GRIFFIN
H
i, you’ve reached Winslow Covington. Please leave a message and I’ll return your call as soon as possible. If this is an emergency,
please hang up and dial 9-1-1.
I growled at the voicemail greeting, checking the time again. Seven forty-eight.
The summer nights were long in Montana and the daylight would last for almost another hour, but it was getting late. She’d missed dinner. She had agreed to dinner, right? I’d left her shellshocked this morning but Winn wasn’t one to ditch without a phone call first.
For the past hour, I’d assumed that something had happened at the station. Maybe an accident or an officer who’d called in sick. But as the minutes wore on and she still hadn’t returned my calls, the churning in my stomach was becoming unbearable.
I pulled up Covie’s number and called it for the third time. Four rings and it dropped to his voicemail.
“Shit.”
Bad news traveled at the speed of light around Quincy. If there’d been an accident or something else significant, someone in my family might have heard about it. So I started with the most likely source of news. Dad.
“ ’Lo,” he answered.
“Hey, it’s me.”
“Hi, how’d the creek look today?”
“Dry. Moved the horses down. All good. Listen, have you heard about anything happening in town today?”
“Uh, no. Why? What happened?”
“Nothing.” I sighed. “Winn isn’t home and she’s not answering. I wasn’t sure if something came up and I hadn’t heard about it yet.”
“No news here. Want me to make some calls?”
“No. Not yet.” If Dad started calling his buddies, there’d be rumor of an emergency before there was an actual emergency.
“Okay. Keep me posted.” “I will. Thanks.”
“Call Eloise,” he said. “If there’s something going on, she’ll know before the rest of us.”
“Good idea. Bye, Dad.” The moment the line went quiet, I called my sister and asked her the same question.
“I’ve been at the front desk all evening,” she said. “There hasn’t been anything going on that I’ve seen.”
And if there’d been a streak of cruisers blazing down Main with their lights flashing, she’d have noticed. “Okay. Thanks.”
“You’re worried.” “Yeah. I am.”
“I’m going to make some calls.” “No, not—”
Before I could finish, she’d hung up on me. “Damn it.”
There was no stopping Eloise, and if I knew my father, he was on the horn at the moment too. If Winn was just out and about, she wasn’t going to like being hunted down.
“Then she needs to answer her fucking phone,” I muttered, hitting the number to her personal phone again. It rang and rang.
Winn had been good about keeping it close and charged since Covie’s heart attack. But when it transferred to voicemail for the tenth time since I’d called, I hung up and paced the kitchen.
wasn’t parked in her reserved spot. I didn’t bother going inside either. I’d call there next, but first I wanted to check with Covie, so I steered myself toward the river.
Covie’s street was as quiet as Winn’s and my heart climbed out of my throat when I spotted her car parked outside his place. “Oh, thank fuck.”
Christ. I’d about lost my shit.
I hopped out of my truck and forced myself not to jog to his door. The doorbell got punched, not pressed, because as my blood pressure returned to normal, anxiety was replaced with anger.
There was no reason she shouldn’t have answered. Covie too.
When his footsteps sounded from beyond the threshold, I was practically shaking as he flipped the locks.
Except . . .
If she was inside, why was the dead bolt on?
“Griffin?” Covie cocked his head. “What are you doing here?” She wasn’t inside. F**k.
“Is it Winnie?” he asked, the color draining from his face. “She’s not home. I tried calling you.”
“I fell asleep with the TV on. She left here hours ago to meet you for dinner.” He looked past my shoulder to her Durango. “I didn’t realize her car was still here.”
“Have you heard anything from the station? Was there an accident or something?”
“Not that I’ve heard. You’ve called her?”
“About a hundred times.” I dragged my hand through my hair.
It was probably nothing, but every cell in my body vibrated that something was wrong.
“Let me call the station.” Covie waved me inside, leaving me in the entryway as he rushed to the living room. The lamp beside his recliner was the only light on in the house. The TV was muted on the movie he’d been
watching. His free hand trembled as he made the call. “Hi, this is Walter. I’m looking for Winslow. Is she at the station or out on a call?”
Say yes.
The panic in his gaze made my knees shake.
“Yeah, okay. Thanks.” He ended the call and shook his head. “She’s not there. Mitch is going to ask around and call me back.”
“I’m going to keep looking.” Maybe she’d gone for a walk. Maybe she’d been at the river and slipped. If her phones were wet, that would explain why she hadn’t called.
“I’ll come with you.” Covie followed me to the door, stepping into a pair of tennis shoes.
The darkness was coming faster than I liked. “Would she have walked somewhere? Maybe bumped into someone who needed help?”
“I don’t know,” Covie said, following me down the sidewalk.
We were feet away from my truck when a loud crash came from next door.
Our faces whipped to the Nigel house.
“What the—” Covie held up a finger. “Let me check on Frank.” We didn’t have time to worry about fucking Frank. “Covie—” “Two seconds. Maybe he saw her leave.”
“Fine,” I grumbled, following him across the lawn that separated their homes.
The garage door was open but the lights were off.
Frank sat on the concrete floor, one knee bent, the other leg straight and his foot tipped to the side like he didn’t have the strength to keep it upright. His back was against a tool bench, his face hidden in the shadows of the dark space.
“Frank?” Covie hurried toward his friend, bending low. “What’s going on? Are you hurt?”
Frank shook his head, his glassy eyes rolling more than blinking as he cast a glare my direction. “Get out, Eden.”
“Are you drunk?” Covie stood and frowned. “We’re looking for Winnie.
Have you seen her?” “This is his fault.”
Was he talking to me? “Excuse me?” “I hate you.”
“The feeling is mutual. Now answer Covie’s question. Have you seen Winslow?”
“Winnie.” His expression went from cold and furious to sad and apologetic in a blink. He dropped his eyes to his lap. “Oh, God.”
“Hey.” Covie dropped to a crouch, putting a hand on Frank’s arm to give it a shake. “What’s going on?”
Frank’s shoulders curled in. “It was just for fun, Walter. It was never serious.”
“What was fun?” Covie asked him.
“We’re wasting time.” I wanted out of this goddamn garage. We should be searching for Winn, not listening to this asshole’s drunken babble.
“One minute, Griffin.” Covie held up a finger. “Frank, what are you talking about? Do you know where Winnie is?”
“You need to understand, Walter.” Frank straightened in a flash, grasping Covie’s forearms and holding him in place.
I took a step forward, the hairs on the back of my neck standing up. “Understand what?” Covie asked him.
“It was sex. Only sex. You know I like sex.”
Sex. With who? My frame locked. My hands balled into fists. If Frank had so much as touched a hair on Winn’s head, they’d never find his fucking body.
“What are you talking about, Frank?” Covie’s calm voice was a stark contrast to the fury that raged through my veins.
I clamped my molars together to keep quiet.
Frank wouldn’t say a goddamn word to me. Maybe, if we were lucky, he’d forget I was standing here, because all that mattered was Winn.
“The girls,” Frank whispered.
My heart lurched. The girls. There was no question who he was referring to. I knew, deep in my soul, exactly which girls he meant.
Lily Green. Harmony Hardt. Where the fuck was my Winn?
“Frank.” Covie pulled his arms free of his neighbor’s hands. Then in a swift motion, moving faster than any man that age should be able to move, he was on his feet, hauling Frank up with him.
“Ah!” Frank cried as Covie shoved him into the tool bench. “What. The. F**k. Is. Going. On?” Covie barked.
Frank collapsed into Covie’s shoulder, trying to hug him.
But Covie pushed him off, shoving him again. The tools on the bench rattled. “Talk. Now.”
“It’s an addiction. It’s not my fault. I like sex and that’s all it was. I swear.”
I gulped. “What’s he talking about, Covie?” If Frank had raped Winn . . .
Red coated my vision and it took every ounce of strength to stand here and not move.
“Who?” Covie asked. “Lily Green?”
The guilt in Frank’s eyes was answer enough. “We kept it a secret. They were all secrets. We’d meet out of town at a hotel. Have some fun. That was it. Sex. They wanted it as much as I did.”
“What did you do to them?” The words were hard to form through my clenched jaw.
“Nothing. I didn’t do anything.” Frank’s eyes searched Covie’s. “You need to believe me. I didn’t do anything. I wouldn’t have hurt them.”
“They’re dead,” Covie spat.
“I know they’re fucking dead!” Frank’s roar filled the garage, bouncing off every surface.
“Tell me.” Covie shook Frank again. “Tell me. Where is Winn?” “She shouldn’t have asked so many questions.”
That statement had me flying across the room, ripping Frank out of Covie’s grip. “What did you do to her?”
“Nothing.” He gulped and there was real fear in his eyes. Because I would murder this motherfucker, and he knew it. “I wouldn’t hurt her.”
“Then where the fuck is she?” I bellowed.
The stench of whiskey on his breath was overpowering as he lost it, breaking down into a fit of sobs. When I dropped him, he collapsed to his knees.
“Where’s Rain?” Covie asked him.
Frank didn’t answer. He buried his face in his hands and cried.
Covie bolted for the door that led to the house, whipping it open. “Rain!”
There was no answer.
He came back and scanned the empty space. “Her Jeep is gone. Maybe she’s shopping. Let’s call her. See if she knows where he might have taken Winnie.”
The sound of the river grew louder as Covie went for his phone.
The river. The mental image of Frank holding Winn’s head beneath the water exploded in my head. Her lungs filling with water. Her lifeless body floating downstream. I squeezed my eyes shut, willing the picture away.
When I opened them, they landed on the safe in the corner. Maybe Frank had taken out a pistol. Maybe he’d pressed the barrel to her head. My stomach roiled.
“I told her not to do it this time.” Frank’s babble tore through my brain. “What?”
“I told her not this time. That it was different. But Winnie knew. She’s too smart. She’s always been too smart.”
“Wait.” I held up a hand. “You told who not to do what?” His whisper was barely audible. “Rain.”
