It was when Kate looked at the bulletin board that she knew something was wrong. She’d pinned Mr. Niederman’s address there but it was gone. When she tapped Jack’s arm, he pivoted so fast on his crutches that he nearly fell. “It’s gone,” Kate whispered. “The address isn’t there.”
“I know how to get there. It’s my town, remember? We’ll—” Suddenly, Jack understood what Kate was thinking. His face turned red and he let out a yell that shook the house. “Medlar!”
There was no answer.
Kate ran to Sara’s bedroom, threw open the doors and ran into the little library, Sara’s writing room. It was empty.
“I’m going to murder her,” Jack mu
ttered when Kate found him in the garage. He heaved himself up into the vehicle.
She jumped into the passenger seat and shut the door. “You think she went ahead of us?”
“Oh, yeah. I saw that her car was gone, but she likes to park it under the palms on the far side. Says the car enjoys the view.”
“Why did she go without us?”
“Because she figured out that we were going without her.” He was backing the truck out. She’d never been in a vehicle doing fifty miles an hour in Reverse. She held on to the armrest and checked her seat belt—then noticed that Jack’s wasn’t on. But the look on his face made her stay quiet.
She’d never seen him so angry. In fact, she’d never seen anyone look as furious as Jack did. Kate remembered Sara telling about Jack’s fights with Roy. The laughing, easy-tempered man she’d come to know wasn’t in the truck with her.
This was what Cheryl saw that night, Kate thought. Roy Wyatt’s dark good looks had been distorted into menacing, threatening rage. No wonder it was easy for people to believe that Roy had murdered two women.
Jack used back roads with little to no traffic to get to an area she’d never seen before. It was rural, with thick growth hanging down around them. Ahead of them was a crossroads with a stop sign, but Jack wasn’t slowing down. There didn’t seem to be any cars coming but the untrimmed shrubs made it hard to see very far. “There’s a stop sign!” she yelled.
In the next second Kate saw the brilliant yellow streak of Sara’s MINI Cooper coming from the side. She screamed. Jack turned the wheel so hard the truck skidded into a circle—and headed directly toward a palm tree with a trunk as thick as a stone pillar. He slammed on the brakes.
Instinctively, Kate threw her arm across her eyes. There was no way they weren’t going to hit the tree.
There was another abrupt turn that threw her against the door, then the truck stopped. By the time she opened her eyes, Jack had already leaped out of the truck and grabbed a single crutch from the back.
“Sara!” Kate flung open the door and jumped to the ground.
The back of Sara’s MINI was barely visible under trees and tall shrubs. Jack was fighting his way through to the door.
Kate was dazed but she was smaller than Jack and not hindered by a cast. She slipped in front of him to reach Sara’s door first.
But her aunt was already out—and she looked as angry as Jack did.
“You were going to leave me out of all of it,” she yelled at him.
He backed out of the bushes but his face was still like the person Kate had never seen before. “You’re damn right I was! Flynn wants us to stay out of this. You—”
“If you say I’m too old for this, I’ll hit you. I’ll—” She gritted her teeth; her fists were clenched. “You were leaving me!”
The agony in her voice went right through Kate. She put her arm around her aunt’s shoulders and began pulling her toward the road. As they passed Jack, she looked at him. “If you act like Roy Wyatt, we’re going to treat you like him. Get it together!”
She escorted Sara across the road to a little clearing and helped her sit down.
The truck was nearby, turned around, and headed in the opposite direction they’d been going. There were skid marks on the pavement and a headlight was broken. The big palm was jammed against the side of the old truck. Another inch and they would have hit it hard.
Kate got three bottles of water out of the back, handed one to Sara and kept the other two. Sara was shaking so badly Kate had to open the bottle for her.
It was minutes later before Jack appeared with his single crutch. Pausing, he looked both ways before crossing the road, then dropped to the ground beside Sara.
Kate, still standing, opened a bottle of water and handed it to him. He drained half of it. As she stood there, looking down at both of them, waiting for them to start making amends, she realized she was furious. How close it had come to all of them being killed! It didn’t take words to know that they were all thinking of Evan’s recent death.
“You don’t need me,” Sara whispered.