Like mother, like daughter?
He took a big pull from his bottle and went over the coincidences again.
Harper had been found outside on the night Anna had died.
She’d discovered not only her grandmother’s body but her brother’s as well.
And she’d been the woman who had first reported the fire the night Cynthia Hunt had died.
A weird connection.
If it was one.
He scratched the back of his neck as he wondered again about Harper being the one who had called 9-1-1 and risked her own life to save Cynthia’s. There were houses scattered all around the lake, and yet Harper—who, according to her, had just arrived at her grandmother’s house—just happened to see the fire.
What were the chances?
Since leaving Almsville two decades earlier, Harper had married, had a kid, and divorced. She hadn’t been back to that house, as far as he knew.
He’d kept track as best he could.
For Chase.
His once-upon-a-time best friend.
Still missing.
His jaw grew tight as he remembered what Chase had told him the night of his disappearance. That he needed to vanish. Before Uncle Sam claimed him.
And Rand had kept his silence. Most of it.
Shit!He shoved his hair away from his face and kicked back his chair so hard it careened across the small space and slammed against the railing.
What a mess.
And he was in the middle of it.
In more ways than one.
Frustrated, he stood and rubbed the back of his neck, guilt riddling through him as it always did when he considered the consequences of keeping his promise to his drugged-out, confused friend.
He should have spilled his guts the minute he learned that Chase had gone missing. However, he’d kept quiet, hoping his friend would show up, as he left the next day, on his way to a camp in the middle of a jungle thousands of miles away.
But there had been other opportunities.
And if he had told everything he knew? Maybe then Chase Hunt wouldn’t be an open file on his desk.
He took a long swallow from his beer and looked down into the living area of this cabin he’d called home for most of his life. The sloped, wooden walls and plank floors looked much the same as they had all those years ago. Although the orange shag rug had been replaced years ago, and his father’s battered recliner and the small black and white TV were long gone, the freestanding wood stove still dominated the room and the avocado green stove still worked in the kitchen.
Just as it had when Chase had come over and they’d made Jiffy Pop on the coiled burners.
Leaning against a post, he thought back to the cold night high above the river. What had Chase confided?
That he would marry Harper to avoid the draft. If she was pregnant.
Or that he would find a way to leave the country—probably make his way into Canada and cross the border, like Patrick Sullivan had.
But there was also the allure of the free sex and drugs at the little house at the end of the street. He remembered his father calling them “no-good dope-smokin’ hippies, on the dole, if you ask me. Student deferments, my ass. President Johnson should draft ’em all.”