Clara might have only been three years younger, but she’d seemed so wise to a young Audrey. But the guilt was real, too. Audrey carried it around with her because she was the one who lived when her sister hadn’t been so lucky. Why? Clara was the better person. She was good. Whereas Audrey clung to the leg of the kitchen table, hiding, while Clara was being hurt by their parents.
“You’re quiet again,” Duke said after they climbed into the truck and he got on the road.
“I keep thinking about Jenson’s family and how tragic this is for them,” she said. “I can’t stop wondering if he died because of a practical joke or because he was headed down a dark path like Halsey thought.” She put her hand up before he could respond. “And I do realize he’s gone and maybe none of this should matter anymore.”
“It does matter,” Duke stated with the kind of confidence that left no room for doubt he meant those words. “Because he made you feel unsafe.”
“Thank you, Duke. I’ve been thinking the same thing, which makes me feel guilty now that he’s gone. How messed up is it that part of me feels sorry for this lost kid? After hearing Halsey talk about him being bullied then in turn bullying others, it breaks my heart things would end for him this way.”
“You’re not messed up,” he countered. “The world might be off, but you’re a good person, Audrey. Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise. You care about someone you never met because he was being bullied despite the fact he violated your privacy.”
The thought he might have been out there taking pictures of her that he intended to share or did share caused bile to rise up in the back of her throat. The only way to find out what he’d been doing was to subpoena his phone records, which she highly doubted her boss would approve. Part of her decided she should almost be grateful her voyeur had been Jenson and not the Ponytail Snatcher like she’d feared after being told he might be in the area.
Duke pulled in front of her cabin and idled the engine.
“That’s strange,” she said, looking at her porch.
“Did you forget to turn the light on?” he asked.
“It’s automatic,” she said. “Turns on by itself when the sun goes down.” She let her hand hover next to the handle and saw that it was shaking. “What are the odds the light needs to be replaced on the day Jenson Napier dies?”
Chapter Thirteen
Duke exited the driver’s side of the truck before coming around the front of the vehicle to open Audrey’s door. She waited for him and then took his hand to climb down. The jolt of electricity shouldn’t catch him off guard considering it was exactly as he remembered it. But it did. Somehow, it had grown stronger than ever, or maybe his memory had weakened instead.
The dead lightbulb sent up a red flag. “Do you want to wait inside the truck?”
“I’d rather stick with you if that’s okay,” she said. He could hear the shakiness, the fear in her voice.
He flipped on his phone’s flashlight as Audrey did the same. Side by side, they walked up her porch stairs and onto the concrete slab. She checked the bulb, screwed it around a couple of times.
The light came on.
Audrey bit out a few muttered curses as she scanned the ground with her flashlight. She walked over to the edge of the porch, stopped and bent down. “Duke, take a look at this.”
There were boot prints.
He immediately scanned the area around them, behind them with the phone’s flashlight. Between crickets and the wind whipping through the trees, his danger radar clicked onto full alert.
“The question is whether or not these were made before or after this morning,” he said.
“I haven’t thought to check around the perimeter of the house today with everything that’s happened,” she said, standing and following the boot tracks around her home. They consistently seemed to stop in front of windows, making a circle around the house.
“I checked the perimeter when I first came by this morning and I didn’t see these prints.” Investigations often stopped the second a perp was dead, so these prints had to be newer. Unless Jenson had walked around her home to figure out where her bedroom was just before he’d been caught and took off running. It was a likely explanation. No. That didn’t make sense when Duke really thought about it. Jensen was found with tennis shoes on, so these prints could not have been made by him. Did that mean he hadn’t been working alone?
“Again, we have boot prints while Jenson wore tennis shoes,” Audrey said. Her fixed gaze on the tracks suggested she was thinking out loud. She still got the same look he remembered from that summer. Her gaze narrowed and her lips compressed into a frown when she was seriously considering something.
“It’s impossible to tell if Jenson planned to escalate tonight or if any of these prints belong to him,” she said with an involuntary shiver. “But it would explain the light bulb being unscrewed.”
There was another explanation. One he didn’t want to consider but had to. Ponytail Snatcher.
From the corner of his eye, Duke caught movement in the trees.
“Stay with me,” he said, bolting toward it, pushing his legs until his thighs burned.
He might be chasing wind or an animal but he intended to find out.
“Stop,” he ordered, running with the barrel of his Glock leading the way toward the trees.
A male figure came into view.
“Stop, or I’ll shoot,” Duke shouted, gasping for air as he tried to catch his breath.
The man stopped as Audrey caught up. She shined her phone app at the tall, muscular man.
“Morris?” Duke asked, astonished as the man’s hands went up.
“Don’t shoot,” Morris practically begged.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Duke asked as Audrey wasted no time calling her boss.
“He was my boy,” Morris said as his face morphed to the kind of sadness that would break anyone’s heart. “My son.”
“You better tell me exactly what you’re doing here in the next two seconds because the sheriff is about to be on the line,” Duke warned.
“I had to come see what he was doing for myself,” Morris said as the big man wiped at his eyes before returning his hand to their previous position. “I had to know what he was up to and why this happened.”
“Does your wife know you’re here?” Duke asked.
