The Girl Who Survived(47)

“What the hell are you doing here?” She grasped the steering wheel in a death grip, trying to force herself to concentrate on her driving. The pass was treacherous. Narrow. Cut into the side of the mountain with sheer rock rising on one side and a deep canyon on the other. All that separated her Jeep from that dark, yawning abyss was a slice of icy pavement, a short guard rail and the tops of giant firs, branches glistening with ice. She had to drive. Had to keep the Cherokee on the road, but she was panicking, her pulse was skyrocketing, her mouth dry as cotton and her mind spinning in desperate circles. This couldn’t be happening! Merritt couldn’t be dead, his throat slashed so violently. Jonas couldn’t be—

Stop it. Get a grip. It’s all real. Deal with it, Kara.

“What am I doing here?” Jonas repeated. “What does it look like? Oh, shit.” He dropped out of sight.

Another cop car sped by, lights blazing, siren blasting, only inches separating the two vehicles.

Kara gasped, her heart knocking crazily, the sound of the siren fading.

She glanced in the rearview again. “You’re hiding from the police?”

“Hell, yeah, I am. You were in Margrove’s trailer. You saw him. I heard you call the cops. What do you think they’d do if they pieced it together that I was there? Just out of prison and my attorney ends up dead. Murdered.” His gaze held hers in the mirror. “And just so we’re straight about it. I didn’t kill him. I know it’s what you’re thinking, but I didn’t kill him.” He let out a sharp breath. “Son of a bitch. Son of a goddamned bitch. This is a nightmare. I mean, I’m finally out. Finally, and now . . . now . . . fuck!”

“Merritt is dead,” she reminded him. “This isn’t about you!”

“Isn’t it? Hey, watch the road!”

“I am.” She slowed slightly as the road jogged, the downgrade steepened. “You scared the hell out of me!”

“Couldn’t be helped.”

“Of course it could have been! You didn’t have to pop up in my car like some serial killer in a slasher movie, for Christ’s sake.”

“A slasher movie,” he repeated, and she immediately regretted her words.

“You know what I mean.” She was still trying to calm down, to bring down her racing pulse, but adrenaline was firing her blood and anger was seeping in. “So where have you been, Jonas?” she said, catching his eye in the mirror. “Why the hell were you at Margrove’s? Why didn’t you let me know you were up there?”

“Margrove wanted to meet somewhere private. You know, just him and me.”

“In the middle of nowhere? Why?”

“To avoid the press.”

She squinted through the windshield, adjusted the defrost, the fan whirring loudly. If what Jonas was saying was true, then there was some sense to it. Margrove could hardly have found a more isolated spot. Even now, they’d hardly met a car on the road, the landscape muted, but still—

As if he could read her thoughts, Jonas muttered something unintelligible under his breath. “You don’t believe me.”

“I don’t know what to believe.” And that was the God’s honest truth.

“I didn’t kill him,” Jonas said from the back seat. “That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?”

She opened her mouth, but before she could ask another question, he repeated himself. “I didn’t kill him, okay? He was dead when I got there.”

“And when was that?”

“Like ten, maybe fifteen minutes before you showed up,” he said. “I just told you we had a meeting.”

Don’t believe him, don’t believe him, he’s a liar! You know he’s a liar. And what if he did kill Merritt? Who says he didn’t? Just Jonas, and he was in prison for murdering the family. Right? You’ve defended him, but you’ve always had doubts. Who wouldn’t? The jury convicted him. Remember that!

“A meeting?” she repeated, her mind racing.

“Yes, for Christ’s sake. He’s my . . . was my attorney. And not a great one, if you want to know the truth. Why did it take him twenty years, half my damned life, to find this cop who finally admitted that the police had screwed up? Huh? Why couldn’t he have found the guy before the trial or anytime in between? Trust me, Margrove was no saint. He was paid and paid well.” That much was true. She knew it. Hadn’t that money come out of the estate? “Between Margrove and your aunt, they pretty much helped themselves to every last dime, right?”

“I don’t know.”

He snorted. “You’re supposed to inherit, right. The bulk of the estate soon. If I were you, I wouldn’t count on it. It’s gone.”

“How would you know?”

“I make it my business to know. And now that I’m out, my conviction thrown out, I’m an heir, too. I checked.”

“How? You were . . .”

“Locked away? Behind bars? Cut off from the world?” He snorted. “There are ways, Kara, trust me.” Jonas was working himself up. “You should have been on top of the money.”

“I was eight!” The snow was falling so fast, she had to up the tempo of the wipers.

“Yeah . . . well, they took advantage of you. Of us.” Tapping his fingers on the edge of the window, he asked, “What happened to the house? You still live there?”