Лори Касс - Gone With The Whisker

“Kate!” I called. “Stop!”

She didn’t.

I summoned the biggest, best Librarian Voice I could muster. Through my panting breaths, I yelled, “Katrina Abigail Hamilton! Stop right now!”

To my surprise and shock, she did. At least the noise of her crashing through the underbrush stopped, and I suddenly found that I could run a little harder and a little faster, and my thoughts ran along with me.

Please don’t let her be hurt. What happened up there? Please, please, don’t let her be hurt. I’ll never forgive myself. Please, please, please . . .

I rounded a bend in the path and saw my niece, sound and whole, standing next to a small building. It was a classic Up North structure: a patchwork siding of half metal and half plywood, with a complicated roof that from a distance looked like a bunch of rusty highway signs tossed up every which way. Bigger than an outhouse and smaller than most sheds, its solidly wood door might or might not have had ancient barn origins, but the chain and lock that fastened it shut were bright and shiny.

Hmm.

“Aunt Minnie?” Her voice was unrepentant. “You need to look at this.”

With relief, I slowed to a walk for the last few yards. “What I need to do,” I said firmly, “is get you out of here and back to the car. Let’s go. Now.”

“But look!” She pointed. “See?”

And since I was human, I felt compelled to look. What I saw was a small and dusty window, just high enough off the ground that I couldn’t see inside, even standing on my tiptoes.

She saw my difficulty and took a knee. “Here. You can get up on my leg.”

“Kate—”

“Just a quick look. Then we can go.”

Thinking things that would instantly disqualify me for the Aunt of the Year Award, I grabbed the edge of a piece of plywood and clambered on top of Kate’s leg. As the shed’s interior was illuminated only by the light that came in through that window, it took a moment for my eyes to identify what was on shelves.

And I suddenly understood everything.

Because on those shelves were hundreds of short plastic bottles.

Prescription medications.

“What’s in there?” Kate asked.

“Pills,” I said. “Lots of them.” I flashed back to that day at Ann Marie and Rupert Wiley’s house. Courtney’s over-the-top reaction when I’d walked into the room. How she wasn’t supposed to be handling medications at all.

“They’re stealing them, aren’t they?” Kate’s voice was high and excited. “Selling them on the black market.”

I slid off her leg and hit the ground with a bump. Nicole. She’d had back problems. Could she have been addicted to opioids? Had she been buying from Courtney?

Even though Up North lacked many Big Box types of shopping opportunities, there were avenues for selling stolen goods. It was my guess that Courtney’s stash had a high percentage of opioids and she was making a pretty penny on sales, enough money that she and her partner were willing to kill to keep the operation going.

Only . . . who was the partner?

A metallic click made me freeze, and a male voice said, “Hold it right there.”

Chapter 20

Kate and I stared at each other, then, as a single unit of Hamiltons, turned to face a twenty-something man, his thick blond arm hairs visible even in the mottled forest light.

Luke Cagan.

Though the very fact of his presence was disturbing, even more troubling was the handgun pointing directly at my niece’s midsection.

I stepped in front of her. “Hey, Luke,” I said as easily as I could. “It is Luke, right, from the hardware store? How are you doing? I’m pretty sure you can put that gun away. We were out here hiking, is all, came across this cool little shed. Do you happen to know who owns it?”

“Cut the crap.” He gestured with the gun. “I saw you looking inside. You know what’s in there.”

I put on an expression of innocence and shook my head. “Not really. It’s so dark in there I couldn’t make out a thing. All that reading I do, it messes up my night vision.” This wasn’t true—at least not yet—but I figured flat-out lies to get Kate away from a guy with a gun wouldn’t count against me in a final life tally. And even if they did, I didn’t care.

“So there’s no problem here, right?” I turned my hands palms up, smiling, being agreeable, being friendly, being accommodating. “We’ll move along and I’ll see you around, okay?” Nodding a cheerful good-bye, I took an angled step forward, intending to go around Luke, keeping my body between that nasty gun and my niece.

Luke stared at me and didn’t move. I watched carefully, ready to knock Kate aside the instant his finger started to tighten on the trigger, the instant his eyes started to focus.

We made it one step. Two steps. And just as I was wildly hoping that my pretense at innocence might actually work, footsteps pounded toward us and Courtney Drew appeared.

“What are you doing?” she called.

I wasn’t sure to whom she was talking, Luke, me, or Kate, but I jumped ahead of anything either one of them might say. “Hi, Courtney,” I said, smiling broadly, edging closer to the gun. “Remember me? It’s Minnie Hamilton. I drive the bookmobile. We met at Rupert and Anne Marie Wiley’s house a few weeks back. My niece and I were hiking, but now we really need to be getting back. Our friends are expecting us soon, and—”

“Stop talking, already,” Courtney said. “And you’re not going anywhere.”

“Um.” I stopped and reached backward. Kate grasped my hand and I gripped hers tight. If I’d been smart a long time ago, I would have learned Morse code and taught it to my nieces and nephew during holiday gatherings, thus providing a current means of communication. Sadly, all I knew were the letters for SOS, but even then I wasn’t completely certain I wouldn’t be spelling OSO, and neither sequence would help much, anyway.

Courtney stood next to her boyfriend. “You know who she is, right? That librarian. The one we almost took care of with the air conditioner.”

“That’s her?” Luke frowned down at me. “But she’s so short.”

I knew this wasn’t the time to mention that good things came in small packages. And from a lifetime of being underestimated due to my size, I also knew nothing I could say was going to change his point of view of my capabilities. What I could do was bide my time and hope an opportunity presented itself that would let me take advantage of his prejudice.

Behind me, I heard Kate suck in a breath. I squeezed her hand as hard as I could and said, “There’s no information I have that the sheriff’s office doesn’t already know, so there’s no point in hurting my niece. She doesn’t know anything anyway.”

“Do, too!” Kate said. “I know that—”

My hand squeezed Kate’s so hard I heard her knuckles crack. “She doesn’t know anything,” I repeated. “So how about it? Let my niece head back to Chilson. Nothing will change if she leaves.”

Neither one glanced my way.

“This is a problem,” Courtney said, crossing her thin arms. “I wasn’t prepared for this.”

“We can put them in the shed.” Luke tipped his head in that direction. “That lock is pretty good.”

“You think?” Courtney rolled her eyes. “And five minutes after we leave, they kick a piece of siding off and wriggle their way out. She’s short, remember? And that girl is skinny. With a boost, I bet she could get out the window.”

Luke studied the shed. “Yeah, I guess.” He looked over at Courtney. “You want me to shoot them, right? Now or later?”

But Courtney was shaking her head before my brain freaked out. “We have a delivery to make, remember? And if these two really are meeting up with friends, they might have said where they were going.”