What Lies in the Woods(86)

“Do you?” he asked.

He touched one thick finger to the underside of my chin, tilting it up. I met his eyes and didn’t flinch. His hand slid forward, fingers around my throat. Just resting there. He leaned in close, until I could see every golden speck in the blue of his eyes. The familiar thrum of fear and desire pierced me like a fishhook, and he smirked like he could sense it.

Why not? part of me wondered. Was he worse than Ethan? Was he worse than what I’d earned? At least I knew already the shape of the cracks he’d leave on my skin. At least I already knew I hated him.

“Get out,” I told him through closed teeth.

His fingers tightened ever so slightly. The pressure cut off my breath for half a second, my muscles tensing in sudden panic—and then he released me. I fought the urge to gasp, to grab for my throat. “No problem,” he said, falling back a step. “Cass just asked me to check on you, that’s all. Make sure you were here, keep an eye on you, that kind of thing.”

Cass had sent Oscar here? This time, when anger flared, it was for her. She might not know the details of what was between Oscar and me, but she knew how I felt about him.

Oscar left at last, leaving me shaky and sick to my stomach. I started to throw the photos and everything else back in the box. There was one more thing at the bottom: a plain manila envelope. I hesitated a moment and then reached for it, shaking it out on the bedspread.

From it spilled a random assortment of photographs and papers, along with a thumb drive labeled “Percy.” With what I’ve got on the guy, he can’t say no to me, I remembered Cass saying.

I spread out the papers and photos with a slow sweep of my hand, feeling uneasy. There didn’t seem to be any clear theme among the documents. A photo showed a man I didn’t know, laughing and holding a bong. A printed-out email from someone at a construction company seemed to be discussing wetland delineation and something about drain tile and “Section 404.” There were a handful of other photographs, some showing obviously sketchy behavior but most seemingly innocent without context. A duplicate check from Meredith Green to someone named Alicia Barlow for $15,000, dated April 2000.

And at the bottom of the stack, there was one more photograph. This one was older, dented from poor storage. It was a photograph of Jim Green, his hands on the hips of a slim woman in tight jeans and a Chester Lumber Co. T-shirt, what looked like the old mill in the background. His head was bent toward hers, almost kissing her. Close enough that there was no ambiguity about his intent, or hers. The woman was in profile, her face turned away from the camera, but still I recognized her.

Jessi Walker.

Jessi’s mystery man was the mayor.

Something like sorrow slithered through me. It wasn’t like I’d ever cared much for Jim. He wasn’t a surrogate father or a protector. But he’d been a constant presence. One more thing turned foul.

When I’d gotten the summer job filing, it had been Meredith’s idea. I’d heard her and Big Jim arguing about it once—what had she said? This way you won’t have to stay late at the office. I’d assumed she’d meant that he wouldn’t have as much work to do. I’d been na?ve in my own way, even after everything that had happened.

I gathered everything and stuffed it back into the envelope. The content of the photograph was less of a surprise than the fact that Cass had it at all. What the hell was this? A blackmail stash?

I shook my head. I didn’t know what the hell Cass was doing with this stuff, but the implications of it were clear. Big Jim had been sleeping with Jessi.

I’d been focused on Oscar—his jealousy, his rage. But jealousy wasn’t the only thing that could drive a man to kill. She’d told Oscar she was going to start a new life with her lover. Which meant she’d thought Big Jim would leave his wife for her. He was going to take her away from this small town and give her everything she dreamed of. Because that’s what you tell your pretty mistress before you get bored with her.

But maybe she pushes. She asks for a deadline. She tells him to step up, or she’ll tell his wife, she’ll tell everyone. So things get heated. Maybe it’s an accident, maybe it’s on purpose, but either way she ends up dead.

Oscar kills her out of jealousy, or Big Jim kills her out of self-preservation. Whichever one of them does it, though, he has to cover it up. He takes her into the woods, shoves her in a hole where she won’t be found.

Except that we found her. The Greens were always in those woods. Hiking, hunting, drinking. What if one of them saw me climbing up out of the Grotto that day, and realized I knew?

Would he have known the others were with me? Liv and Cass had had a sleepover the night before, at Liv’s house, but I couldn’t go because I had a cold. He wouldn’t necessarily have assumed that we’d met up. He might have thought I was alone, or he might not have thought at all—just panicked.

So Cass covers for her brother, or she covers for her father—and either way the result is the same.

I took the paper from my pocket, my finger bumping against the earring case that held Persephone’s bone, and unfolded it. The image of the name change paperwork was pasted in below an email I’d barely glanced at. Just Here’s the paperwork you were asking about. The content didn’t tell me anything. But the email was from [email protected]. Jessup Consulting, Security & Investigations.

They were working for Jim Green. He was the one who’d sent that man to follow me, to break into my hotel room. Protecting his son? Or himself?