“You don’t know where, exactly, Roger found the bracelet and wallet?” Blake asked Lucas, glancing at the woods around them.
“No. But I think it was somewhere in this area, in the vicinity of the rock shelter.”
Blake studied the landscape. “That way leads to the bluffs?”
“Yeah. It’s a thirty-foot drop to the creek.”
Blake nodded decisively. “You know the bluffs. You look in that area. I’ll take the section north of the rock building. Wade, you look south.”
Lucas lifted an eyebrow. “What are we looking for?”
“We’ll know it if we find it,” Blake replied with his own brand of logic.
“Blake, it’s been twenty-four years. And Chief Packer scoured this area when Roger took his dive, looking for evidence against me.”
“Then we’re probably wasting our time. But it beats watching football. Or going to a wedding shower.”
“I like football,” Wade muttered, but he walked away obligingly, his eyes trained on the ground.
Lucas sighed and headed for the bluffs.
LUCAS WALKED up to Rachel’s door just before 8:00 p.m. The back of his neck itched, making him feel as though dozens of eyes were watching him from behind curtains and window blinds. He hadn’t felt that way since he’d left this town.
He squared his shoulders and held his head high, telling himself he didn’t care if half of Honoria was watching him. He and Rachel had nothing to hide now.
Mindful that Rachel’s grandmother could already be sleeping, and expecting Rachel to be waiting for him, Lucas tapped lightly on the front door.
Over dinner, he’d decided, he would tell her about the search he, Blake and Wade had conducted all afternoon. It had netted them a few beer cans, a rusted belt buckle that could have belonged to anyone, a broken flashlight and... Blake’s discovery... a filthy lace bra. The undergarment hadn’t been there twenty-four years. A few months, at the most—proving that the gate hadn’t been as effective a deterrent against trespassers as whoever installed it had hoped.
They had found nothing that indicated a murder had ever taken place there. Lucas hadn’t really expected to find anything, of course. He had let his imagination carry him away, just as Roger’s had fifteen years ago.
Rachel would probably be amused by the whole story. Maybe.
So, where was she?
He tapped on the door again, a little louder this time.
The door flew suddenly open. “There you are. I’ve been...”
The frail-looking, elderly woman in the doorway stopped and stared at Lucas. “Who are you?”
Lucas cleared his throat. “I’m a—er—friend of Rachel’s. I’m here to take her to dinner.”
Jenny Holder’s faded blue eyes suddenly narrowed. She held her glasses higher on her nose and peered at him. “You’re the McBride boy!”
At thirty-five, it had been a while since Lucas had been called a boy. “Er...yes, ma’am. Lucas McBride.”
“And you’re here to take Rachel to dinner?”
“Yes. She’s expecting me.”
“She’s not here.”
Lucas frowned. “What do you mean? She told me to pick her up at eight.”
“She’s not here,” the woman repeated flatly. “I don’t know where she is.”
Several wild thoughts flashed through Lucas’s mind. The woman was lying, trying to keep him from Rachel. Or Rachel had left town without saying goodbye. Paying him back for doing the same to her—letting him know how it felt.