Someone must have found it, must have seen him pick it up and drop it, and now they were thinking they could blackmail him? He laughed. “Can’t get blood out of a turnip.” His head hurt too much to try to make sense of it. For years, he’d lived in fear that the note would turn up—with his fingerprints and Megan’s blood on it.
All he knew right now was that he had to get out of here. He wadded up the note and shoved it into his pocket rather than leave it in the trash. He hurriedly packed, already thinking that he would reinvent himself once he left Montana.
His phone dinged as he got a text. He ignored it, figuring it was one of the investors. It dinged again. And again.
With a curse, he pulled his cell from the pocket of his jeans and read I’m waiting. He didn’t recognize the number, but he did the photo that accompanied it, even though the snapshot was grainy and dark—except for Megan’s white dress and long blond hair. Still, there was no doubt about who was with her—a younger version of himself. He had his hands around her neck as he forcefully held her backed up against a tree. She looked as if she was fighting to pull away.
In truth, she’d been laughing, her head thrown back. She’d been literally asking for it, but whoever had taken this didn’t know that. So maybe it wasn’t about the note. Either way, they had something they thought they could hold over him.
He stared at the photo for a moment and then finished packing and sneaked out of the hotel, taking his suitcase down to his car before he headed into the woods. Best end this before he left.
POOR LITTLE RICH GIRL? Jen scoffed silently at that. Everything about Megan smelled of money, from the way she looked, to her clothes, to her perfume. Especially her perfume. Jen had never forgotten that scent. The scent had reached her long before Megan had that first day. She remembered breathing it in as if it were rarefied oxygen. In one whiff, it had embodied everything Jen wasn’t and never could be.
She had yearned for Megan’s carefree confidence, the way she went through the world as if nothing could touch her up there so high above it all. Above the rest of them.
Jen remembered the day Megan’s perfume order had come in at her aunt’s general store.
“Don’t touch that,” Vi had barked. “That little bottle is worth more than you make in a year.”
It wasn’t quite that expensive. Jen had had to use all of her savings, though, to buy a tiny vial of it. She still took it out sometimes and put it on, closing her eyes and pretending. All it took was just a drop of it—the perfume was that potent.
The fantasy lasted only moments, though, leaving her feeling gutted, because as soon as she opened her eyes, she was faced with the truth. Not even Megan’s perfume would make Jen Mullen special.
Wasn’t that exactly what Megan had told her when she’d caught Jen in her room wearing not just her perfume but her white sundress—the same one Megan had later died in?
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CASEY STAYED BEHIND to clean the kitchen after everyone had an excuse to leave earlier. Jen had excused herself to go to the bathroom, no doubt an excuse to get out of dishes since she hadn’t come back. Shirley had said she didn’t feel well and was going to her room. Patience said there was something she had to do as well, and the guys had all left to look for Devlin—at least, that was their excuse for getting out of chores.
She didn’t mind doing dishes, actually. It was mindless work that let her sort out her thoughts. She’d picked up on whatever was going on with Patience and Jason. It made her think of the expression Misery makes strange bedfellows. She knew that Finn had noticed, too. It bothered her that Claude had left, though. Now everyone was thinking he was the killer and for no real reason. What would they say when she left?
She was through cleaning up the kitchen when Jen returned. “You going down to the campfire again tonight?”
Casey shook her head. “I have too much to do.”
Jen laughed. “I don’t blame you for not wanting anything to do with this reunion. Bad memories, huh?” Casey said nothing, concentrating on folding up the dish towel in her hand. “Patience and Jason have come up with games, they said. Probably more truth or dare. Like anyone tells the truth.”
Casey was straightening up the condiments on the table when she saw the scrap of paper someone had stuck under the ketchup bottle. As she pulled it out, she froze. It was a list of ingredients, she saw, for taco salad. She recognized the handwriting—the same as the writing on her bathroom mirror and on the note that was supposedly from Finn.
“Looks like someone’s grocery list,” she said, holding it up.
Jen glanced at it and laughed as she took the list. “Jason’s. He misspelled chipotle?” She shook her head as she wadded up the list and tossed it into the trash. Turning on her phone, she began to dance to the music as she checked the refrigerator and then the cupboards. She found a bottle of hotel wine and held it up.
Casey nodded her assent. She still owned the hotel, so she guessed it was hers to share. She noticed how at home Jen seemed here in the hotel. She’d found the corkscrew on her first try.
But then again, she lived in Buckhorn. She might have spent a lot of time in the hotel over the years that Casey had been gone.
“I think I’ll take this with me, then,” Jen said
