Sarah Varland - Perilous Homecoming

She didn’t seem to want his regret, didn’t need his friendship. And Sawyer refused to sit around and let that nag at him.

Foot raised over the gas pedal, he looked at Kelsey again. Why was it taking her so long to get into the car?

Something about this wasn’t sitting well in his stomach. Slowly, he lowered his foot back to the floor and put the truck back into Park, almost in slow motion.

Was that something in her hands? What was she doing?

Kelsey looked over her shoulder first, then spun in his direction, eyes wide. She looked back at her car.

He rolled down the passenger side window. “You need something?”

“No.” She said it firmly, cutting him off before the whole sentence had even tumbled from his mouth. But he wouldn’t let her push him away that easily.

“Look, whatever you think of me, I’m not stupid. I can tell something’s wrong, Kelsey. Maybe you should get back in my truck.”

She turned toward him, eyes flashing. But no sound left her mouth. Neither of them had a chance to say anything before a sharp crack, like a firecracker, but with more weight, split the air.

“Get down!” he yelled, but she’d already dropped by the time he said it. Had she been downed by the gunshot or were her instincts that fast?

He was just about to push his own door open, run out there and see if she was all right when the passenger door opened and she jumped in.

Another shot rang out, just as she was climbing in. This one hit metal.

“Go!” Kelsey yelled. He was already working on it. He peeled out, tires squealing like they hadn’t since he was sixteen, and drove. He didn’t ease up on the gas till they were mostly down the drive that led out of the Hamilton estate and back to the main road.

Kelsey had pulled out her phone and had it lifted to her ear. He needed an explanation, wanted to know especially why she seemed to calm, so unsurprised by this. But he imagined she was probably calling the police, and that was more important right now.

He heard someone on the other end answer. The voice was low. Male. The chief?

“This is Kelsey. You need to know that somebody wants me dead.”

She said it calmly. Like it was a fact, nothing more, no feelings attached.

Someone wanted her dead. Why? Was it connected to whatever had happened at the museum? What had she gotten mixed up in? Uncertainty clouded the edges of his judgment. What did he really know about Kelsey Jackson? Nothing. And hadn’t he heard rumors here and there—he tried not to pay attention to small-town gossip, but it was impossible to avoid altogether—that she hadn’t left the police department on the best terms?

She set the phone down. He glanced over at her. “Where are we going?” He kept his own voice calm and measured. The chief seemed to trust her; that had to be enough for him now. He couldn’t exactly leave her on the side of the road when someone had been shooting at her ninety seconds before.

“I’m not sure yet.”

“What are you sure of?” he asked as he kept driving. He’d grown up here, knew every back road in a thirty-mile radius, minimum, and he had a full tank of gas. If driving was what she wanted, that’s what they’d do.

She looked over at him. “You really didn’t hear anything about what happened tonight?”

He shrugged. “It’s pretty clear that something happened, but the police were being pretty closemouthed about it all.” Sawyer glanced over at her, but nothing in her expression gave away any of her thoughts. She must have been one impressive cop. He turned back to the road. “Was something vandalized?” he guessed. “Or stolen?” A theft would explain the police response, but not the gunshots. What had she done that resulted in someone wanting her dead?

“Not as far as I know. But Michael Wingate is dead.”

“The curator?” The man had been around Treasure Point for as long as Sawyer could remember, but their paths hadn’t crossed much when he was a kid—he’d guess Michael was about twenty, maybe thirty years older. He’d met him formally for the first time yesterday.

“Someone pushed him off a balcony. I overheard it happening just a few minutes before the lights went out. Now someone wants me dead.”

“What was on your car that made you stop?”

“A note.” Kelsey looked down at her lap, leaned over to look at the floor. “I must have dropped it during the shooting. It said I had twelve hours to get out of town or I’d pay for it, basically.”

“They didn’t give you until morning, though.”

She shook her head. “No. I don’t know why.”

“Maybe the note was a trap itself, just to get you to stand in one place.”

“Could be. Who knows?”

Sawyer kept driving, winding his way through the tall pine trees that towered over the darkened back roads.

Kelsey said nothing. He got the feeling she was still deciding whether or not she could trust him.

And Sawyer was trying to decide the same thing. One thing was certain, though. He wasn’t going to be able to drive away and put the dangers of Kelsey’s situation behind him.

FOUR

She’d been in Treasure Point for less than forty-eight hours, and Kelsey was already on her second trip to the police station. At least this time, she was in the chief’s office, waiting for him to come back in.

“Just can’t stay away, can you?” one of the officers teased as he walked by the room. Kelsey offered a small smile back, thankful the teasing seemed to be good-natured.

Lieutenant Davies strolled through the door, piercing her with a hard glare. “It seems you’re a regular magnet for trouble, huh, Jackson?”

He’d always called her by her last name. He didn’t consistently do that to any of the male officers and it had always rankled her.

But he was one man who’d never intimidated her. “No, it just seems that this town isn’t the sweet little hamlet by the sea that some people like to pretend that it is.”

He studied her for a minute. “That’s what you’re going with? You don’t think it looks oddly coincidental to us that years ago you were in a relationship with a suspect while you were an officer, aided him in getting away with the crimes he committed, and now you’re back and there’s trouble at the museum?”

“I wasn’t in a relationship with a suspect.” Kelsey took a deep breath, pushed back memories of the past, and kept talking. She’d let a guilty man go because she’d misjudged him, that was it. How had the rumor mill managed to morph the story from the truth to something so salacious was beyond her. “I looked up all the information on the museum before I took the job here, Lieutenant. I’m well aware that there’s been trouble at the museum since the idea was barely a spark in the historical society’s eye.” The museum had suffered several bouts of sabotage in a failed attempt to avoid the discovery of a years-old murder victim on the grounds.

Davies had nothing to say to that. Keeping quiet, he set down a stack of manila envelopes on the table, took a seat at the chair opposite her and stared.

The chief walked in just then. “Kelsey, I’ve got almost all my men at the museum—they’re collecting evidence on Mr. Wingate’s death, but they also started looking for any clues as to your attacker as soon as they heard the shots fired.” He turned to Davies. “I actually need you back there now, supervising.”

The lieutenant walked out without another word to Kelsey, which was fine with her.

Although facing the chief when he was wearing his current expression was a bit intimidating.

“What’s going on here?” he asked.

“I don’t know, sir.”

“You believe you witnessed a murder tonight.”

“Yes.”

“We don’t have any evidence of foul play yet, nothing except your testimony to tell us it was anything other than an accidental death.” The older man shook his head. “It’d be likely this won’t be treated as a murder, except that we went through a similar case recently. Because of that we will treat this one as though it is a homicide, whether preliminary evidence supports that or not.”