From the Shadows by B.J. Daniels

Author:B.J. Daniels
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-01-06T15:48:51+00:00

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DEVLIN COULDN’T REMEMBER the last time he’d drunk this much or been this sick. “Just shoot me,” he said to the empty hotel room. He’d opted for his own room without a roommate and was glad of it now. He thought he might die as he lay half-naked on the bathroom floor waiting to heave again.

Why had he drunk so much?

The answer came back to him in a wave of nausea: the conversation at the bar earlier about who’d been in the woods the night Megan died. Jason had been going around the table trying to remember the timeline they’d told the marshal.

“Devlin,” he’d said as if forgetting for a moment that he was even there, “what were you doing in the woods that night?” The way Jason asked it, the words intimated that he was a loser who wasn’t out there with a girl, so what did that leave?

“I was taking a whiz,” he’d said and motioned to the bartender for another beer since, after all, Jason was buying.

“Oh, right, sure,” Jason had said, making it sound as if Devlin had been lying. “And Benjamin—”

“I’d stepped away to do the same thing,” Benjamin had said quickly.

“Amazing that you two didn’t piss on each other,” Jason had said and laughed.

“So Jen and Shirley had gone to get more beer. Megan and Casey had been at the fire. Jen and Shirley returned. Shirley...” He’d stopped and looked over at her.

Shirley had been staring down at her beer as if knowing he would be coming to her soon. She’d told him the same thing she had the marshal ten years ago, she’d said. “I was sick in the car coming back with the beer. I didn’t want to go all the way back to my room, so I went through the trees down to the creek and washed up as best I could. I was on my way back, turned around and a little lost, when I found Megan.” Shirley had looked relieved when Jason took her at her word and moved on.

He looked at Jen. “I was at the fire. Casey was there. Maybe she saw Megan wander into the woods. I didn’t really notice.”

Jason nodded. “Now, if we just knew what Claude had been doing.”

“I think we already do,” Patience had said and ordered another round. Shirley had said she needed food, and the others had agreed.

Devlin left them to hit the bathroom. When he returned, he noticed that his cell phone was lying on the bar but not where he’d left it. He picked it up, feeling as if someone had opened it. Anyone at the bar could have seen him put in his passcode.

“I’ll buy the ingredients for taco salad,” Jason was saying magnanimously as Devlin had looked around at the others. Only one met his gaze: Jen. She smiled as if everything was fine. Or was it a knowing smile?

“Just tell me what to buy,” Jason said as he borrowed a pen and pad from the bartender and began to make a list.

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