Page 21 of So Dark

He stared at her a moment longer. “Use the truck instead.”

Worth a shot.“I’ll think about. Thank you.”

They stepped inside the truck, and Michael turned to Faith. “So what do you think?”

“He’s shady as hell. And he has motive and resources. He’s clearly an asshole, and he has a tough guy shell that masks an anxious and insecure personality.”

“So you like him for it.”

“I do. But we don’t have enough to bring him in right now.”

Michael frowned. “Yeah. We can watch him, though.”

Faith nodded. “That’s what we’ll do. We’ll get some supplies and set up down the street. When we see him leave, we’ll follow him.”

“You don’t want to have the police do that?”

She shook her head. “Not yet. We’ll watch him today. If we don’t notice anything, then we’ll go from there.”

Michael checked something on his phone. “Well, we have internet, so I’ll accept that for now, but I don’t think we should put all of our eggs in a Tundra Outfitters basket.”

She raised her eyebrow. “You don’t like him?”

He rubbed his chin. “I don’t know. The guy who set those traps prides himself on being unseen. He wanted his prey to have no idea what was coming to them. Garrett strikes me as more of a peacock. He’d want them to know it was him. If they had been shot in the face, I’d like Garrett, but… yeah, I don’tknow. We’ll watch him for now, but I think we should look for other options too.”

Faith looked at Turk. He still stared at the shop, his eyes alert, his body coiled like a spring. “You like him, boy?”

Turk met her eyes. She recognized uncertainty in his gaze and sighed. “We’ll get him,” she said. “Whoever he is. We’ll get him.”

She had a good feeling about Garrett, but after talking to Michael, that good feeling was a lot less powerful. And if it wasn’t Garrett, then they were back to square zero, and that was a place she very much didn’t want to be. Not when their killer was already two steps ahead.

CHAPTER NINE

The rest of the day was a series of disappointments. Wyatt called around lunchtime to tell them that they had cleared every member of each victim's family. The reason was a simple and common one: they were thousands of miles away at the time of the murders.

As for friends, that proved to be as difficult as Wyatt predicted. They had neighbors, but they were both of the self-reliant type and rarely interacted with them. People knew that Ethan and Valerie had left for excursions into the wilderness, but they didn’t know why or for how long or if anyone followed them or went before them. Alibis began to arrive for the neighbors as well, timestamped receipts and photographs from local businesses and occasionally security camera footage.

It was incredible in the worst possible way how difficult it was for them to find suspects. The pool was so small. There were fewer than a thousand people within a hundred miles in either direction. It should be easy to find people who knew them or had motive, but other than Garrett, there was nothing.

Faith wondered if this was the way cases went in the dark ages before computers. Nowadays, it was so easy to learn everything there was to know about someone with a few hours and a search engine, but up here, that tool was almost useless. She hated to think that someone could get away with crimes like this, but with no record of anyone’s activities or relationships, it was getting easier to see how people could walk out into the wilderness and just disappear.

They got snack foods and drinks from the local general store and sat in their truck waiting for Garrett to leave his shop. The sun rose high—well, actually, low—and set just after four o'clock.

“I wonder why we’re handling the cold so well?” Michael asked out of nowhere. “I mean, we have thick coats and stuff, but I feel like we should be in a lot more pain than we are.”

“We’re probably more focused on the dead-in-the-water murder investigation,” Faith suggested.

“Jeez. I was just going to say that we’re badass.”

“Sure. I’ll go with that.”

Michael looked at her for a moment. “We’ll get this guy, Faith. We always do.”

“AndIalways say I’m not afraid we won’t catch him; I’m afraid we won’t catch him in time. However, this time, I do wonder. The normal avenues of investigation are closed to us. People here love their privacy a little too much.”

“Yeah, but we always find a way. We just don’t know what that way is yet.”

She managed a soft smile. “You’re right. I just wish things could be simple sometimes.”

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