The Girl Who Survived(48)

“No . . . oh, no.” She shook her head violently, saw the curve up ahead and slowed, the Jeep shimmying slightly. “I have my own place.”

“Lucky you.”

“Jonas—”

“Was it sold then? The house?”

“No . . . it couldn’t be.” She eased around the curve, felt the tires slide a bit. “Not according to the trust.”

“So?”

“Aunt Faiza lives there.”

“What! Faiza? Shit!” He let out a long breath. “You’re fucking kidding!”

“I thought you made it your business to know these things.”

“I guess Margrove had his reasons to keep that little fact from me.” He glowered into the night, his fingers still tapping rhythmically on the glass. “I wonder how much else he hid? How much he bled from the estate?” She caught his grimace in the mirror, his lips razor thin. “I want it.”

“What? You want the house?”

“I figure it’s owed to me. It and a whole lot more.”

“If you say so.”

The tempo of his nervous tapping quickened, and the interior of the vehicle seemed to shrink. “Look, just so you know, and you’re not disappointed. You shouldn’t expect any big payout when your time comes to inherit. I’m pretty sure that between Faiza, our loving aunt, and that fucker Margrove, there isn’t much left.”

Her stomach knotted at this unexpected turn in the conversation. “I don’t know what to expect.”

“As I said, I’m taking the house. I don’t care who I have to sue.”

“Auntie Fai, okay, but Margrove—”

“Was an incompetent clown. A has-been!” Jonas said emphatically. “It took him years . . . Years to get me out. While the cop with the conscience, that Randall guy who ratted out the rest of the cops, was right under Margrove’s goddamned nose!” Jonas thumped the armrest in frustration. “I spent half my fuckin’ life locked up because he was so incompetent! Jesus H. Christ, could he have been any worse?”

“He stuck with you,” she argued, though the points Jonas was making were valid, if sharp enough to cut deep, make her reexamine her beliefs. Another curve as they headed downhill, the beams of her headlights reflecting on the swirling snow.

“Cuz no one else would have him. And it seems, because he was skimming from the estate. I shoulda known. Shit, I should never have trusted him.”

She didn’t like where this was going. “I thought you turned all religious, that you found God or something while you were in prison.”

He shot her a look in the mirror. “I did.”

“Doesn’t sound like it. You aren’t exactly turning the other cheek.”

“Didn’t you hear me?” he spat. “Twenty fucking years. You try that on for size.”

She wondered. Jonas seemed angry, tough and, yeah, scared. Like her after finding the body, but she saw nothing of the spiritual, calm man he was supposed to have become. She passed a sign warning of a steep downgrade and her palms began to sweat on the wheel. “How’d you get to Margrove’s?”

“A ride.”

“With who?”

He hesitated, then slashed her a dark look in the mirror, his features shadowed. “Mia.”

“Who’s . . . who’s Mia?” Jonas had a girlfriend?

“Someone who cares, okay?” He glared at her. “Unlike everyone else.”

She knew who everyone was. Not just her and Margrove. Jonas felt completely abandoned; she’d heard that from the attorney. His mother, Daddy’s second wife, Natalie, had fled the area after the murders and her only son’s arrest. Kara had no idea what had happened to her. As for Lacey Higgins, who had been Jonas’s girlfriend at the time of the massacre, the girl whom Jonas had supposedly found screwing around with Donner, she had testified against him and never spoken to him again. At least that’s what she’d heard Margrove say to his wife once when Kara had been staying at his house for a weekend. She’d snuck down to the kitchen for a soda, and Margrove and his wife Helen had been in the den, the TV on, a fire burning in the fireplace. “The kid feels completely alone. Even his own mother won’t visit. And that girlfriend of his?” Margrove had let out a disgusted sigh. “First, she screws his stepbrother, then that testimony.”

“It did sound bad,” his wife had admitted.

“I know, I know, but he was just an angry kid.”

“An angry kid who had trouble with the law before. And hadn’t he broken a kid’s arm in grade school, right, when they were wrestling?”

“That was an accident,” Margrove had snorted.

“Maybe, but hadn’t he gotten into a fight with Donner Robinson just the week before the massacre?”

He’d sighed. “Brothers.”

“Stepbrothers,” she had reminded him. “Full of raging hormones—too much testosterone. What do you always call it? ‘Piss and vinegar’?”

Silence.

“If you ask me—”

“I didn’t.”

“Too bad, you need to hear this. Jonas McIntyre took things to the next level. You know it. I know it. And the judge and jury knew it. I wouldn’t blame Lacey Higgins one bit for not wanting to hitch her wagon to him, if you know what I mean.”