Page 27 of Frozen Secrets

She grabbed for the overhead rafter, careful not to step down onto the insulated space between the beams. They were over the garage. Any misstep could be fatal from this height. Her heart pounded so loud, she could barely hear her inhale. Winnie slipped her hand into the third box stacked beside her, moving slower than she’d moved in her entire life, and wrapped her hand around her father’s first service weapon. He’d taught her to shoot with this gun. She remembered every lesson. “We don’t have anything in common.”

The masked attacker took another step forward. “Come on now, Winnie. There are lots of things we have in common. For starters, we both lost our mothers. We agree Arthur Hutton is the human equivalent of garbage, and oh, yeah.” The killer tugged off her mask, revealing her face. “The freckles. We get that from our dad.”

Our dad. Winnie blinked to bring her brain back online. No. That wasn’t possible. She wasn’t… Her breath left her chest in a rush. Adrial had been right. Lighter hair, a slightly brighter shade of green in her eyes, same face shape. Winnie dragged the weapon from the box. It hadn’t been cleaned in years. Boxed up and forgotten. Just like her. But firing it was a risk she was willing to take. “You’re lying.”

“Surprise.” The killer lunged for her, and Winnie pulled the trigger.

But the gun never fired.

Chapter Twenty-Four

He couldn’t go back to that house.

Couldn’t face the photo of Katie on the bookshelf or the little reminders of Winnie that’d accumulated over the years. The color of green she’d dreamed of putting on the walls, the counters she’d gone crazy for and imagined filling with cookies for the neighbors every Christmas, her favorite flower in the damn boxes he’d built under the windows.

Every single detail testified to his failure.

Adrial stared at the case file on his desk, reading the same details for the thousandth time. None of them had changed in the hours since he’d returned to the office or in the two years since he’d told his lieutenant back in Chicago to go screw himself and took the case file with him against orders. Katie’s murder—the murder of their unborn baby—had consumed him every second of every day since he’d come back to Black Hollow, but he hadn’t dug this folder from his desk since Winnie had walked in and demanded his help to investigate the Lila Mercer case.

His office door swung inward, centering Baxter in the frame, holding two coffees. Hell, it’d felt like weeks since the forensic investigator had brought Winnie in when it’d really been just five days ago. Time had lost its meaning since she’d shown up, and he… He didn’t want to think about that. How being with her these past few days had resembled what he remembered peace feeling like.

She’d told him she’d was falling in love with him.

And he’d told her them being together was a mistake.

He didn’t get to come back from that. There wasn’t a world where Winnie would ever forgive him for lying all these years, he knew that. But that didn’t mean he should’ve just walked away, either. He hadn’t deserved her before, and he sure as hell didn’t now.

Adrial closed the file on his desk, setting it to the side, but always within reach. He didn’t miss Baxter’s attention settling on the creased folder, the multiple coffee rings stained into the cream cardstock, or the pity in the man’s cold blue eyes. He didn’t want it. He didn’t deserve the concern that followed or the days, weeks and months Baxter had spent pulling him back from the edge while trying to hold himself together at the same time. “You hear from the ME?”

“You were right.” His best friend handed off one of the coffees and took the same chair he always did when inviting himself in. “Guy’s up to his eyeballs in debt. Took me a while to get it out of him, but there’s no denying it. He was paid to lie about the cause of death on Arthur Hutton’s death certificate. Fifty thousand dollars.”

“Not many people have that kind of cash lying around to spend on an ME.” Adrial chugged half the coffee in one go, leaning back in his chair. Both stab wounds were doing a hell of a job of keeping him awake, but he needed to be focused. To find the threat to Winnie before it found her. Starting with her father’s death. “Electronic?”

“Cash.” The forensic investigator had a knack for getting information out of people when he wanted it. It was one of the reasons they worked so well together. Baxter took a sip of his coffee, rolling his lips between his teeth as his gaze diverted back to Katie’s file. “I handed off one of the bills to Michal. She’s going to run a trace through a contact at the treasury. See where the money came from. Shouldn’t take more than a couple hours, but until then, you need to take a break.”

Adrial knew exactly where to send that suggestion. He set aside his coffee, then dragged the Lila Mercer file Winnie had put together from her father’s files in front of him. “How did Arthur die?”

Baxter’s concern spread into the set of his mouth and deepened the lines in the corners of his eyes. “Insulin.”

That one word had Adrial closing his eyes. Hell. His former partner wouldn’t have gone out gently into that good night. He would’ve suffered, which revealed more about his killer’s intentions than anything else. She could’ve stabbed him and gotten away with it by having an ME in her pocket, ended it quickly, but she’d chosen to draw it out. Maybe even watch the life leave his eyes.

“Manner of death could suggest a personal connection. She may have wanted him in pain.” Knowing what he did now—that Arthur may have very well been involved in Lila Mercer’s death—gave them a new angle.

“You’re thinking revenge?” Baxter took another drink. Just another day in the office discussing murder and how someone might’ve gotten away with it. And while Adrial had resigned himself to this life, his best friend had too much life still left to share instead of wasting away in the town where he had lost everything.

Adrial tapped his middle finger on the top crime scene photo, one of Lila Mercer laid out on the exam table before the autopsy. “We looked into every aspect of Lila Mercer’s life, but we never had reason to believe the lead investigator had anything do with her murder. That’s changed. Assuming the evidence he compromised could identify him as the killer, there’s a good chance Arthur Hutton had a personal relationship with the victim. One his wife and daughter might not have known about. You ask the ME about who paid him to lie?”

“Said it was all done through that app that automatically deletes messages. Snap something. Never met in person, never heard their voice. Completely anonymous, but he did say whoever it was knew he was spending money he didn’t have on things his wife probably didn’t know about.” Baxter stared down at his coffee, driving the edge of his thumb against the lid. “Your killer targeted him. Knew he could be bought. We can subpoena the platform, but we’ll be waiting years just for them to acknowledge we exist. It’s a dead end.”

“Just add it to the list.” Adrial skimmed through the crime scene photos. The exhumation order for Lila Mercer’s body had been another one of those dead ends. No judge would sign off on digging up the remains of Black Hollow’s sweetheart on the off chance of getting a lead. They needed something concrete, but the medical examiner had taken plenty of pictures. Though they hadn’t done him an ounce of good in the past. While the lake had preserved a good amount of the victim’s tissue, clear animal activity exposed bone, destroyed most of Lila Mercer’s facial features and sped up decomposition. The medical examiner hadn’t been able to tell them how long she’d been in the water, but it’d been well before winter had frozen the lake considering the damage. Days, if not weeks. That complicated a solid suspect list considering it’d taken her fellow nurses a while to report her missing. It’d only been through the process of elimination they’d been able to identify Lila Mercer at all, her teeth and fingers removed before the remains had been dumped.

Arthur would’ve known how to slow down identifying the body.

“And you had no idea your partner had his hands caught in the cookie jar on this one?” Baxter set his coffee on the edge of the desk.

Of course, Adrial had told him about the incident in the evidence room and why he’d left Black Hollow in the first place, but the rest… He’d always wondered, but putting Winnie at risk of the heat that would destroy Arthur’s life hadn’t been an option.

But had he done it for the reasons he’d told Winnie? Or had he merely convinced himself it’d all been for her as a way to justify hurting the one woman in this damn town who’d looked at him like a person, instead of a tool to be used or put on display? You didn’t leave to save me pain. You left to protect yourself. Air stalled in his throat. Of course, she’d been right. Revealing Arthur’s secret would’ve destroyed what was left of Winnie’s life, but worse, she would’ve blamed him for bringing it all into the open. She would’ve hated him, left him, stopped loving him. And he… He hadn’t been able to deal with that. So he’d left.