Later that night when she was home from her planning session with Monica, she was still thinking about her conversation with Monica and Joan. Up at the lodge, they had finally finished a huge to-do list that could now be broken out and shared with volunteers, come up with a plan for the water Olympics, and formed a general idea of how much help they’d need. She’d start calling around now and see who else they could get on board, and she vowed to get to it as soon as possible, but when she stood in the front hall of her family’s home, shaking water from her umbrella and leaving it on the porch, the sound of young voices stopped her.
Footsteps approached, and Mary came into view. “Stella, there you are! Come right in to dinner. Justin and Liz are here.”
Steel slammed the brakes of his truck a hundred yards from his trailer. It was dinnertime, he was exhausted after a night and day of consulting with Bolton and the other deputies, going over all the facts and evidence they’d gathered so far about Sue’s death, but even more exhausted by what they didn’t know. None of them were going to take the weekend off when there was so much to do.
Sue’s parents had confirmed what he’d seen: that Sue had come home early in the afternoon in tears several days prior to her death but hadn’t confided any details to them. They’d chalked it up to hormones and a fight with her friends; they’d noticed she wasn’t hanging out with Lily and Lara anymore.
On Friday she went to her room after dinner and never came out again. Her parents, tired of her sulking, left her there. They were just about to go to bed when they got the call from the sheriff’s department.
Sue’s bedroom was on the first floor, so it hadn’t been particularly difficult for her to climb out a window and leave. Neither Lily nor Lara had seen Sue that day. They admitted they’d been fighting, but they both claimed it was because Sue had been lording it over them the past week or so. That she had a boyfriend and they didn’t. Typical girl stuff.
It wasn’t typical, though. Not when neither girl would admit who that boyfriend was. They claimed Sue had never told them his name, and neither of them buckled under close questioning.
Steel was sure they were lying.
All Steel wanted now was a hot shower and his bed, but as soon as he pulled into the trailer park, he knew something wasn’t right.
He let the truck’s engine idle, scanning his temporary home, trying to spot the difference the reptile portion of his brain had instantly noticed. The trailer looked peaceful enough. The front door was closed, although of course he couldn’t tell from here if it had been forced open and then shut again. The tiny front porch was empty. Although his garbage cans might overflow, he deliberately kept the porch clean so he could come and go as quietly as possible. His work took him out at all hours, and he didn’t want his movements tracked by his neighbors, though he doubted anything went unnoticed by Marion.
His gaze shifted to her trailer. It was dark, for once, not a sliver of light escaping the windows, the curtains all closed.
Strange. Normally at this hour Marion was still ensconced on her porch, mug of coffee in her hand. He swore she lived on the stuff. Had a pot plugged in outside somewhere. He never saw her re-enter her trailer for a refill.
He looked back at his trailer and stiffened. His own living room blinds had been drawn tight yesterday when he’d left, to thwart any curious peeping Toms—or peeping Marions, more to the point. Today one of them was askew, not quite covering one corner of the living room window.
Someone had been inside.
A normal man might question whether he had been careless when he drew the blinds closed the previous day. Not Steel. Years of working in dangerous circumstances had taught him to watch for details like this.
Someone had definitely been inside his trailer. The question was: Were they still there?
He put the truck in Reverse and backed out of the trailer court slowly, spinning his steering wheel when he got to the end of the lane and turning toward the entrance. Back on the road, he drove a quarter mile, parked and headed overland through the woods that rimmed the park, coming at his trailer from a different angle.
When he reached the back of it, all was still inside, and it would have been easy to assume the perpetrators were long gone. Steel acted from an abundance of caution, working his way up the side of the trailer, listening for telltale signs that someone was inside, checking each window in turn.
His bedroom at the rear of the trailer, which looked out into the woods, lacked any shades at all, an oversight he’d been meaning to fix, but the room was dark and he couldn’t see anyone inside it when he stepped up on a stump a few feet away and peeked in. He jumped down lightly and inched along the side of the trailer. The bathroom window was open, as usual. It was too small for him to easily climb into—high up, too. He kept going. When he reached the front porch, Steel came to a decision, drew his pistol from his shoulder holster, hidden under the shirt he wore, and stepped cautiously toward the front door.
With his back to the wall, he reached out a hand and slowly tested the doorknob. Like he’d suspected, it turned and opened. Someone had jimmied the lock.
He peeked around the jamb cautiously—and stopped.
“Marion? What the fuck?”
“Get your ass in here and explain yourself, Cooper,” Marion said caustically. She was sitting in the threadbare easy chair he’d rescued from a thrift store, the only piece of furniture in his living room except the television set sitting on
