Deadly Fate (Krewe of Hunters #19)(28)

“Now—because of this?” Clara asked.

He hesitated. There was something more, and it was obvious, but he wasn’t going to say. Clara wasn’t sure why, but in that moment, she decided he wasn’t such a jerk.

“This is pretty bad,” he said quietly. “You should try to get some rest.”

He was dismissing her; he wanted quiet. Fine. She laid her head down.

Then she bolted back up.

“Footage! Film footage! Everything at the Mansion was being filmed. Maybe if you get that film footage, you’ll find the killer on it—find out if Amelia made it to the Mansion before she met up with the killer. You can see if—”

She broke off; her eyes locked with his.

She felt like a fool.

“You’ve already gone through all the footage, right?”

He smiled. “Yes.”

“What’s on it?”

“The Wickedly Weird crew mugging in front of various cameras to check them out, and your friends—Ralph, Simon and Larry—arriving, freaking out, screaming and leaving. And then there’s footage of you. Silent—seeing the place—freezing and then leaving.”

“Yes, but I know that someone was upstairs. I heard footsteps!” Clara protested.

He hesitated. “Possibly.”

“What do you mean, possibly?” Maybe he was a jerk after all!

“The camera upstairs clicked off about two hours before you got to the house,” he said.

“Yes, but doesn’t that prove my point? Someone was there—someone who turned off the cameras!”

“We have tech people working on that possibility now.”

Screw resting; she was angry. “I told you that someone was in there. Do you really think that I made that up, that I’m a liar?” she demanded.

“No,” he told her impatiently. “It’s possible that you were completely unnerved and imagined that someone was in there. Whoever killed Amelia Carson didn’t do so at the Mansion. There’s no real reason to suspect that the killer was ever in there. He might have known what was going on and had no reason to go in.”

“So I just panicked and ran?” she demanded.

He sighed, trying to hide his impatience. “The main-floor cameras were working fine. You can’t get upstairs until you’ve been downstairs. Look, this is no insult to you. I’ve been with the Bureau for fifteen years—that scene at the Mansion was horrific and damned real.”

She knew that her eyes narrowed and her voice was strained and harsh. “I’m not an idiot who imagines things.” Except I’ve just seen a dead woman! she thought.

“That isn’t what I’m suggesting.”

“But it is!”

“Miss Avery,” he said, clearly growing agitated as well, “I don’t know what to tell you. Our reports say that while the cameras upstairs did an automatic click-off, the cameras downstairs were working away.”

“Maybe there are ways into the house that aren’t within camera range,” she said.

“That is possible,” he said.

Possible.

But it didn’t sound as if he believed it—not in the least.

She let out a sound of frustration and anger. “Stop playing hard-core Fed—I mean, you did see a ghost, too!—and pay attention to what I’m saying. Someone was in that house. Right now, you have a dead woman in a hotel room and a dead woman in the snow—two different places. You don’t know how either one of them wound up dead, by whose hand or why. Or even when! And I’m telling you—I heard someone in that house. It wasn’t Ralph, Simon or Larry, because they’d already been gotten. And apparently, the film crew were here, greeting them when they came screaming their way inside. And I’m assuming Magda and Justin Crowley were here, as well. So, that would mean that your killer is on the island somewhere.”

“And law enforcement officers continue to scour the area,” he told her.

“You’ll never find him,” she murmured suddenly. “This island... I’ve only seen it once before, but we all know it’s full of hiding places.”

He stood up abruptly and walked over to her. For a moment, his sheer size and the heat that swept off him scared her.

But he didn’t touch her. He stopped at the couch.

“We’ll catch him,” he said. “If it’s the last thing I do in this life, I will catch the bastard,” he swore.

Before she could respond, they both heard a thumping sound—as if someone or something had banged against the outer log wall of the office.

She definitely didn’t imagine it. She saw his frown and the tensing of his body. He turned and headed for the door.

She was up and after him in a flash.

“Get back in there!” he told her.

“I am not staying in there alone!” she said.

Jackson had been sleeping on the sofa in the living room; he was up in an instant. The officers in the hallways came heading toward them, along with Mike. By then, Thor was exiting by the front door. Clara ran after him, terrified of being alone.

He was already walking down the length of the porch and into the surrounding snow. She and the others were behind him.

He stopped and she slammed into his back. “Get back in, please, for the love of God, will you?” he demanded, shouting to the others next. “Fan out around the house. Someone was out here!”