The Overnight Guest(75)

“What about the gunshot?” Santos asked. “Anyone hurt?”

“I couldn’t see. The smoke is too thick.” The deputy bent over, hands on his knees, and coughed and gagged.

“You go,” Santos said. “Make sure everyone is well away from the property. Call in backup.” The deputy nodded and disappeared into a black cloud.

Santos knew she should retreat and go to safety too, but the sheriff hadn’t emerged from the smoke and she couldn’t leave him behind. Shrugging out of her suit jacket, Santos used it to cover her face and went deeper into the smoke.

The pyre of rubber tires was fully engulfed in fire, and Jackson Henley, brandishing a shotgun, was standing in front of it, his eyes as wild as the flames behind him. Several gas cans lay at his feet.

Santos tossed aside her jacket and raised her sidearm.

The sheriff, overcome with toxic fumes, was on his knees, struggling for air. “Jackson Henley,” Santos called through the smoke. “Put your weapon down.”

“I knew you would come,” Jackson slurred. He was drunk, Santos thought, making him more dangerous and unpredictable. His face was black with soot, and his pale blue eyes sparked with anger. “I tried to help that girl. She was bleeding and all I wanted to do was help her. Now you think I took her.”

The black smoke was hardening like cement in her lungs. She needed to get Butler out of there; she needed to get out of there.

She considered shooting Henley. It would be the fastest resolution. Santos knew she’d be justified—he was waving a shotgun around. It was almost as if he was begging to be shot. But there were so many unanswered questions that she needed to know the answers to, the number one being the whereabouts of Becky Allen. If he died, Becky Allen could die with him.

Santos made a decision. It was a risky one, but it could be their only chance to learn the truth. She lowered her gun knowing that her fellow officers had her covered.

“Come on, Jackson,” Santos said. “Let’s talk about this. I want to hear what you have to say, just not this way. Not here. Let’s go somewhere safe.”

Henley shook his head. “You won’t believe me. No one ever believes me.”

“That’s not true,” Santos said in a rush. “Your mother believes you, I believe you.”

Henley gave a bitter laugh and kicked over a nearby gas can and it exploded with a loud pop. Jackson Henley watched, mesmerized, as the fire rushed toward him. The flames, following a frenetic path across the ground, coiled their way around his ankle like fiery snakes and slithered up his leg.

Agent Santos tossed her gun aside and rushed toward Henley. Using her jacket, she tried to smother the flames that covered Jackson’s leg and had jumped to his arms.

A rush of firefighters in protective gear came toward them. Someone pressed an oxygen mask to her face and she was lifted to her feet.

Anguished screams filled her ears. Jackson Henley was alive, and he would tell them what happened to Becky Allen.



40


Present Day

Training her flashlight on the man, Wylie examined his face more closely. He was twenty-two years older, of course, and his hair had receded, exposing a broad, heavily creased forehead with a sparse whorl of gray hair. But there was no denying who it was—she could see the thick, rough scars just below his jawline. She had seen his picture a thousand times on the news, in the newspaper clippings she kept over the years. This was Jackson Henley, the man who murdered her family, had taken Becky, and now he was back to claim her.

Wylie fought the urge to smash him in the face with her flashlight. To kick and beat him until he was as bloody and broken as her parents and brother were. She wanted him dead. But she had to hold her fury in check, at least for now. She needed to make sure he didn’t come inside the house.

“I saw the wreck and thought someone might need some help down here. I was just getting ready to knock.”

“No, we’re fine,” Wylie managed to say, then mentally kicked herself for signaling that she wasn’t there alone. “My husband and I are just fine,” she lied hoping that would do the trick and he’d just leave.

“That must have been one hell of a crash,” Jackson said. “I saw some lights. I thought any survivors might have come here to get out of the storm. It’s the closest house to the wreck. I didn’t think anyone was living here right now,” he said, removing his stocking cap from his head.

Jackson didn’t recognize who she was or at least made a good show of pretending not to know her. Wylie and her grandparents had left the area soon after the funerals. She’d been gone for over twenty years, and no one here knew that Josie Doyle had come back to town as Wylie Lark.

But Wylie had been watching Jackson Henley. She drove past his home—the same one that he’d lived in with his mother. He had cleaned up most of the junk—the tires, the farm equipment—all gone. All that remained were a few vehicles parked in his yard. What she hadn’t known was that he was a snowplow driver.

“Anyone from the crash show up?” Jackson asked.

Wylie paused before speaking. If Jackson had been watching her as closely as she had been watching him, he’d know that she didn’t have a husband, that she was here all alone. She had been so careful though not to have any interactions with the locals. All her interviews for the book had been done months ago by phone. She hadn’t wanted anyone to know who she really was.