Page 30 of Into the Fall

Moments like these reminded me just how capable he was and why he was both a thorn in my side and someone I respected. His instincts were sharp, but what the hell was he doing here?

And why did Micah tug him away?

Chapter Eleven

CONNOR

When Micah calledand said he needed help, I’d headed straight here. I expected something to do with Quinn, hence including me, and the urgency, but this was something else. Firstly, there was no sign of Quinn, who was at the lawyer’s office for something to do with his trust fund. Then, I met Wyatt down at the ranch house, and he’d chatted to me about how he was taking evidence bags up to the sheriff because Micah had found something, or someone had—he wasn’t sure what was going on. He never once asked me what I was doing when I joined him in walking the path to the landslide.

The benefit of me acting as though I belonged.

However, I couldn’t imagine Neil overlooking my presence as easily.

When I arrived at the chasm in the ground—which looked less scary in daylight—Neil was there with a group of people. It wasn’t Neil who took my attention but a very pale Micah, who grabbed my hand and tugged me away.

“What’s wrong?” When we stopped, I cut to the chase after Micah deemed the distance enough.

“There’s a gun down there,” he said under his breath.

I blinked at him, swiftly transitioning from interested to focused. I glanced back at Neil and the rest, who peered over the edge of the hole.

“A gun, where? In the hole?”

“It was in the well, and the landslide took down the side of it, and what if the watercourse took the gun from the well, and anyone could find it now.” He stopped and rubbed a hand on his chest.

“They can see a gun?” I thumbed behind me, but Micah shook his head, so pale and shaky I rested a hand on his arm.

“No, but…”

“Start from the beginning.”

“It’s the gun that…” He glanced at me. “The one that was used to kill Callum Prince.”

“Why do you…” I stopped when I realized what Micah having the gun might mean. “Shit.”

Callum Prince. The depraved, psychopathic monster in charge of the Brothers of Chiron cult, the one where my cousin had gone and vanished. The one who had held Micah’s sister Rachel prisoner when she was pregnant on two occasions. I knew Callum was dead. I’d seen the photos of his twisted, burned remains, all that was left of him and others, including kids after he’d torched the buildings in a murder-suicide pact.

But Micah had a gun used to shoot Callum?

Had he died before the fire? I wasn’t sure there’d been the impetus to examine things in detail, given some of thehigh-profile kids who had been lured into being part of the cult. A ton of evidence had been suppressed, and I only knew that because I’d gotten hold of original photos.

But if Callum was already dead, shot before Micah had gotten Rachel out, and before the fire that destroyed everything, then who set the fire?

“Who was the last person to handle the gun?” I asked. Who’d killed Callum?

Who do I need to protect?

“Me,” Micah met my gaze head-on, but I could see the lie in his eyes. He was protecting someone.

Rachel.

His sister had killed her husband. Micah was resolute in his decision to take the fall for the crime to protect his sister. I didn’t care who’d killed Callum, just knowing he was dead helped my aunt and uncle come to terms with losing Natalie. I was sorry I hadn’t been there because shooting him would have come right after torturing the fucker for what he’d done.

“How long has it been down there?”

“Since just before the first time you turned up, trying to track down Rachel.” He forced a hand through his hair, on edge, so stressed he wasn’t far from marching over and turning himself in before we even knew what they’d found. I remembered the time I’d headed up here clear as day, which was enough time for the constant flow of water to wash away skin cells, sweat, and any other trace evidence. I knew this all too well from my SEAL days—training missions where we had to retrieve weapons submerged in various conditions, always clean as a whistle when we pulled them out. The truth was thatwater was a natural eraser, and any evidence left on a weapon could be obliterated in days, if not hours.

“Okay, rationally, the gun has been down there a long time, so they’d be unlikely to find DNA.”

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