Dead Right (Stillwater Trilogy #3)(64)
Author: Brenda Novak

Besides, if Clay had killed Reverend Barker, the evidence he was finding suggested Barker deserved it. How could Hunter pursue a case like that? Maybe it wasn’t right for Clay to take the law into his own hands, but being sixteen and pitted against a man as powerful as Barker, he might not have had much choice. Given the circumstances, Hunter—anyone—might’ve done the same thing.

Hunter didn’t want to see Madeline’s stepbrother go to prison for trying to protect his family. And he didn’t want to get emotionally involved with Madeline. Two powerful reasons to turn back. And yet, the existence of those other panties suggested Barker had hurt more than Grace. Should the reverend be exposed for what he’d done to these women?

If there were others, why hadn’t any of them come forward?

A chilling thought stole over Hunter: Maybe they were all dead…

Katie was a hit-and-run. Rose Lee was a suicide. They’d both been close to the reverend, and they were both gone. So was the reverend’s first wife, who’d become obsessed with “protecting” Madeline. What if the girls had been molested, and Eliza had found out? Then the three of them would know. Which made it damned convenient for Barker that they’d all met tragedies that would silence them forever.

Hunter thumbed through the journal again. Katie has another sore on her neck…I found a naked lady in a magazine in my dad’s drawer…My mother wouldn’t let me go…

Madeline resented her mother and idolized her father. But what if her mother hadn’t taken her own life? Or did it because of the helplessness she felt?

He remembered the letter Madeline had discovered in that secret compartment of Eliza’s jewelry box. She’d been begging for help, which seemed to fit. Maybe Eliza was afraid for her life, afraid for Madeline, and was trying to get away. If so, didn’t she deserve to be remembered differently?

And what about Katie’s mother and Rose Lee’s father? They probably had no idea that the man they’d trusted to help them had likely molested, maybe raped, their daughters—repeatedly. It was even possible that Mr. Harper blamed himself for Rose Lee’s suicide and had lived in hell for the past twenty-some years.

Who else was out there suffering because of the reverend’s actions?

“I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to leave.”

Hunter blinked as the booming voice penetrated his concentration. It was the bartender. Hunter was almost the last person in the place.

“It’s closing time,” the man explained. “Do you need me to find you a ride home?”

Hunter chuckled dryly. “No.” For once he’d closed down a bar stone-cold sober. “I’m fine.”

After the initial fifteen or twenty minutes, he hadn’t even craved a drink. But maybe that was because he was fighting something else; he craved the feel of Madeline’s body. Craved it more than the booze. That was why he hadn’t left the bar. He didn’t want to go back to the motel.

The blood was immediately apparent. There was a spotty trail, smeared with a few pawprints from before Madeline had locked Sophie in an upstairs bedroom. Someone had obviously cut a hand or an arm reaching through the window to open the door. From there, the trail led to the middle of the room, then disappeared as if the intruder had wrapped something around his or her injury.

Hunter could hear the low murmur of Chief Pontiff and Officer Radcliffe, questioning Madeline in the other room. They’d already photographed the kitchen and taken a sample of the blood. By the time he’d returned to his motel and found the message the night manager had tacked to his door, the police had been at Madeline’s for almost an hour.

If he’d followed his first instinct and gone back to the cottage, this might never have happened…

Stepping over the blood, he started toward the living room. He was planning to join the others, but as he passed the door to the basement, he noticed that it stood slightly ajar.

“It had to be Mike,” Madeline was saying. “Maybe he just wanted to scare me. But I don’t know anyone else who’d break in. Nothing was stolen.”

Hunter opened the basement door a little wider and flipped on the light. “Madeline?” he called.

“What?”

“Has anyone been in the basement tonight?”

There was a few seconds of surprised silence. “No. Why?”

“The door was open.”

Chief Pontiff appeared in the living room doorway. “So? Maybe she went down there earlier and left it that way.”

“No, I didn’t.” Madeline came out, with Radcliffe a step behind. “I thought I heard someone outside before I fell asleep, so I went around to check the windows and doors. I passed the basement. I would’ve noticed because I don’t like Sophie going down there.”

Hunter squinted at a few dark spots toward the bottom of the stairs—and on the railing. “Does that look like blood to you?” he asked, pointing.

“I’ll be damned,” Radcliff muttered and they all followed him into the basement.

“There you go,” Chief Pontiff said, crouching beside one speck. “That is blood.”

“What’s it doing down here?” Madeline asked.

Hunter turned in a circle, trying to see into the dark recesses. “Anyone have a flashlight?”

“I do,” Radcliffe piped up. But he handed it to Pontiff, who slowly swung the beam around the perimeter of the concrete room. When he reached the area behind the stairs, Madeline clutched Hunter’s arm.

“What is it?” he asked.

“My father’s things!”

That section looked as if it had been ransacked, but they’d been rummaging through boxes there earlier, and it hadn’t been all that neat to begin with. “What about them?”

She reached out and held the flashlight steady, directing the beam more carefully between the gaps in the wooden stairs. “The big box on top, the one we didn’t bring up yesterday is gone.”

“Why would anyone want to steal your father’s belongings, Maddy?” Pontiff asked.

Madeline sat on the couch, holding the cup of hot tea Hunter had thrust into her hands. He stood at the window, presumably watching the sunrise as he listened to them talk.

“I have no idea,” she said.

“Are you sure something’s actually been taken?” Radcliffe sat across from her. “With all the stuff you’ve got in that basement, it could be difficult to tell. Maybe you shoved a few boxes off to the side and don’t remember doing it.”