Page 27 of Only One More Lie

Instead, he grabbed his gun and took a hesitant step forward.

People didn’t just disappear. There was a reason there were no more footprints.

He just wasn’t sure what.

He walked deeper into the woods, determined to catch this guy.

But there was no sign of him.

Whoever had been inside Juniper’s cabin clearly knew this area well. It was the only way Duke could explain his quick getaway.

He searched several more minutes but still didn’t find the man. Now he wanted to get back to Andi to make sure she was okay.

With a scowl, he started back to the cabin.

Something was going on here. Something he didn’t like.

They needed to get to the bottom of this before anyone else got hurt.

CHAPTER 12

Andi set the files she’d been scouring on the floor before leaning against the wall and sighing.

This research hadn’t gone as they’d planned.

Thankfully, Duke had come back, and he was okay.

But they had no idea who that man was.

They’d spent the first fifteen minutes simply picking up the bookcase and placing the items back on it.

Then they’d begun to look through the rest of the files.

“Anything?” Duke glanced over at her.

“No. I figured this might not lead anywhere. But what Juniper said was correct. There’s nothing suspicious in these files. Everything looks like business as usual.”

“That’s too bad.”

“The only things that grabbed my attention were two items that were found on the bottom of the drawer.” She held up the items. “One is Juniper’s birth certificate. Normally, that wouldn’t be weird. But it was under a false bottom in this drawer, almost like it was hidden.”

“Anything look strange about it?”

“Not really. Then there was this.” She held up a partial photo of Juniper’s parents. “This was taken around the time this placeopened. There’s a date stamp in the lower right corner. But, as you can see, someone was torn out of the photo.”

“Maybe it was Heath and Claire Klinkhart, their former best friends.”

“That’s what I was wondering also. But tearing people out of a photo seems immature. And why keep this picture at all?”

Duke looked it over and shrugged. “Maybe Mary liked the way she looked in it, although she didn’t strike me as the vain type—from what I heard about her, at least.”

Andi shrugged. “Maybe. I’m going to hang on to this and the birth certificate, just in case. I’ll return them both when this is over, of course. And I’ll mention it to Juniper.”

Duke set his own stack of files on the floor next to him and leaned back also. “At least we can mark this task off our list.”

“At least. But my fear is that there’s absolutely no connection between these victims.”

“There has to besome typeof connection, even if it’s vague. This guy didn’t simply pick his victims out of the phone book and go kill them.”