From the Shadows (Buckhorn, Montana #2) - B.J. Daniels Page 0,62
like Finn, rich by forty. He wished he could blame Megan. But she’d spotted him for the loser he was and called him on it. He’d been angry. Who wouldn’t be? Once she was dead, though, he’d put her behind him.
Just like he would put all of this behind him and move on. It was something he was good at. Maybe the only thing.
Which meant he had no intention of being here in the morning. He’d just started to pack when he heard a sound and turned to see that someone had shoved what appeared to be a note under his door. He listened but didn’t hear anything before he moved to pick up the piece of paper.
Written on it were the words Meet me in the woods—now.
He realized with a start that someone knew about the note he’d seen lying on the ground next to Megan’s dead body. He’d stupidly started to pick it up but had quickly dropped it when he saw the blood on it. He’d stepped away from it as the others had joined them.
Someone must have found it, must have seen him pick it up and drop it, and now they were thinking they could blackmail him? He laughed. “Can’t get blood out of a turnip.” His head hurt too much to try to make sense of it. For years, he’d lived in fear that the note would turn up—with his fingerprints and Megan’s blood on it.
All he knew right now was that he had to get out of here. He wadded up the note and shoved it into his pocket rather than leave it in the trash. He hurriedly packed, already thinking that he would reinvent himself once he left Montana.
His phone dinged as he got a text. He ignored it, figuring it was one of the investors. It dinged again. And again.
With a curse, he pulled his cell from the pocket of his jeans and read I’m waiting. He didn’t recognize the number, but he did the photo that accompanied it, even though the snapshot was grainy and dark—except for Megan’s white dress and long blond hair. Still, there was no doubt about who was with her—a younger version of himself. He had his hands around her neck as he forcefully held her backed up against a tree. She looked as if she was fighting to pull away.
In truth, she’d been laughing, her head thrown back. She’d been literally asking for it, but whoever had taken this didn’t know that. So maybe it wasn’t about the note. Either way, they had something they thought they could hold over him.
He stared at the photo for a moment and then finished packing and sneaked out of the hotel, taking his suitcase down to his car before he headed into the woods. Best end this before he left.
* * *
POOR LITTLE RICH GIRL? Jen scoffed silently at that. Everything about Megan smelled of money, from the way she looked, to her clothes, to her perfume. Especially her perfume. Jen had never forgotten that scent. The scent had reached her long before Megan had that first day. She remembered breathing it in as if it were rarefied oxygen. In one whiff, it had embodied everything Jen wasn’t and never could be.
She had yearned for Megan’s carefree confidence, the way she went through the world as if nothing could touch her up there so high above it all. Above the rest of them.
Jen remembered the day Megan’s perfume order had come in at her aunt’s general store.
“Don’t touch that,” Vi had barked. “That little bottle is worth more than you make in a year.”
It wasn’t quite that expensive. Jen had had to use all of her savings, though, to buy a tiny vial of it. She still took it out sometimes and put it on, closing her eyes and pretending. All it took was just a drop of it—the perfume was that potent.
The fantasy lasted only moments, though, leaving her feeling gutted, because as soon as she opened her eyes, she was faced with the truth. Not even Megan’s perfume would make Jen Mullen special.
Wasn’t that exactly what Megan had told her when she’d caught Jen in her room wearing not just her perfume but her white sundress—the same one Megan had later died in?
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CASEY STAYED BEHIND to clean the kitchen after everyone had an excuse to leave earlier. Jen had excused herself to go to the bathroom, no doubt an excuse to get out of dishes