The seconds scraped by on the clock in the den, and Jenna was going quietly out of her mind. She, Cassie, Turnquist, and even Critter were sequestered in the small room. Every curtain and blind in the house was drawn tight and the lights and television flickered as winds, keening down the gorge, buffeted the house. The girls huddled together under a sleeping bag on the couch, and Jenna tried to keep her cool.
Impossible.
Get here, Carter, she silently thought, every muscle in her body tense.
Turnquist, too, was on edge, his weapon at his side.
Every ten minutes, he walked through the house, weapon in hand, eyes darting everywhere, stopping at the windows and opening the blinds a bit to catch a glimpse of the storm. Jenna listened to his footsteps creak on the stairs or pad lightly on the floors overhead.
She sat in a rocker, eyes fixed on the clock, one hand falling over the arm to scratch Critter behind his ears.
Finally, about the time Jenna was certain she was coming completely unhinged, the dog lifted his head and growled. Turnquist, who was just descending from the second story, walked into the darkened kitchen and squinted through the night. “It’s Carter’s Blazer,” he said, and punched in the code to allow the sheriff to roll through the gates. But the gates didn’t so much as budge. “Damned things. I’m going out,” he called over his shoulder. “The gate’s iced up.” He threw on a down jacket and left the house, closing and locking the door behind him.
Allie was dozing, Cassie’s eyes at half-mast. “Can you trust him, Mom?”
“Who? Jake Turnquist?”
“Yeah. It doesn’t seem like he does much. Not if the guy still gets in. Maybe it’s him.”
“I checked him out.”
“By talking to Mr. Brennan. Oh, wow.”
“I called names on the list of references he gave me.”
“Like he couldn’t have set that up.”
“Sheriff Carter recommended him.”
“Maybe he’s in on it, too.”
“No.”
“No?” Cassie lifted an eyebrow. “How do you know, Mom? This whole place could be some kind of weird community, everyone like an alien. They’ve got really odd stuff up here, Mom. Half the people believe in Bigfoot, and that Charley Perry, the man who found the body at Catwalk Point, he claims he was abducted by aliens for a while. What’s freaky about that is that everyone in town just accepts it. He’s ‘a little eccentric.’ Are they kidding? The guy’s a full-blown nutcase and should be locked up. Just like half the townspeople. Don’t you think it’s strange that two of the men you’ve been seeing, Harrison Brennan and Travis Settler, have secret pasts—that they were involved in some kind of elite special forces military group or the CIA or something they can’t talk about? And what about Rinda, your friend. Her brother and son are creeeeeepy. Something genetically wrong there, if you ask me.”
“But Josh is normal.”
“No. I didn’t say that. His whole family is off! I’m starting to think that we—you, me, and Allie—are the normal ones. And that’s crazy, too, cuz you’re a Hollywood star, or were one, the family’s divorced, Dad’s remarried…but we still seem more sane than most of the people around here.”
“You think?” Jenna asked as Cassie turned back to the television. Normal? With her distaste for winter? She doubted it as she peered through the slats at the white-out.
White Out. The unfinished movie. Where Jill had died.
Instead of you. You were supposed to be up on the mountain, not Jill.
She shuddered, remembered hearing the explosion, snow pluming hundreds of feet into the air, and then the horrendous rumbling, as if the earth itself was being painfully wrenched apart. From her spot on the Sno-cat, she’d watched in horror as a wall of snow and ice roared down the mountainside, to the very spot where the next scene was to be shot, where Jill was innocently waiting. Jenna had screamed and thrown herself off the vehicle, but was restrained by some of the crew.
They hadn’t found Jill’s body for hours, but Jenna had known the minute she’d died.
All because of you. You’d talked her into following your footsteps. You’d suggested to Robert that he hire her.
And look what happened.
The aftermath of the disaster had far-reaching repercussions. Investigators surmised that explosives intended to be used later in the filming had accidently been discharged early, causing the avalanche, that it had destroyed the set where they were to film. An unfortunate tragedy. No one at fault. Everyone associated with the film to blame. Jenna had been emotionally devastated, Robert nearly ruined financially. They had blamed each other, and Jenna had given up acting, refusing to finish a project that had cost Jill her life.
The press had gone nuts. Pictures of Jenna and her family splashed on newspapers across the country. The tabloids had promoted a conspiracy theory, promoting the idea that the financially troubled endeavor was so far over budget that the film had been sabotaged by one of the backers who wanted to get out and escape with the insurance money.
That time of her life had been an excruciating blur. She’d tried to hold herself together for the kids, but her career was a shambles, her already-strained marriage crumbling, her guilt eating her alive. Everyone she knew was angry and pointing fingers. One of the major backers, Paulo Roblez, had been particularly upset, as had Monty Fenderson, Jenna’s agent, who, when she’d announced she was giving up acting, had lost his only star-caliber client. He’d threatened to sue her and Robert and anyone he could think of.