From the Shadows (Buckhorn, Montana #2) - B.J. Daniels Page 0,35

mountains.

A numbing cold breeze curled around her neck, sending a chill through her like the one she’d experienced earlier coming up the stairs.

But that wasn’t all that had stopped her just inside the door. At first she didn’t know what had sent her heart plummeting and made her freeze in midstep.

Nothing looked amiss, and yet she sensed it. Someone had been in her room. She smelled the scent still in the air. Megan’s perfume. Megan’s signature perfume was so distinctive that Casey would never forget it.

“She’s dead,” she whispered to herself. “She isn’t wearing perfume where she is.” Casey closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

“Don’t let her get to you,” Anna had said ten years ago. “Be the better person. You need to learn to deal with this sort of thing. Someday this experience will serve you well.”

Opening her eyes and letting out the held breath, Casey wanted to laugh. She’d let her imagination run away with her. No one had come into her room. Hadn’t they all been down at the campfire? She tried to remember. People often would walk into the woods to pee after too many beers. But one of them could have doubled back to the hotel. Or come to her room while she and Finn were talking at the back door.

The wind blew the drapes aside. She rushed to the window to close it and shut out the cold night air, recalling that it had been locked when she’d left earlier. She was sure of it.

That was when she saw it out of the corner of her eye and felt her stomach knot. She turned slowly to look into the bathroom to the words written in lipstick on the mirror.

I know what you did

The letters were half scrawled, poorly shaped. But with a shudder, she knew exactly what the person wanted.

A confession.

CHAPTER TWELVE

AS FINN CAME out the back door of the hotel again, he studied the figures silhouetted against the firelight at the edge of the woods. He’d felt the tension around the fire earlier. It was as if everyone was trying too hard to get into the party mood, while all the time knowing that there was a probable killer among them.

He’d read the marshal’s report on the murder. No one else had been seen in the area that night. No tracks had been found other than those down by the firepit and Megan’s. Nor were any vehicles seen around the time of the murder. The pit was far enough away from the hotel that it was only used by the staff and always had been. The marshal had concluded that one of them had probably killed Megan. The question had always been which one. Because of a lack of sufficient evidence, no arrest had been made.

“Casey not coming back out?” Jason asked, a smirk on his handsome face.

“She’s had enough for one day,” Finn said.

“But not you.” Jason handed him a beer.

The talk around the campfire was hushed as the cold night hunkered just outside the flames. Patience was visiting with Jen and Shirley. Claude and Benjamin stood apart, both silent. Devlin stayed close to the cooler full of beer, looking sour and still upset. Clearly Jason wanted a party, but he wasn’t getting it.

“Claude, you should have brought your guitar,” Jason said.

“I don’t play anymore.”

The tension was as thick as the smoke rising into the air. As Finn looked around the group, he realized that Casey wasn’t the only one he had to keep an eye on. Jason was at the top of that list. He’d seen the tension between him and Casey. She’d tried to hide her dislike of the man, but, given what Megan had told him and what he’d read in Anna’s journal, he already had a pretty good idea why she couldn’t stand Jason.

There’d been something sparking between Casey and Jason before he’d hooked up with Megan and doused that spark before it ever had a chance. Megan, of course, had told a slightly different story, saying that Jason had begged her to save him from Casey, who he said had a schoolgirl crush on him. According to her journal entry, Anna had seen something entirely different but had been caught in the middle.

But Finn suspected Jason, at least, was still interested in Casey. He just wasn’t sure what that interest was.

“So you dated Megan?” Patience asked.

He nodded. “Just for a few months before she came out here.”

“Now you’re looking for her killer,” Jason said. “How’s