
“This is off the record, but I feel it’s important to your safety.” He was grim. “Several of the bodies had gunshot wounds. Only one, the one closest to the tracks, had no bullet wounds.”
I ran the scene through my head. “That was Beau.”
“We figure he was either part of the massacre and they turned on him after the fact, or he managed to run during the shooting. We believe he was fleeing at the time he was killed.”
“He tried to jump a train.”
Jake nodded. “That’s the scenario that makes the most sense. We don’t have confirmation yet, but that’s what we’re going with.”
I was still confused. “Thanks for the tip.”
“There’s one other thing.” He was so serious my heart skipped a beat. “The rounds in the men don’t match the rounds in the bodies at the halfway house.”
“Maybe our killer has more than one weapon.”
“Maybe.”
“Or maybe we’re dealing with more than one killer.”
He nodded, his lips curving down. “That’s probable. I need you to be really careful.”
“I’m always really careful.”
“I’m serious. I don’t know what you were doing out here and I don’t expect you to tell me. But this is very dangerous. You need to hold it together.”
Because I knew he had my best interests at heart, I simply nodded.
