The Last Thing She Ever Did(73)

His words seemed to embolden her a little.

“Really?” Liz asked, although she took the volume down a notch. “I don’t care. I really don’t. I’m not able to turn off my feelings the way you are.”

“I have feelings too,” he said. “I hold them inside. Because if I didn’t, I’d smack you so hard for what you’ve done. How your fuckup has encircled me like a goddamn noose.”

The office door opened, and Damon came inside. He looked concerned as he studied the two of them through his Buddy Holly glasses. “Everything okay?” he asked, looking first at Liz, who wouldn’t even glance in his direction. “Owen?”

“Yes,” he said. “Fine. Just a disagreement about where we’re going on our celebration trip. She says Tahiti, I say Bora-Bora.”

Owen was a facile liar. Liz had always known that about him. She wondered how many times he had turned on a dime and lied to her. He was too quick. Lying was second nature to him. Maybe first nature. It probably took more effort for him to tell the truth.

“Sounds like a lot of disagreement going on here over some pretty good travel choices,” Damon said. “Why don’t you go to both? You can certainly afford it—that is, if you can risk the time off.”

“Right.” Owen forced a smile. “Great plan. Right, Liz?”

“Yes,” she responded, still not making eye contact with her husband or his business partner. “Sounds great to me.”

“Conference call in ten minutes,” Damon said. “Nice seeing you, Liz.”

He shut the door and disappeared.

Liz got up. “You have a line for everything, Owen. I see it. I also see how everything you do is for you. You pretend it’s for us. I know better. I did something terrible and probably completely unforgivable. Carole is about to find out her son’s dead. For all I know, there’s some goddamn DNA or fibers or something that will circle back to me.”

“We were careful,” he said.

“You were careful, Owen. You always are. You cleaned up my mess for yourself. Not for me.”

Owen tried to hug her, but she pushed him away.

“You need to chill, Liz,” he said. “Go home. We can ride this out.”





CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

MISSING: EIGHTEEN DAYS

To Owen Jarrett’s way of thinking, running a restaurant was among the stupidest and riskiest of business endeavors. Not only that, there was no way of getting around the fact that you had to deal with the public every single day. Listening to a litany of complaints while reveling in only occasional praise. The staff problems. The cycle of rinse and repeat for every single lunch and dinner service. While he admired David Franklin’s house, car, and standing in the community as someone everyone seemed to know, he knew that none of what David had had been earned entirely on his own. His wife’s money had kept Sweetwater afloat. It had paid for every single thing the older man had.

Everyone who lived there knew it.

Owen scrolled through the news alerts he’d set up for Charlie’s case. He’d returned to one in particular several times.

Ohio Man Questioned in Boy’s Disappearance Bend police detectives questioned a registered sex offender in connection with the disappearance of Charlie Franklin, the three-year-old Bend boy reported missing by his parents, David and Carole Franklin.

Bradley Collins, 40, of Dayton, Ohio, was interviewed for two hours.

“Collins was cooperative and has been cleared,” said Rick Massey, public information officer for the police department. “He’s one of many leads detectives have been following.”

Massey said that they have no evidence that the boy drowned in the river, was abducted by a stranger, or met with some other foul play.

“We don’t know what happened to Charlie Franklin,” Massey said.



Liz was imploding, and if she totally blew, then he’d be ruined. She’d started this mess, and now it was up to him to find a way to end it all.

He had been sure that Charlie’s body would have been recovered long ago. Finding the body would shift the case to a full-bore abduction/murder investigation. No one on earth would suspect that they would be involved in anything like that. But a registered sex offender, who’d been there on the river when Charlie went missing? Bradley Collins would surely get a very intense second look, from both the cops and the media. Fresh meat for them, instead of gnawing away next door on the only bone they had: what had happened the morning Liz’s RAV4 hit Charlie.

Owen couldn’t wait any longer for the desert to give up the boy’s bones. The longer things festered in uncertainty, the greater the chance that Liz might ignore his warnings and tell the truth.

Only the truth that she knew.

That she had killed the boy.

Which, of course, wasn’t the truth at all.

He had.

Owen left his office at Lumatyx and made his way down the street to Sweetwater. The restaurant was quiet when he arrived, the lull between the early afternoon and early evening rush. Amanda Jenkins, her red hair flowing down her back, was up on a step stool, stretching to reach a blackboard that promoted Alaska king salmon and Ellensburg rack of lamb. As her arm lifted the colored chalk in her hand to gracefully loop out the specials, her short skirt rode up a little to reveal more of her upper thigh than she probably would have liked.