“Your great-grandfather? Did he… was he the one who murdered Jedediah?”
Eric shrugged. “Who the hell knows? Or even cares now? I just know that the Hellmans came into a good chunk of money eighty years ago, and there were stories passed down in our family that speculated about where it came from. And I’m guessing your daddy had heard the rumors, too. That’s why he never would discuss his search for the gold with me. And I know he was close to succeeding when the fire destroyed all his research.”
“How do you know that?”
“I knew he had Jean Lavoie’s diary. I saw his copy.”
“When?”
“The night of the fire,” he said, his voice low and angry. “And if your sister hadn’t caught me, I would have gotten it then.”
Sadie whirled on him again, stumbling back when he bumped into her. “What are you saying?”
She could just make out Eric’s sneer in the glow of his flashlight. “I’m saying that your sister didn’t burn in the fire, Quill. She was already dead.”
She lunged at him with a shriek of anger, one hand coiled into a claw, the cane raised to strike in the other. They went tumbling to the ground, and Sadie tried to reach for his gun as they fought. He hit her on the side of her head with the flashlight, momentarily stunning her with the blow.
Eric rolled to his feet, his gun back in his hand, and kicked her. “After the fire, I spent the next five years trying to talk Frank into resuming his research,” he continued as if nothing had happened. “But he’d lost his passion for the hunt. He wouldn’t even tell me where he’d found the diary when I alluded to it. I couldn’t come right out and mention the diary, because I wasn’t supposed to know he had it.”
“Then how did you?” Sadie asked, rising onto her hands and knees, clutching the cane in her fist.
“I only knew Frank had found something important. He couldn’t wait for you to get home from school. He was like a kid with the key to the candy store.”
Sadie glared at him past the flashlight beam. “So you broke into our house and tried to steal what he’d found.”
Eric nodded. “But then Caroline came into the study. You really had left a candle burning, Quill,” he continued derisively. “Your sister was covering your ass. But we struggled, and that’s how the fire started. We knocked over the candle, and Lavoie’s diary burned before I could get to it.”
Sadie stood up, and Eric took a guarded step back, raising his gun.
“You’re a murderer,” she said in a low voice. “You killed my sister eight years ago, and you tried to kill me yesterday.”
She could just make out that he was shaking his head. “No. It was Morgan MacKeage I was aiming at. Why in hell would I want to kill you?” he asked incredulously. “You’re the only one who knows this valley.”
“And now I know you’re a murderer.”
He nodded. “That doesn’t matter now. Where’s the gold?”
Sadie realized then that he intended to kill her. And that she needed a way to stall for time until Morgan could get here. Surely he’d heard the gunshots. “So where did you really find the diary you gave me?”
He laughed again, somewhat insanely. “I searched every museum in this state for eight years. But those bumbling Dolans managed to find it first. They came into the store last winter bragging their fool heads off that they had the next best thing to a map. And that’s when I started making plans to get you back here.”
“Why didn’t you just work out a deal with Dwayne and Harry?”
He scoffed, waving the gun in the air. “With those two? Between them they don’t even have a full brain.”
“They found the diary.”
“And I found a way to get it from them. Now, where’s the gold, Quill?”
“It doesn’t exist,” she said. “I’ve already searched this entire side of the mountain. I found the cliff mentioned in the diary, but there was nothing there.”
“You’re lying.” He took a threatening step toward her, his face twisted in anger in the beam of his flashlight.
“But I did find placer gold in a stream near here,” she quickly amended, taking a step back.
He stopped and was silent for several seconds, apparently trying to decide if he believed her or not. Sadie held the cane up in supplication and reached into her pocket with her other hand. She slowly drew out one gold nugget and held it up for Eric to see.
“This is what I found,” she said in a voice that belied the anger she felt, handing him the nugget. “It’s large, Eric. It must have been close to the source. You could probably be rich just panning that stream. I don’t think there’s an actual mine, Eric. I think Jedediah found only this heavy placer gold.”
He put the nugget into his shirt pocket, then took his flashlight and waved it at the trail.
“Then let’s go, Quill. Show me.”
Sadie turned and started them back in the direction of the stream, frantically thinking of what she should do next. Where the hell was her husband?
And where should she lead Eric? To Prospect River? Or to the stream? She could buy a couple of hours waiting for Morgan to show up by taking Eric to the stream well below the pool and then pretend to search for the exact spot where she’d found the nugget.
Sadie clasped Daar’s cane protectively to her chest, then remembered it was supposed to be her crutch. She started using it like a cane and tried to think of a way to make the magic work for her without blowing them all to kingdom come.
What had the old priest mumbled to the cane when he started the fire? She needed to be able to speak to the cane. And the only word she knew in Gaelic washedgehog.
Morgan snapped his head up at the soundof gunfire echoing down the mountain. It was coming not from where Mercedes should have been waiting safely for him but from the old logging camp, where she’d probably gone.
He knew she wouldn’t stay put.
Morgan turned his gaze down the mountain to where Grey and Callum were trying to drive anyone lurking in the woods toward him. But they probably still were a couple of miles away. Ian had been posted at the river, protecting everyone’s back.
Sweat now covering his forehead, Morgan abandoned his post and started running upstream at an angle that sent him toward the logging camp, hoping to intercept whoever had fired those shots.
As they finally neared the stream,Sadie began speaking to Eric again, her voice loud enough that she hoped it would warn Morgan of her presence and that she was not alone.
She hoped Morgan had heard Eric’s gunshots. An hour was enough time for Morgan to run to her rescue, wasn’t it?
And Sadie worried about Faol. Was the wolf fatally wounded? Dead? Or was he quietly following them?
“How did you find the logging camp?” Sadie asked, still walking with a pretend limp, still trying to stall for time.
“That pack you picked up last Sunday,” Eric said. “I sewed a transmitter into the bottom of it.”
Sadie stopped and looked back. “A transmitter?”
“I sell them for hunting dogs,” he told her, nudging her shoulder to keep her moving.
“They’re good for more than two miles.”
“But why, Eric? Why leave me alone for ten weeks and then suddenly start interfering?”
“Because the Dolans arrived. And I heard about your date with MacKeage, and I didn’t like the distraction he was making for you. So I decided it was time I intervened.”
“Why ransack my cabin? It was you, wasn’t it?”
“Because you always keep a journal, and I hoped you had made notes from Lavoie’s diary. That day I brought you the photos, I was going to look for it.”
They finally reached the stream, and the anger of knowing she’d been forced to walk and talk calmly with the man who had murdered her sister threatened to boil over. Sadie stopped beside the water and turned, forcing herself to be calm.