Keith continued. “I don’t know if I like that tattoo or not, though.” He pulled her shirt up a little, staring at her side. “Too bad you covered up your scars. I rather liked them.”
It was hard not to answer him. To tell him there was a special place in hell for people like him, but for now, Mckenna stayed quiet, biding her time. He was having so much fun goading her, she could tell he wasn’t making the knots as tight as he should.
“Well,” Keith said, standing, “that should hold you for now. I need a little time to get my plan in action. I’ll have to be careful, but if I do this right, Rex over there will take the blame.”
Mckenna wondered how he was going to do that.
As if reading her thoughts, Keith said, “He’s a bit beat up, but after we play our game of catch and release over and over, I think you might be a little beat up too. I’m thinking through a scenario where you fought him, so he has defensive wounds all over him. And you almost escaped. Almost. But then he caughtyou and killed you. I’ll make sure your FBI lover finds Rex with the murder weapon. Meanwhile, I have a job offer in Wyoming. I hear it can be a remote place to live. Not many people up there. Just the way I like it.”
Keith walked out the door. “Don’t go anywhere. Not yet.”
CHAPTER 38
Flooring the bu-car, Evan cursed the winding road with the switchbacks that forced him to slow down as he drove to Lily’s house. He would accelerate on the straightaways. After what seemed like an eternity, he arrived at the entrance to Lily’s house.
Cassidy’s vehicle was already parked there, and she wasn’t in it. She must be inside. Evan leaped out of his car and up the steps where the door opened for him. Brenda, Lily’s mother, invited him in.
“Agent Knox,” she said. “The other agent is in the living room with Lily.”
“Thanks,” he said. “Were you here when Mckenna was?”
“No, I was out grocery shopping. When Mckenna called I thought it would be great for her to come by and check on Lily so that she didn’t have to be alone.”
“Okay,” Evan said, heading into the living room where Cassidy was already seated. Lily was holding a pillow against her chest and appeared worried.
“You’re not in any trouble,” Cassidy was saying to her. “We just need some information. Okay?”
Lily nodded and clutched her pillow tighter.
“When Mckenna came here today, what did she want?” Cassidy asked.
“She wanted to see if we had similar memories.”
“Similar memories?” Cassidy asked.
“Yes, she thought we’d been taken by the same person,” Lily answered.
Evan could tell Cassidy was trying to wrap her head around that thought. Mckenna had told him that her older sister doubted her feeling that Toby was innocent. He spoke before Cassidy could question the idea. “What specifically did she ask you?”
Lily glanced back and forth and said, “We talked about the bad smell and dancing trees.”
Evan didn’t know what to make of dancing trees. He’d start with one thing at a time. “I remember you talking about the smell before. Mckenna too.”
“Yeah, like rotten eggs. Mckenna said it could be from a mine that was near where we were kept. From fool’s gold or something like that.”
Evan thought about the ghost town Mckenna had mentioned. He hadn’t made it there yet himself, with everything else going on. A sheriff’s deputy had gone there and wasn’t able to find signs of anyone being kept in any of the old buildings, but Evan didn’t know if the deputy had searched the whole area. Evan had googled pictures of the town. There were no obvious mining areas in the pictures, but like so many Colorado ghost towns, it had been built during the gold rush. If the mine was nearby, but no longer in any kind of use, trees and shrubs may have overgrown the area or any surrounding buildings. That might be why the previous sheriff couldn’t find where Mckenna was held.
“Tell me about the dancing trees,” Evan said.
“Well, they’re not really dancing, you know, but they look cool because the trunks are all curved in the same direction. Mckenna and I both thought they seemed like they were dancing.”
“I’ve seen pictures of trees like that. Aspen trees,” Cassidy said.
“They were aspens,” Lily said. “We both thought maybe we were seeing things because we were drugged.”
The ghost town had to be the key. If there was an old mine in the area, then maybe that was where Mckenna had been held. And maybe where she had gone looking for answers. It was Evan’s best lead. Should he go out there himself? See if a deputy could go? It was Mckenna. For any other case, he might send a deputy, but this was different. Mckenna was different. She’d changed his life in ways he hadn’t expected. He couldn’t imagine a life without her.
“What else did she ask you?” Evan said. The more information the better. Cassidy was watching him but allowing him to take the lead now in the questioning.