“Me? Like I said, I just came to have fun.” He laughed and looked around the group before returning to Finn. “But I suspect there’s more to your story.”
“You got me there,” Finn said. “I’ve since decided to buy the hotel and the land.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Casey as the news swept around the fire. Like him, she had to have seen everyone’s surprise, especially Jen’s and Shirley’s. Being locals, they knew that he’d been squatting there a good portion of the winter and early spring and had assumed he was homeless and broke.
But it was Devlin’s openmouthed reaction that pleased Casey the most, he saw. “What’s this?” Devlin demanded.
“I’m making an offer and taking care of the paperwork in the morning,” Finn said.
Devlin shifted his gaze to Casey. “I thought we had a deal.”
“Not hardly. I kept waiting for a formal offer, and you kept making excuses and putting me off, trying to get a better price,” she said, returning his glare.
Finn could feel Jason’s gaze on him. Speculating? Or had he already figured out who he was? Either way, Jason was enjoying this. Finn thought the man would like to see them all at each other’s throats. Finn wondered how long Jason had been in town. Long enough to hear about Finn spending months in the hotel, which meant he’d been here for a while.
“Finn? Finn what?” Devlin asked, also turning to look at him.
He’d known it would be out once he contacted his lawyer, accountant and banker in the morning. “Finnegan James.”
Devlin’s gaze widened in shock as he recognized the name. He swore under his breath and kicked a rock into the firepit. Finn saw Jason smile. He really was enjoying himself. Maybe too much.
“Let’s not argue.” Jen took a drink from the wine bottle and passed it to Shirley, who simply stared into the fire as if she wished she were anywhere but there.
“So we have no idea whose brainchild this was,” Jen said, looking around at them all. “Kind of macabre and ghoulish, just like Megan.” Most everyone laughed. “But no one is going to take credit for this reunion?” She searched the group speculatively, meeting with only silence. “If none of you invited us all here,” she asked, “then who did?”
“That’s the million-dollar question,” Jason said, grinning. “Someone wanted to get us all back here awfully bad. Got to wonder why, huh?”
“That about sizes it up,” Finn said, seeing how quickly things could get out of hand.
CHAPTER NINE
BENJAMIN RATHER LIKED watching the others squirm. They were all terrified—even of Megan’s ghost. It amazed him how much the young woman had affected all of their lives.
She’d ignored him as if he were nobody. He’d worked hard to prove to himself that she was wrong, which was silly. There was no proving anything to her. She was dead. Her body was slowly decaying in her dark, cold coffin.
He looked around the campfire, wondering why the others had come back. Were they that afraid that if they hadn’t, someone would think that they really had killed Megan?
He scoffed at that as he watched them all trying to have a good time, drinking too much, looking warily at each other. They really didn’t know who killed her—or if they were next.
Ten years ago, he’d watched them play games, stabbing each other in the back, being tossed away like trash when Megan was done with them.
Benjamin tried to gauge which one of them had hated her the most. It was difficult because any one of them had wanted her gone, himself included.
He noticed, though, that no one seemed leery of him. What fools they were.
CASEY FOUND HERSELF watching Finn out of the corner of her eye. He was holding his own, which didn’t surprise her. He had just let the cat out of the bag, as her grandmother would have said. It wouldn’t be long before the press picked up on it and he was making headlines again. She was surprised that he’d given up his anonymity for her.
She could see him studying the people around the fire, questioning each of their motives. She wondered about his. Was he really going to make her an offer on the hotel and property in the morning? Why was he doing this?
Looking around the campfire, she couldn’t understand what they were all doing here. Were they really that interested in Megan’s murder after all this time? If one of them were the killer, wouldn’t they be glad to hear that the hotel was going to be razed? Any evidence would be gone. Or would it? Was the killer afraid something would be uncovered?
They really didn’t look as if they had changed, except for Ben. Benjamin, she corrected. Patience still wore her dark hair in a pixie cut and looked younger than a woman hugging thirty. A curly brunette, Jen’s hair was shoulder-length and jagged as if she had taken scissors to it herself. Shirley’s long brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail that stuck out the back of her baseball cap. Jason looked exactly the same, same smirk, same shiftiness in his gaze. Devlin appeared to be getting a little bald. He kept brushing his brown hair back as if to cover the sparsely covered spot.
She watched them all share a look around the campfire and felt the atmosphere change as if they were finally starting to question why someone had wanted them here. One of them had purposely gotten the others back here. Finn was right. Someone had an agenda. But what?
Jen laughed as if wanting to ease the tension. “Interesting that we all came back.” She took the wine bottle from Shirley and took a drink. “So you’re all good with this? It’s really happening? Three nights, two days, here in a supposedly haunted and now-abandoned hotel.” She looked at Casey. “You are going to let us
