From the Shadows (Buckhorn, Montana #2) - B.J. Daniels Page 0,42

toward the hotel.

Devlin had pretended not to hear him. He kept thinking that anything could happen this weekend. Any one of them could die.

The thought had perked him up as he reached the lights of the hotel back entrance. If he were dead, the investors couldn’t destroy his career, his life, his future. He’d pushed open the door, letting it slam, still pretending he hadn’t known Jason was right behind him.

This morning, he knew he had only one chance to save himself. Somehow he had to have this hotel and land. Which meant he had to convince Casey to take his offer. Otherwise, he was a dead man.

* * *

CASEY FELT THE tension the moment she walked into the hotel kitchen. Jason had made a quick departure, leaving her alone with Finn. “Was it something I said?” she joked, then saw his face. He looked as if someone had punched him in the gut. “Or something you said?”

Finn groaned and raked a hand through his dark hair. He didn’t look as if he’d gotten any more sleep than she had. She listened as he filled her in on what Jason had told him.

“Wait—what?” she said.

“Megan lied. If someone knew she lied, that she’d been responsible for the car wreck and gotten away with it, then she could have been right. Maybe someone was stalking her. Someone could have gotten a summer job here planning to make her pay.”

“That’s kind of a long shot, isn’t it?” Casey said. “But if true, then her death might not have had anything to do with what happened among the staff. Or it could have been Megan’s guilt just making her paranoid.”

“That’s what I would have said, if someone hadn’t killed her.”

“I’ve never considered that Megan’s murder might have been premeditated,” Casey said after a moment. “It wasn’t like the killer brought a weapon.”

“Everyone thought that the killer saw an opportunity when he found Megan alone in the woods. So he picked up a rock and caved in the back of her skull. It had been a spur-of-the-moment decision. She never knew what hit her.”

“Or who hit her,” Casey agreed with a shudder. “It sounds like Megan had a lot of reasons to feel guilty. No wonder you didn’t believe that her life was in danger. You didn’t know the truth about the car accident or what was going on here at the hotel.”

“If that’s what got her killed,” Finn said with a shake of his head. “The guilt could have been getting to her. Or it could be one of the staff with their own reason for wanting her dead,” Finn concluded.

Casey questioned whether Megan could feel guilt: she had so much of her own. She told herself that she wasn’t getting involved in finding the killer. That she didn’t care. That she just wanted to get as far away from all of this as possible. “Either way, you have a lot of suspects. Unless...”

“Unless I try to find out which of the three girls in the car might have a connection to someone who worked at the Crenshaw that summer,” he said, finishing her thought.

She wanted to smack herself. Don’t get involved. Don’t let him pull you in. And yet her mind was already working. “If someone killed her because she lied to save her own neck and got her friend killed, that would make more sense than murdering Megan over some silly squabble here at Crenshaw.”

“Jason said that she admitted in her diary that she’d been driving the car,” Finn said. “I’m wondering what else she might have written down—maybe who she thought was after her. Someone has that diary.”

Casey had just taken a sip of coffee. It went down the wrong way, making her choke. She couldn’t seem to get any air into her lungs. She fought for her next breath as Finn hurried over to her. She held up a hand to ward him off.

“Are you all right?” Finn asked.

The concern in his eyes was so caring, so trusting, that she had to look away.

“I’m okay,” she managed to say around gasps. That Megan might have told the truth in her diary, that she might have also written down the name of the person she thought was stalking her... That had never dawned on Casey. Until now.

“I looked all over the hotel and grounds for her diary.” He shook his head. “The killer must have taken it. I guess we’ll never know what she wrote in it. Unless it comes