Darkest Journey (Krewe of Hunters #20)(37)

“I don’t think you imagined anything. And I’m not sure you should be around here right now. Aren’t you done filming your scenes?” he asked.

She made a point of looking down at the grass.

“Charlie?”

“Mostly,” she said.

Ethan turned suddenly, a shiver running up his spine, and saw that they weren’t alone. Two people were standing near them on the bluff.

Barry Seymour and Luke Mayfield.

“Are we missing another prop?” Charlie asked as soon as she noticed them, too.

“Yeah, but, don’t worry, we’ll find it,” Barry called back.

Ethan grabbed Charlie by the hand and led her over to the others. “We’ll help,” he said.

“It’s all right,” Luke said. He glanced uneasily at Barry.

“What is it?” Ethan demanded.

Luke let out a sigh.

Barry spoke. “An Enfield rifle. With a bayonet. And we didn’t lose it today,” he added in a rush. “Luke and I were just helping some of the others—Brad and Mike, Jennie—go through the props. But...when we counted the Enfield rifles—reproductions, not collector’s items—we realized we were missing one.”

“How long has it been missing?” Ethan asked sharply.

Barry and Luke looked at each other again.

“We’re not sure,” Barry said.

“The last time we had a record of anyone using it was a couple of weeks back—first day of filming some retro shots.” Luke hesitated again. “It was before...before the whole special programming thing we did on the Journey. And it was just one of a bunch of props we signed out, so there’s no record of who, specifically, was using it.”

“Brad’s calling that cop, Detective Laurent, right now,” Barry said. “But Luke and I thought we should search the field one more time. We were thinking that maybe it got lost on the field.”

“We were just hoping against hope that we could find it before we had to tell you about it, too,” Luke said.

“We’ll help you look,” Ethan said.

He created a grid, scratching lines into the ground with a tree branch, and then all four of them went to work.

It was a lot of ground to cover, so it was a relief when Brad and Mike arrived, looking embarrassed and upset, and joined the search.

To no avail.

An hour later, there was no sign of the rifle and bayonet.

And no sign of a knife, either.

“It’s too dark to keep going,” Brad said. “We can try again in the morning.” He cleared his throat. “I told Laurent, so—”

“So we can get the police out here to help once it gets light,” Ethan finished for him.

Now, though, it was time to head back. Clean up. Have dinner.

And put in a call to Jackson Crow.

They were a glum group as they headed for their cars.

Still, Brad tried to be cheerful. “See you at the café,” he said, forcing a smile.

They waved to one another, and then, at last, he was alone with Charlie in his rented SUV. He met her eyes. “You should know there’s a leak somewhere. The media have the information that the medical examiner thinks both men were killed with a bayonet.”

“And you think that the missing bayonet is the bayonet. The murder weapon,” she added softly.

“Well, on the plus side, the fact that it’s missing will make the local authorities think that the movie crew are as suspicious as your father,” he said.

“Great,” Charlie murmured. “I’m supposed to suspect my father or my friends.”

“You’ve really got to stay away from that whole area now,” Ethan told her. “Someone threw that knife for a reason, and until we know what that reason is, what someone—probably the killer—thinks you know, I don’t want you out in the open that way.”

She didn’t reply. She was looking out the window.

“Charlie?”

“I hear you,” she said, turning to look at him, serious at first, and then she smiled.

When they reached her place, she looked at him and flushed slightly. “You’re not just going to drop me here, are you?”

“Nope. I’m like a Boy Scout. Always prepared. I brought some things with me last night.”

“Good planning. Thank you.”

“Charlie, I don’t like the idea that someone was snooping around here.”

“I really might have imagined the knife, though. We didn’t find it.”

“No, we didn’t.” Whoever had thrown it might have gone back for it before they went back to search, but he didn’t want to tell her that. She was worried enough as it was.

He stopped her just as she was about to slip the key into the lock, stepped forward and examined the door. Satisfied that no one had tried to pry it open, he nodded at her.

“We’re going to be late to the café,” she said, leading the way inside.

“Not that late. I’ll see you back down here in twenty minutes—if you can be ready that fast, that is,” he teased, trying to lighten the mood.

“Hey, you may be FBI, but I majored in theater. I can be ready to go in about fifteen minutes,” she said, then turned and raced up the stairs.