The Girl Who Survived(116)

He walked past the stone wall of the fireplace to the back side of the bin, where there was a definitive line in the siding. Using his key, he unlocked the latch and the door fell open. He slipped inside, crawling through the close, dusty space where cobwebs caught in his hair and slivers from old chunks of fir scraped his hands. Ignoring the irritation, Jonas slid onto the living room floor, just to one side of the grate, and peered around the gloomy interior.

His ribs protested, pain radiating through him, but he ignored it. He hadn’t come this far, spent all those years behind bars to let a few cracked ribs stop him. He gritted his teeth, gutted it out and flipped on his flashlight, the thin bluish beam illuminating, washing over the gray stones and peeling wall paper and dusty floor.

This is where it had all gone down.

He remembered the blood. The fear. The rush of adrenaline.

But most of all, he remembered the sword, how heavy it was. How sharp. He’d made certain of that because he’d wanted it to do as much damage as possible.

And he remembered Donner in the light from the fire, his eyes rounding in surprise as Jonas had swung, the expression of utter surprise and horror on his face when the blade had made its first deadly slice.

“Jonas! What the fuck! You’re insane!” he’d yelled, jumping back toward the Christmas tree. Screaming at the top of his lungs, he’d yelled, “Stop it! Shit! Stop it! Oh, God! Noooo! Help! Help!”

But Jonas hadn’t stopped and it was too late for help and that traitorous fucker had died, his blood spilling red on the carpet, him stumbling to his knees and eventually his head dropping with a heavy thud.

It should have ended there, he thought now as he crossed the room, recalling that once Donner was down, how easy it was to tangle his hand in the prick’s hair, pull his head back and make the final, purposeful cut across his throat.

Now, reliving that rush, Jonas climbed the stairs to the second floor, hurried down the hallway and paused for only a second at the open doorway to his once-upon-a-lifetime-ago bedroom. As if it were yesterday, Jonas recalled practicing his martial arts moves on the stuffed eagle that had been mounted on the wall, how the head had severed in a flurry of feathers.

Smiling to himself, Jonas hurried to the door to the attic and shined his light up the narrow staircase. It had been years since he ascended these worn steps, he thought, securing the door behind him.

Once on the top floor of the house, he shined the beam of his light over this cavernous space with its high-pitched roof and exposed beams. This attic space was where he’d hidden the cash that he’d stolen from the old man’s secret stash. He hardly dared believe it still existed, but this was his chance to find out.

*

Tate drove into the short lane leading to his family’s mountain retreat. The beams of his headlights illuminated the narrow front porch and paned windows of the two-bedroom cottage where he’d spent most of his summers growing up. Built in the 1930s, it was less than a quarter mile from the McIntyre place, and as a kid, Wes had loved it here. Until the night his father had given up his life to save a frantic little girl—this girl, he thought, glancing over at Kara, huddled against the window of his SUV.

Rather than head directly to the house where she’d witnessed the aftermath of her family’s slaughter, Tate had brought her here first, to test her, to see if she could handle being so near the house where she’d witnessed so much tragedy and horror. So far she was handling it, he thought, though she’d grown quieter with each passing mile as they’d driven into the mountains.

“We don’t have to go inside,” he said, but she shook her head.

“I want to.” She was already opening the passenger door and stepping into the weather, ready to face the cold as well as the truth.

“Okay, then.” And he was out of the Toyota.

Together they made their way to the porch, where he fished into his pocket for his father’s set of keys and unlocked the door. She eyed the living room, a small area with the same lumpy couch, rocker and recliner that had furnished the place for as long as Tate could remember. Flipping on the lights, he noticed that one of the bulbs in the old ceiling fixture had burned out and more than a dozen dead insects were silhouetted in the glass.

“No one comes up here much,” he admitted. “Mom remarried, but she never felt comfortable coming back to the spot where Dad died. My sister and her kids try to come up once a year or so, mainly to clean the place, fix stuff, but it’s not the same. We all say we’re going to go up to the cabin ‘next summer.’ But we never do.”

“Why not sell?” she asked, moving toward the kitchen.

“Mom hasn’t been able to, she can’t quite let go,” he admitted, running his fingers over a side table and seeing the dust. “And my sister and I, we don’t think she should. It’s like the whole family is still hanging on to this place because of Dad.” His gaze skimmed over the things that had belonged to Edmund Tate—the photographs, hunting trophies, military paraphernalia, and his heart twisted. “Dad loved it up here.” He felt his throat tighten a bit. “We all did.”

“Until.”

“Right. Until.” He walked through the house, caught sight of the military shadow box in the hallway and something niggled at his brain, something he couldn’t quite grasp. He stared at the nameplate dead center in the box: