From the Shadows (Buckhorn, Montana #2) - B.J. Daniels Page 0,79
it. But she would quit her job. She would travel. She would go on that adventure. So why did she feel like crying?
They wandered back to the hotel. She could feel time slipping away.
He stopped just outside the hotel garden-room door and turned to her. “Just the thought of you leaving... I was thinking that maybe tonight—” His cell phone rang. He swore under his breath as he looked at the screen. “This is another reason I dropped out of sight. I have to take this. Unfortunately, I am no longer missing, and this one is important.”
“It’s fine,” she said. “I need to pack, anyway.”
“Tonight, then.” His phone rang again. Swearing under his breath once more, he moved away to take the call.
* * *
CASEY FELT HER eyes burn with tears as she said to his retreating back, “Tonight.” She’d seen the promise in his deep blue gaze and felt her own promising one. Tonight. This was one promise she planned to keep no matter what.
Back upstairs, she began to pack, but her heart wasn’t in it. So much had changed since she’d come back here. She looked around the room, suddenly filled with an overwhelming sadness. When she’d arrived, she’d thought saying goodbye would be hard, but not this hard. This hotel was the last of her grandmother. Once it was gone...
She reminded herself that it was gone and wiped her tears. It was time for a change—just as she’d told Finn. She needed to do something else after all these years of being involved in hotel management. She could blame her grandmother’s death for this. Or selling the hotel. But in reality, it was all Finn. Meeting him had made her yearn for more than she’d let herself accept over the past ten years.
She knew she needed time to sort it all out. Nothing had gone as she’d expected when returning to Buckhorn, but in some ways it had turned out so much better. She had sold the hotel, gotten more money than she’d expected and felt good about whom she’d sold it to—even though she had no idea what he would do with the hotel and the land.
It didn’t matter. Not anymore. Telling Finn about the diary had been a weight off her shoulders—just like selling the hotel. If Finn thought it would help, she’d tell the marshal. The diary was gone, either way. They would never know what Megan had written.
She told herself she’d done what she’d come here to do. By tomorrow morning, everyone who was still here would be leaving. Except Finn?
He hadn’t really said what his plans were. But she couldn’t imagine him giving up—until forced to. He had really expected something to happen over this weekend that would force Megan’s killer out into the open. That was why he’d been so worried about her. Now he knew why the killer might be coming for her. Believing that Megan had told too much in her diary? Convinced that Casey hadn’t just read it, that she’d lied about sending out the reunion invitations because she was no longer going to keep the killer’s secret?
Well, if true, wouldn’t Casey have said or done something by now? Maybe Finn was right, and they’d all been looking for closure. Or facing the ghosts of their past. Devlin and Claude must have felt the same way since apparently they’d left early. Or maybe they hadn’t left at all. Maybe the worst was still yet to come.
It was up to Finn now to decide what to do with the information he’d gathered. The car wreck, Megan lying about driving, Claude being a friend of a friend who might or might not have come here that summer to seek revenge on Megan. Would the marshal take it seriously after all this time?
She finished packing, leaving out only the clothing she would wear tonight and in the morning when she hit the road. “I know this isn’t the ending you’d hoped for, but I can’t see any other way.” She said it aloud to her grandmother, hoping Anna would understand. She hadn’t come here to solve a murder. She didn’t even think Finn was going to pursue it any further.
Casey checked her phone and noticed she’d gotten another call from the family attorney in California. He’d told her there was more to her grandmother’s will than just the Crenshaw. But she’d been anxious to get the sale completed, promising to meet with him when she got back.