Page 99 of Misdirection

“Why did Sonny contact you?”

“An alarm went off at work, and he became concerned. I was heading into the office to check it out. He just texted back a few minutes ago and said he figured things out.”

“And you couldn’t have told me that?” Olive was trying to understand his reasoning and keep her emotions at bay.

“I wanted to get more information before I shared anything.”

She cocked her head as she stared at him. “Why?”

Jason met her gaze. “Because it looks like Duncan caused the alarm to go off . . . I didn’t want to paint him in a bad light if it wasn’t necessary.”

Duncan? He’d fallen off Olive’s radar.

What if he shouldn’t have?

CHAPTER 42

EIGHT YEARS AGO

Olive stared at the parsonage in front of her: the one-time all-American home where a semi-normal family had lived.

Now the place was a house of horror.

The place where four people had needlessly died.

Four people Olive had loved dearly.

Tom had brought Olive by one last time before she moved two hours away to his home, where she would complete her senior year of high school.

Several people in Galax had offered to let Olive stay with them. People from church. One of her friends from school. Even Chief Maier.

But Olive couldn’t see herself staying in this town. Not knowing what she did and experiencing the things she’d experienced.

So she’d told everyone else no, and she’d told Tom yes.

She wasn’t sure how the arrangement would work out.

But if she were honest with herself, she might admit she had ulterior motives for agreeing.

One reason was that her family’s killer hadn’t been caught.

The other reason was she honestly did intend to find whoever was responsible.

Who better to teach her how to do that than Tom? Only he didn’t know it yet.

But Olive wanted to learn everything she could from him. Then she wanted to apply that knowledge to her investigation.

She didn’t know how long that would take. As a seventeen-year-old, there wasn’t much she could do. Especially if the killer wasn’t from this area—and she was beginning to suspect he wasn’t.

She believed this killer was someone from her dad’s past who’d come back to teach him a lesson.

That meant she had many years to dig through to see what she could uncover.

But it wouldn’t be that simple either. She’d need money to support herself, and her mom and dad’s bank account had been empty.

Empty.

Olive couldn’t believe it. There was absolutely nothing for her. Even the parsonage belonged to the church, so she wouldn’t get any money from that.

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