Page 74 of Threat of Danger
THE FOLLOWING MORNING,Jess and Zelda headed to Burlington. Zelda dozed in the passenger seat. She must not have gotten enough sleep last night, worrying about Chuck.
Jess stopped at the end of the long Taylor driveway as Derek’s truck passed on the road going east. He waved at her.
Going for his walk in the woods.The quick thought snagged in Jess’s brain as she turned west, toward the city.
Derek walks by a river every day. With a stick.
He did have a limp, but he didn’t normally use a stick for walking. The times she’d seen him in the woods, he hadn’t been using the stick for support either. He was scratching through the mud on the riverbank with it.
Almost as if ...
As if he was looking for something.
Jess kept her eyes on the road and the sparse traffic, as she mulled over the idea of Derek’s walks having a purpose. What was he looking for?
He’d found bones, she knew that.Hannah Wilson’s.
Jess’s throat tightened at the thought. Every time she thought of the poor girl, she wanted to cry. Nobody knew what Hannah had gone through more than Jess did.
Although, Derek knewsome—
Was he looking for bones on his daily walks?The thought knocked Jess sideways.
Whose bones?
He walked by the river. Every day. All the way to the bend.
Whatever fell into the water usually washed ashore at the bend—mostly dead animal carcasses. Nobody walked all the way down there. The place stank half the time, and garbage littered the riverbank.
Derek. The river. Bones.
Jess was parking her car at the hospital by the time she put it all together. Derek had been looking for the bones of the masked man who’d kidnapped them.
Because Derek, like Jess, didn’t believe that the man had drowned. So Derek kept searching for proof. But he’d found Hannah’s bones instead.
Jess’s heart pounded. She hadn’t been alone in her suspicions all along. Derek too had his doubts about the masked man’s death. She sucked in a sharp breath. They needed to talk about this.
As soon as Jess parked the car, Zelda woke. She blinked and blinked again. “I fell asleep. Sorry.”
Jess schooled her expression. She didn’t want Zelda to see that something was wrong. Zelda and Chuck needed to be her focus right now.
She unsnapped her seat belt. “You needed the rest. Ready?”
Zelda groaned as she unfolded her legs and slipped out of the car. “I’m too old to sleep sitting up.” She hung on to the door. “My knees get too stiff.” She bent them slowly, one after the other.
Jess came around and offered her arm. “We can walk around a little. Want to check out the indoor garden on the ground level? Move a little before you sit again by Chuck?”
“Maybe later.” Zelda closed her door at last, clutched her purse to her side, and shuffled toward the lobby.
They popped in on Chuck first so they could report on him to Rose. Jess stayed with her mother, and Zelda went back down to Chuck and Kaylee.
An hour later, when Jess and Kaylee left for home, Zelda stayed.
At the house, Jess fed Kaylee lunch. Derek was at the sugar shack, supervising the work. She’d seen his truck parked up front. She didn’t call down to invite him to join them for the meal. Her mind and feelings were in turmoil. She didn’t know what she would say about his search. And whatever she decided to say to him, it wasn’t a conversation to have in front of Kaylee.
Jess avoided him for the rest of the day. At six, she drove with Kaylee to the hospital and brought Zelda home. They heated up leftovers. Zelda set a plate for Derek, but he didn’t come up to the house for dinner. Jess was relieved.
Relieved or not, she couldn’t sleep. A thousand thoughts zoomed around in her head, until, nearly at midnight, she bolted up in bed. Zelda was asleep in her new room downstairs. Jess dragged on her clothes, hopped into her car, and drove over to Derek’s place.
