Page 57 of One Last Chance

Oh.

“She went missing three years ago, and I . . . I’m here to find her.”

He pressed his hands together, then touched them to his lips. “I know.”

Her eyes widened.

“Deke told me.”

She leaned back. “Right. Deke. You two know each other.”

“Pretty well, yeah. He told me about the case. And how it went nowhere.”

“Yeah. Until a few days ago when I saw a newscast about a woman who was shot in the woods near Copper Mountain Ski Resort. I don’t know . . . I just . . .” She looked out the window. “I’ve never been able to get it out of my head that Kennedy’s still alive. But my parents want to declare her dead and have a memorial service. And I . . . I can’t. Not until I know.”

“You think she was killed by the Midnight Sun Killer.”

“I think she could have been. She matches the profile of his victims. Young—between the ages of seventeen and thirty. Independent. The kind of woman not afraid to hike alone, drive alone, or even stop to help someone on the side of the road. And she was camping near the Copper River where?—”

“All the bodies were found. Or most of them. The girl at the ski resort was found away from the river, up the hill, frozen.”

Her eyes widened. “Really?”

“Mm-Mmmhmm. I was there for that.”

“Oh.”

Maybe, since she’d come clean, he should too. But . . . somehow, looking at the price she’d paid to discover the fate of her sister, he just couldn’t tell her that he’d been the guy who had . . . possibly . . . let . . . Okay, yeah, maybe Moose was right—it was a gulf of a blame jump there.

Still. “Not long ago, Air One rescued a woman who we think might have been picked up by the guy.”

“What?”

“Yeah. They were in an accident in a river. We rescued the woman. The man . . . got away.”

She nodded, swallowed. “He’s still out there.”

He lifted a shoulder.

“Twenty years is a long time to be killing women.” She looked at her hands, closed them. “So many victims. So many untold stories. So many people waiting for answers.”

Aw, she had no idea that his family might be some of those people waiting.

She looked up. “I need to find the guy who was shooting at me.”

“You . . .what?”

“I need to find the shooter. I don’t know why he was shooting, but . . . what if he knows something about Kennedy?”

A beat.

“Okay, I know that sounds crazy, but listen, here’s my working theory. What if he lives around there, or maybe hunts in that area every year, and he saw me? And . . . you know, I am Kennedy. We’re identical twins. And maybe he thought . . . I was a . . .”

“Ghost?”

That seemed to take the wind out of her. She frowned. “Okay, you’re right. That’s nuts. I just . . . I got nothing here.” She leaned away and closed her eyes. “Maybe this is a crazy wild-goose chase. Maybe I should just take my hits, learn my lesson, and go home.” She opened her eyes, met his, relaying so much grief that the pain reached in, twisted everything inside him. “Tell my parents to have that service, bury my sister, so to speak, and move on with my life.”

She looked away, her eyes filling, andman,he couldn’t stop himself?—

---