Page 52 of Engaging the Deputy

She feared she was about to suffer the same fate Evangeline had.

Feeling Cody directly behind her, Olivia moved slowly toward the open root-cellar chasm, knowing that once he got her down there it would be over. “This can’t be the only reason we’re here. Just to kill me?” she asked, surprised that she’d voiced her thoughts.

He shoved her forward. They were almost close enough that all he would have to do was give her a push and she’d tumble into the void.

She glanced down the hillside to where she’d heard Rob’s body had been found and stopped abruptly. Cody jabbed her in the back with the barrel end of the gun. “Did you see that?”

“What?” He glanced down the hillside. But not long enough for her to take advantage of the misdirection, even if she felt strong enough to do so. The physical struggle with him had taken a lot out of her.

“I just saw someone,” she said in a whisper. She pointed. “Down there. He went behind that house.”

He looked at her, unsure, and she was afraid that she hadn’t sold it well enough. “What are you trying to pull?” he demanded.

“I’m telling the truth. It was a man. He was…watching us.” She opened her mouth and screamed “Help!” as loud as she could.

* * *

Cody grabbed Olivia’s arm, dragged her to him and clamped his hand down hard over her mouth. He told himself it was time to finish this. Shove her into the hole, kick some dirt down on her and take care of the reason he had planned all along to come here tonight long before she’d shown up at the wrong time at the hardware store.

What stopped him was that he wasn’t so sure she was lying. What if she had seen a man? But why would someone come out here tonight? Maybe for the same main reason he had. That was what really changed his mind. He realized he might need a human shield. As badly as he wanted to pitch her into the open root cellar, he realized it might benefit him to keep her with him.

He’d been so certain that no one had known what he’d been hiding up here. But Rob had. With a silent curse, he recalled that he’d foolishly brought Krystal with him on one of his late-night trips to Starling. He’d ordered her to stay in the pickup while he’d trudged up the hillside with his full backpack. But Krystal never did what she was told. He hadn’t thought much of it, though. He never thought she’d tell anyone, knowing what he’d do to her if she did.

But she must have told Rob. And who else?

Holding Olivia by the back waistband of her jeans, he pushed her in front of him to the corner of one of the still-standing old houses. Pulling Olivia close, he peered around the corner.

No one. Yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that they weren’t alone. He told himself it was the drugs. They made him paranoid and anxious. He closed his eyes, only to have a flash of memory from Halloween night. He’d climbed out of the root cellar to kill Rob and found him digging in the debris. He’d known at once what Rob had been looking for—and why Rob had agreed to come to Starling that night. He knew about his boss’s stash.

Cody had wanted to kill him for skimming from him. But once he’d realized that Rob knew about the money stashed here on this hillside, he wasn’t about to let the man take everything he’d work so hard for. He’d known then that it was time to kill him.

That night, he’d felt a kind of fury like none he’d ever known. It still amazed him that he hadn’t attacked Rob right then and there, blowing his alibi and any chance he would have had to get back in the root cellar in time. But he’d kept his cool. Finding Rob digging under the rock foundation wall, he’d realized that the man hadn’t known exactly where the loot was hidden.

Moving swiftly, the clock ticking, Cody had slipped around the foundation wall and pushed with a strength that still boggled his mind. The wall toppled, but not before Rob had seen it coming and tried to scramble out of the way.

But the man hadn’t been fast enough. Cody had stared at the body crushed beneath the wall. Only Rob’s head and arms had managed to get free. He’d seen the shine of the man’s eyes. Rob had been trying to say something, possibly beg for his life, mumbled words bubbling out in blood. It would have been so easy to finish him, but Cody hadn’t had the time. He’d had to get back to the root cellar.

Reliving that night now, though, only made him more edgy. If Rob had survived, he would have turned on him. Good thing he hadn’t. Like tonight. He couldn’t leave Olivia alive. It was that simple.

But first he had to get to where he’d hidden the bags of money. He assured himself that if they’d been found by search and rescue or the state crime investigators, he would have heard about it.

Still, if someone else was really out here tonight with them, the person could already have found his stash and could be carrying it off right now.

He pushed Olivia ahead of him, keeping a strong grip on her to keep her from escaping as they descended the hillside. In the moonlight, he made out the old stone pump house below them. It didn’t surprise him that it was still standing. The rock walls were thick, the space inside tight.

As they got closer, he saw that the door stood open, making his heart rabbit in his chest. Of course, it would have been searched. But had they found anything?

Too dark to tell if his secret hiding place had been discovered, he forced Olivia inside. She cried out when her hip connected with the rusted old-fashioned hand pump. He held her against it with his body as he took out his phone and used the flashlight to shine it on the stone wall. Relief made him weak. The loose large rock and the hiding space behind it that he’d discovered as a boy hadn’t been found.

Putting away his phone, he worked the stone out, dropping it to the wooden floor with a thud. Then he reached in, still worried the bags wouldn’t be there. Rescue and searchers had been all over Starling, not to mention law enforcement. Hurriedly, he reached deeper into the space between the stones, his panic growing until his hand brushed the canvas of a bag.

He let out a laugh as he began to pull out one bag after another. He still couldn’t believe his luck. For a while tonight, things hadn’t been going well. Olivia showing up at the hardware store had thrown him. But now he felt a lightness that reassured him it was all going to turn out just fine.

Or it would—once he took care of Olivia.

She hadn’t seen anyone out here with them. She had just been trying to throw him off. It had worked, but soon her time would be up.

“Is this why you killed Rob?” she asked as he opened one of the bags, half-afraid he’d been wrong and the bag would be filled with paper instead of hundred-dollar bills. With a laugh, he confirmed it was full of money. His money.

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