Page 42 of Dangerous Lies

Her voice caught, barely a hitch, but Jax heard it.

His chest clenched. His instinct was to reach out—to comfort her—but doing so might break her concentration. “Oliver’s car was found half a mile away with a flat tire. Did he say anything to you about that?”

“No. I learned that later.” She let out a long exhale. “When Oliver didn’t show up, I kept driving a little farther down the road.”

Jax eased off the brake, letting the SUV roll forward. They passed the fallen tree, the windshield wipers sweeping away the rain as a dirt road turnoff appeared in the headlights.

“Stop!” She pointed to a cluster of trees on the left. “There. That’s where he came from. Oliver was soaking wet. No jacket. His hair was plastered to his head, like he’d been out in the storm the whole time. There was a scuff on his chin, like he’d been in a fight. It looked fresh, but I dismissed it at the time.”

“Makes sense. He was often involved in fights for Zeke.” Jax frowned, thinking back on the official reports. Megan was right. Oliver had been dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved shirt that night. No jacket. It was a small detail, but it mattered. “His jacket wasn’t in his car either. Investigators assumed that Oliver’s tire went flat, and that’s when he called you. But his car was half a mile from here. Assuming he came here to meet someone…” Jax shifted in his seat, looking at the thick forest surrounding them. “It’s raining. It’s cold. No one would stand around in a storm.”

“He smelled like hay when he got in my car.” Megan inhaled sharply. “There’s a barn at the end of that dirt road. Oliver was the one who showed it to me.” She hesitated and then admitted, “We used to get high there. Have parties sometimes.”

Jax had forgotten all about the barn. “Oliver used to go there as a kid.”

“What if he met Zeke there? Or if not Zeke, the person who attacked him?”

Jax’s mind raced as childhood memories surfaced. “There’s a trail that cuts through the woods to the barn. Based on where Oliver’s car was found, he must have taken that path.” Frustration burned through him. “When I surveyed the scene after joining the police department, the path was overgrown. I didn’t remember it was there until now.”

Megan wasn’t the only one with buried memories. Jax's heart pounded against his rib cage. They were on the cusp of figuring out what had happened to Oliver. He could feel it. Tomorrow morning, at first light, they would get a search warrant for the barn. Ten years had passed, but it might still contain clues that would lead them to the killer.

Jax drummed his fingers against the steering wheel. “Whoever Oliver was meeting with, the arrangement was made in person. There was nothing in his cell phone records.” He glanced at Megan. “Oliver drives here. Parks his car. Walks the path to the barn to meet someone.”

“But something goes wrong.” Megan picked up his train of thought. “There’s an altercation. Oliver gets a scrape on his chin and loses his jacket. Runs away and calls me, begs me to pick him up.”

“Why you?” Jax had asked that question many times during the investigation. “He had other friends. You and Oliver hadn’t spoken in months. Why reach out to you?”

“I’ve been thinking about that. Oliver was an informant for the sheriff’s department. He’d turned on Zeke, which meant turning on everyone in that world. Maybe he was worried that no one else could be trusted.”

It made sense. “You weren’t a part of that circle anymore.”

“No. I dropped all of those friends when I got sober.” Megan ran her hands over her jeans and breathed out. “Oh Jax, what if he was going to get clean? We talked about it months before. I told him life would get better once he got off drugs, that I’d help him. Oliver didn’t accept my offer at the time, but I felt like he heard me. So much so, I thought he’d call in a week or two.”

His heart stuttered. Jax didn’t know if it made things worse or better to realize that his brother may have finally decided to straighten out his life. He swallowed hard. “It makes sense he was considering it. Especially if he was feeding information to the sheriff’s department about Zeke.” Jax stared at the empty road and the woods beyond. “But he was high at the time of the accident. So maybe that’s just wishful thinking.”

“I’m sorry.” Megan’s hand came to rest on his arm. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“No. It’s better you did. We don’t know which details are important and which ones aren’t.” He tossed her a reassuring look. “This is good. We’re making progress. Let’s keep going.” His gaze flicked back to the cluster of trees where Oliver had hidden that night. “What happened after he got in your car?”

“He was panicked. He yelled at me to drive. Told me someone was trying to kill him.” Megan pointed down the road. “I went that way. The rain was beating against the car and Oliver was shouting…” She bit her lip. “I couldn’t follow everything he was saying.”

Jax eased off the brake again, and the truck rolled forward. A part of him hated bringing Megan back to the crash site, but he recognized it might dredge up a memory that would crack the case wide open. “When did you see the headlights behind you?”

“Not until they were right on top of us.” She hugged her arms around herself as the woods along the left side of the road thinned, revealing a steep drop off into a drainage ditch. “The truck rammed us, and I screamed. It was hard to keep my sedan on the road. Oliver…” Her eyes widened as she inhaled sharply. “Oliver said, I never should’ve trusted him. He’s going to kill us.”

“He could’ve been talking about Zeke. You said the vehicle was a truck. Are you sure?”

She frowned. “I remember thinking it was a truck because of its size, but… it could’ve been an SUV. Maybe even a van.”

That fit. Zeke had an Explorer.

“Oliver was yelling at me to drive faster.” Megan’s voice was hollow, like she was lost in memories. “Then he grabbed the wheel. I fought him for control, and that’s when the truck rammed us again.” She swallowed hard. “And then… we went off the embankment.”

Jax brought his SUV to a stop. Even after ten years, some of the trees still bore the scars from the crash—deep gouges in the bark where Megan’s sedan had torn through them before plunging into the ditch. Rainwater rushed through the culvert below, not deep enough to swallow a car, but enough to have half-submerged the front of her Toyota that night.

Megan reached for the door handle. A second later, she was outside, standing on the side of the road, staring down at the ditch. Jax shoved the SUV into park. Rain smacked the top of his cowboy hat and slid down the collar of his jacket. When he reached Megan, his chest clenched at the look on her face.

Pain. Grief. Heartache.

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