My Sister's Grave (Tracy Crosswhite, #1)(96)

Sarah knew Harley was closed and no one was home. Tracy was out with Ben and her parents were in Hawaii. She’d be sending him on a wild goose chase. “You don’t need to do all that.”

“No trouble.” He approached and held out his hand. “I’m Edmund.”

“Sarah,” she said. “Sarah Crosswhite.”

“Crosswhite? We got a Ms. Crosswhite over at the high school in Cedar Grove. Teaches science, I think.”

“You work at the high school?”

“I’m one of the night janitors.”

“I’ve never seen you.”

“That’s because I work at night. Only vampires see me. Nah, I just got the job.”

She smiled. Gorgeous and funny.

“She’s blonde, isn’t she? Looks a lot like you.”

“We get that a lot.”

He nodded. “She’s your sister. I can see it in the face.”

“She’s four years older. She teaches chemistry.”

“I’ll bet that’s an easy A, huh?”

“Oh, no. I graduated. I’m going to the U-Dub in the fall.”

“So you’re one of those brainiac types?”

“Hardly.” She felt herself blushing. “Tracy’s the brains in the family.”

“Yeah, I got a brother like that, a real junior Einstein.”

The rain fell harder, another gush of water. His hair hung nearly to his shoulders. His T-shirt, now saturated, showed every ripple of his chest and stomach. He rubbed his arms.

“Well,” he said, “why don’t you wait under the trees by that mile marker over there, so I know where to find you, and I’ll go see about getting you some gas.” He started for the cab.

“It’s okay.”

He turned. “What’s that?”

“I’ll just go with you.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. It’s fine. I don’t want to make you drive all the way there and back.”

“All right then.” He hurried around the hood, climbed into the cab, and reached across, pushing open the passenger-side door and smiling down at her. “Let me help you with that.”

Sarah handed him her backpack and used the door to swing up into the cab. She took off the Stetson and shook out her hair, craving the heat blasting from the vents. “I guess I’m lucky you came along.”

“Instead of some freak job,” he said, putting the car in gear. “Guy like that picks you up out here and you could disappear forever.”





[page]CHAPTER 62





Dan knew Calloway was pointing in the direction of the peaks of the hills above Cedar Grove, but he couldn’t see beyond twenty feet with the darkness and swirling snow.

“He kept her alive in a room in the Cedar Grove mine. He waited until the dam was about to go online and buried her where he knew it was going to flood.”

“How do you know that?”

“Logical, given where we found Sarah’s remains.”

“No, how do you know he kept her in the mine?”

“We got to keep moving.” Calloway trudged on, Dan at his side and straining to hear. “Parker found it,” Calloway said. “Edmund used to leave the house on the ATV and go off into the mountains. After he was convicted, Parker thought of the mine and wondered about whether maybe Edmund had been going there on the ATV. He came and told me about it and we went up with bolt cutters and cut the lock from the gate at the entrance. At first we didn’t find anything, but then I noticed the wall in the office seemed crudely built for a large mining company. When I looked closer I found a seam for a door. House had built a false wall and kept Sarah chained in a room behind it. We found a gray frock on the floor, manacles and chains bolted to the wall.” Calloway shook his head. “Made me sick to my stomach thinking of Sarah in a place like that, what he must have done to her. We left everything as is, locked the entrance, and never went back.”

Dan grabbed Calloway’s shoulder, abruptly stopping him. “Then why the hell didn’t you tell anyone, Roy?”

Calloway knocked Dan’s hand away. “Tell them what, Dan? Tell them we all lied, that we manufactured evidence, but now we were sorry and want to do it right? House would have walked free and killed someone else’s daughter. What was done was done. There was no going back. House had a life sentence and Sarah was dead.”

“Then why didn’t you tell Tracy?”

“I couldn’t.”

“Why the hell not, Roy? Jesus, why the hell wouldn’t you?”

“Because I swore I wouldn’t.”

“You let her suffer for twenty years not knowing?”

The fur lining of Calloway’s hat had completely iced over and ice crystals clung to his eyebrows. “It wasn’t my decision, Dan. It was James’s.”

Dan squinted in disbelief. “Dear God, why would he do that to his own daughter?”

“Because he loved her, that’s why.”

“How can you say that?”

“James didn’t want Tracy living the rest of her life with the guilt. He knew it would have killed her to know.”

“She’s lived with the guilt the last twenty years.”