Page 80 of Face Her Fear

“It wasn’t Sandrine,” Josie said. “She didn’t kill Meg or Taryn. Brian did.”

Nicola’s head swiveled toward Josie. She laughed. “Don’t be absurd and don’t take Sandrine’s side. We’re not murderers.”

Brian didn’t take his eyes off Josie but when he spoke, it was to Nicola. “Speak for yourself.”

Then his fist shot out, connecting with Nicola’s temple. She dropped where she stood.

FIFTY-THREE

Sandrine and Alice screamed at the same time. Alice turned and tried to pull the door open, but Brian was too quick. He grabbed her by the collar, whipping her entire body down, over the bed frame, and onto the floor. He put a boot across her throat. Her hands shook violently as she tried to pry it away. Sandrine slid along the wall, as far from him as she could get. Josie bent her knees, lid at the ready. She tried to stay out of his swinging range though. His left hook was nasty. Under his foot, Alice squirmed.

Staring at Josie, he shook his head. “So fucking nosy. You can’t help yourself, can you? You’re worse than Meg.”

“She saw you with that pen,” Josie said. “With the SD cards.”

“Yes, she came out of her cabin that first night it snowed. I don’t know where she was going but she saw me coming from the main house. Except I didn’t realize it because it was really dark and neither one of us had our lanterns with us. Both sneaking around. I don’t know if she was spying on me or what.”

Josie knew she’d been headed to see Taryn but to Meg, almost everyone was suspicious. She’d happened on Brian at the wrong time and approached him.

“I had this thing in my hand. I’d been changing out the cards. I was trying to get the stupid cap on and dropped it. I had my phone with me. I was using the flashlight app to find all the cards. She saw. Didn’t give me a chance to explain. Just called me a pervert and said she was going to get off the mountain and call the police. So I hit her with this and then I dragged her down the path and strangled her with her own scarf. I took some of her clothes off to make it look like she got hypothermia. What else do you want to know before I crush your friend’s windpipe?”

Alice squirmed harder, squeaking like an animal caught in a trap.

Josie tried to keep Brian talking so he wouldn’t hurt Alice anymore while another part of her brain worked to figure a way out. Sandrine, now cowering in the corner, couldn’t be counted on to help. Nicola was a heap on the floor. Josie wasn’t even sure if she was still alive.

Alice wrapped her hands around Brian’s ankle and tried to twist it, but he pressed down harder, leaving her gasping for breath.

Josie took in the room. Her options. She could drop the lid and launch herself at him. Drive her shoulder into his hip. Fold him in half and send them both flying backward over the bed frame and into the door. But then she’d have no weapon and he’d still have a lot of advantage over her. It would come down to hand-to-hand battle. Close quarters. He was a lot bigger than her. Even at close range, he could do some damage. Then again, she’d taken on bigger, angrier men than him before.

“Why did you kill Taryn?” Josie asked.

“She was going to blow up the entire plan,” he replied. “She said she loved Sandrine and only wanted to have a relationship with her. She didn’t care what Sandrine had done in the past. She was going to expose all of us and excuse this piece of garbage, even though she is a murderer. I couldn’t let her do it.”

“Where is her body?” asked Josie.

“You’re the one who knows everything,” Brian said. “You tell me.”

Josie thought about the night Taryn had disappeared, now knowing that Brian had been behind it. Alice had said Taryn was going to her cabin but hadn’t actually seen her leave. No one had seen her on the path. Brian had been in the main house the entire time. When Josie arrived, he’d been by the fire. He said he’d been there the whole time except when he went to check the generator.

When Taryn came out of the breakout room to go to her cabin, she would have seen him. They would have been alone in the great room.

“You killed her in the main house,” Josie said. “She never went to the cabin.”

An evil smile slithered across Brian’s face, but he let up on Alice’s throat slightly. Josie watched her suck in several breaths.

“You’re too smart for your own good,” Brian told Josie. “Makes me kind of sad that I have to kill you.”

Brian had admitted to going out back to the generator when asked about what he’d been doing when Taryn went missing. Why bother with that detail?

“You took her out back,” Josie said. “Through the kitchen. That’s why there were no tracks anywhere. You hid her body near the generator.”

His smile widened.

But they’d checked the back of the main house and not found Taryn. There had only been snow and more snow. It had been falling from the roof of the house in huge chunks.

“Oh my God,” Josie said. “You didn’t hide her.”

His grin made him look like a completely different person than the man they’d spent the week with. “Didn’t have to,” he said. “I got her out back, put her next to the house, and while I was trying to figure out how the hell to hide her, a big avalanche came down off the roof and buried her in three feet of snow. No muss, no fuss. It was meant to be.”

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