Left to Kill (Adele Sharp #4) - Blake Pierce Page 0,68
jerked a thumb toward the large blue van. “Look in the backseat,” he said.
Adele approached the blue vehicle and peered through the side window, frowning. There was a baby seat in the back.
“I didn’t see a child in that cabin,” John said.
Adele shook her head. “Me neither. Why do you think they have that?”
John and Adele stood in the darkness, eyes on each other.
“Anything inside?”
Adele shook her head again.
John cursed and wiped a hand through his hair.
“Something is off about those folks,” said Adele. “My dad’s right. They’re very warm, hospitable. Nice. Which makes no sense with two federal agents snooping around their property. No one is that easygoing.”
John shrugged. “Most people don’t abscond to the woods.”
“Be that as it may, we’re a disturbance. An unexpected, unwanted disturbance. And yet they’re inside, setting food for us. Either they’re the kindest people I’ve ever met, or… they’ve rehearsed this before. They’ve prepared for this sort of thing.”
John tapped a finger against the hood of the blue van, his narrowed eyes darting back toward the cabin. He puffed a breath. “All right, but right now all we’ve got to go on is they’re really nice, and they have a baby seat without a baby. What does that mean?”
Adele waited, hoping the clues would click into place. She stood still, and John allowed her silence. But as she waited, there was no sudden sense of realization. No clue popping to the forefront of her mind.
She gritted her teeth. “I don’t know,” she said in nearly a whisper. “I don’t know.”
“I think maybe we just leave, regroup. Maybe we can come back in the morning, with other people to help us search.”
“It might be too late by then,” said Adele. “If they think we’re getting close, they might make a move. If there are others… like Ha Eun… like Amanda… they might kill them too, bury the evidence…”
The ominous words hung over the garden, and the sounds within the cabin seemed to have faded.
Adele shook her head. “Nothing back here? Nothing besides that baby seat?”
“Nothing.”
Adele growled and turned, and with John in tow, the two of them marched back around the house.
They passed through the garden in the front yard, and Adele hesitated, glancing toward the partially open door to the cabin. “Should we tell them we’re leaving?”
“Let them stew in it,” said John. “Your gut says something’s off, and I trust your gut.”
For some reason, this filled Adele with a sudden surge of warmth. She smiled at John, watching him, and for an unusual moment, he didn’t have a sarcastic smile or twinkle in his eye. His face was illuminated by the orange light from the cabin, but he watched her back, sincere, solemn. He dipped his head once in a sort of acknowledging nod, then his tall form continued down the path, away from the cabin now.
With another long look back at the cabin, her eyes scanning the garden, then over to the shed just visible behind the main structure, Adele also sighed and turned, moving away.
A dead end. Her promise to the Johnsons: broken. Her skills as an investigator: failed. Her own mother’s case would never be solved now. The missing searcher, the other missing persons—all in pain. All without help. All lost.
Adele moved down the path toward the road and stepped from the dirt driveway, with John behind her, moving back into the forest.
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
As she passed the driveway and stepped through the trees, Adele’s eyes flicked once last time toward the garden; up the hill, she noticed a hose curled by the cabin, barely visible past a wooden fence post. The hose was attached to a spigot beneath the wooden structure. Her gaze moved between a couple of trees, and she spotted the stone structure of a well.
The gray stone surrounding the well, and the wooden roof splayed above it, caught her attention for a moment.
She hesitated, strolling to a halt.
John, a few paces ahead, noticed her stop, and he turned back. “What is it?”
“That hose,” she said.
John followed her gaze, both of them at the end of the dirt trail, now both peering up toward the garden and the cabin.
“Yeah? Probably for the garden.”
Adele nodded, slowly, her eyes narrowing. She felt a tingle across her palms.
“John,” she said, slowly. “That hose is attached to the house. If they have a water source, some creek or something leading to pipes beneath the house itself…”
John just watched her, frowning in confusion.
“Then why do they also have an open well?”