“Where were you earlier?”
“At home. Waiting for him,” he repeated.
“But we stopped by. Why didn’t you answer the door?”
“I didn’t dare. I thought maybe…maybe it was a trick. The person who killed your mother. Or the person who set the fire. You never come over.” For the first time, his eyes darted toward Isaac, giving Claire the impression that it might’ve been Isaac’s presence at his door that had made Jeremy shy away. Jeremy didn’t trust him.
“Your father’s probably over at the Kicking Horse,” she said. “He spends a lot of time there.”
“He’s not at the Kicking Horse.” He screwed up his face as if he was about to cry. “The police are looking for him and everything.”
The police were looking for him so they could ask why he’d been seen burning her mother’s files. But if word of Myles’s interest in Don had gotten out, maybe Les Weaver had killed him to make sure he couldn’t talk. Or maybe someone else had a vested interest in keeping him silent.
She turned to Isaac. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Unfortunately, I believe I am.” Isaac leaned toward the steering wheel so he could see around her. “Has anything else happened that makes you feel your father might’ve been hurt?” he asked Jeremy. A V formed in Jeremy’s forehead. “You mean besides the bullet hole?”
Claire gripped the window ledge. “What bullet hole?”
“The one in the living room. It wasn’t there before. It was only there the day my father went missing.”
“And when was that?” Isaac pressed.
“The night the fire started. I saw blood that night, too. S-some speckles on the wall.” He hugged himself, no doubt to control the shaking that had set in. “I think someone t-tried to clean it up. The—the cleaning smell makes me sick. I don’t like it.”
“Holy shit,” Isaac mumbled.
Claire was horrified. Poor Jeremy. He’d had so many things go wrong in his life. “Do you know of anyone who might want to hurt your father?” she asked.
“Has anyone been calling him lately? Anyone you don’t normally hear from?” Isaac chimed in.
“Just Tug,” he said.
Claire’s blood ran cold. “My stepfather’s been calling?”
Jeremy nodded.
She swallowed hard. “Does he usually call?”
“Not usually. He said it’s important. But I don’t think my dad will be calling him back.”
Isaac hated to leave Claire, but he was convinced something was going on—something involving Don Salter and possibly Tug. Someone needed to go back and take a look at the bullet hole and the blood Jeremy had mentioned, before the police figured out that Don was missing. If it was a crime scene, the Salter residence would be taped off, and he and Claire would be denied access. As civilians, they’d be excluded from most of the information gathered by the police, too. Just like before, when Alana disappeared.
Isaac wasn’t comfortable allowing that to happen. He respected Myles, and he understood the police worked that way for a reason, but he felt responsible for protecting Claire, and he wasn’t about to let information slip past them that might answer her questions about Alana or help eradicate the danger.
On top of his concern for her, he felt he owed it to Jeremy to help right his world, if possible, simply because Jeremy was incapable of coping with such unusual events on his own. Isaac had once been that vulnerable. He’d been five at the time, but what would he have done without Tippy? Where would he be today?
“Are you okay with staying behind?” he asked Claire before he left.
He could tell she wasn’t happy about it, but she nodded. “I guess.”
“We can’t leave Jeremy alone. He’s too agitated.”
“I know. It’s just that…I want to ask my father why he’s been calling Don. And I want to see his face when he answers.”
Isaac wanted the same thing, too. But why drag Tug from his bed? “He’s not going anywhere. It can wait until tomorrow.” Right now, Isaac needed to take a look at the Salter home, and he preferred to do it at night, when he had a better chance of going unobserved.
“Okay,” she agreed. So he left her and Jeremy in separate rooms at the Cabinet Mountains Motel and headed back to Pineview.
Jeremy paced the motel room Isaac had rented for him. The lights were off, but he hadn’t removed his clothes because he didn’t plan on going to sleep. He couldn’t stay the whole night. He had to leave, go as far into the wilderness as possible—someplace no one would find him.
But he couldn’t go alone. That would be too frightening. He’d heard about Isaac’s bear story, seen the scars on his arm. Everyone asked to see those scars whenever Isaac came into the Kicking Horse. His father had told him that.
Jeremy imagined himself trying to fight off a wild animal, but he didn’t think he’d be able to. He wasn’t good at fighting, not like Isaac was. That meant someone had to go with him, and he didn’t want anyone except Claire. She’d shoot anything that tried to hurt him, and he’d do the same for her. He’d brought his father’s gun from above the fridge and everything.
Pivoting at the foot of the bed, he went back toward the closet. How was he going to convince her? She wouldn’t leave Isaac behind, not willingly. He’d seen the way the two of them kissed when Isaac left the motel, heard the way she’d asked him to be careful.
She was in love.
But she couldn’t be all that much in love. She’d forgotten him once before, when she got back together with David. Isaac was just a stand-in for her husband. And why should he get David’s spot? Jeremy had loved Claire longer than anyone. He’d only been in second grade when some other boy pushed him off the swings and she came over to help him to the nurse’s office. Ever since then, he’d lived for her smile, her touch, even the sound of her voice.
If she went back to Pineview, she’d be killed, anyway. It wasn’t safe for her there. Look what had almost happened in the fire.
Jeremy couldn’t let her get hurt. He’d promised her mother he wouldn’t. He couldn’t stand the thought of it himself.
But if he took her with him, Isaac would come after them. Isaac wouldn’t let her go. And Jeremy would never be able to fight someone like Isaac. He’d seen what Isaac had done to anyone who bothered him, especially when they were in high school.
So—Jeremy returned to the window—what if Isaac couldn’t come after them? What if Les Weaver got rid of Isaac like he got rid of David?
Jeremy had heard his father on the phone, pleading with Les for it all to be over. He’d said he didn’t want anyone else hurt. But it didn’t matter what his father said because Les started the fire, anyway. He didn’t want to go to prison. He didn’t want to have his block knocked off, either. So he’d do anything. Even kill Isaac.
Jeremy understood. Because he’d do anything before he’d be raped in the butt—or dragged off to the cuckoo hospital. His father had told him too much about both places.
He’d do anything before he’d lose Claire, too.
He needed to call Les and tell him where Isaac was. That was what his father would do, wasn’t it? Yes. He’d done it before. Jeremy wasn’t sure Les would be close enough to fix anything. He lived far away. But if he set the fire, maybe he wasn’t so far away right now. Maybe he could get to Pineview in time.
Taking a deep breath, Jeremy crossed over to the phone. He had a lot of numbers in his head from all the messages he’d taken in the past week. But he knew one of them belonged to Les. And he knew which one. It started with three extra numbers.
A man picked up almost immediately.
“Is this Mr. Weaver?” Jeremy asked. He figured that was more polite than calling him Les.
“Who is this?”
He hadn’t spoken very clearly. He had his fingers in his mouth, chewing on his nails. He forced himself to stop. “Jeremy. Don Salter’s son.”