“And we know more than we did,” he said.
“Yeah, like what?”
“Naomi said your mother had known her brotherbefore. She told us to look up ... something. I just couldn’t understand her. Could you?”
“I’m thinking on it. It didn’t make sense. Free ... that’s all I could understand.”
He shook his head. “She knows something vital. Honestly, I wish she had led with that.”
“Could the shooter have been after her and not me? Could the ferry killer have been there to kill Mason after all? She and her brother had information.” Jo’s shoulders tensed.
“Yeah, she said that your mother and Mason had known each other before. But we know that because they met in the parking lot. If what Naomi said is true, your mother contacted him. So they definitely knew each other.”
“So, what did she mean by ‘before’?” she asked. “Naomi mumbled the word ‘free.’ Free what? She was cut off by bullets. And I could have completely misheard.”
“So let’s focus on the before aspect then,” he said.
“Maybe it was before some incident that was free, which doesn’t make sense, or they knew each other before some point in their past lives.” What exactly was her mother’s past? Jo hadn’t been left with her ancestry handwritten inthe pages of a family heritage Bible. She’d simply been told all her grandparents were gone.
“Which means we’re missing a lot of pieces,” he said. “But we now have a lotmorepieces. I’ll send this new information to Allison.”
Jo didn’t have to just sit here and wait for the answers to fall into her lap or for Allison to find all the answers. She could at least search the internet at the safe house, even though it didn’t always give the correct answers. She’d already searched on her father’s real name and never found him. Clearly, Allison was a master at intelligence. Jo had only her art skills.
“So, you talked to the sheriff longer than I did. What did you learn?”
“The sheriff is forwarding the security footage. I’ll hold him to it. I left a voicemail with Rick in Michigan to let him know what’s happened. I don’t know if Naomi told him what she told us about her brother, but she hadn’t told me.”
“Why do you think she held back?”
“I have a theory or two. One, she might not have known all of it herself. Maybe Mason told her this news not long before he was killed. Or maybe she wanted me to discover what I could on my own without the additional information.” He shrugged.
They were still sitting in the parking lot. Two county vehicles remained.
“It’s time to get out of here.” Cole shifted into reverse and steered them out of the parking lot and away from the chaos. Jo sank down in the seat, wishing she was on the other side of the nightmare.
“Where are we going? What about the house, Cole? Do you think it’s still safe? What if this man who’s after me follows us?”
“I’ll make sure he doesn’t.”
“How can you be one hundred percent sure he won’t?”
“He has a BOLO out on him now. He’s on the run.” Cole held up his cell. “I have his picture right here. Sent it to Hawk. I sent it to everyone.”
“But we can’t see the eyes.” Even so, Jo was already drawing his face in her mind, completing the sketch by adding the eyes from the ferry killer. Would it be their man?
“We have enough for now, and I have a feeling that his full face will be discovered soon enough. Someone will figure it out,” Cole said.
“That’s what I used to do, the kind of thing I did with my job. I could—”
“You don’t have to, Jo. I don’t want to put you through more trauma. We’re all watching out for you.”
Yeah. Everyone except for her father.Oh,Pop...
“I’mwatching out for you.”
Jo couldn’t help the surge of emotion, but she needed to hide it, so she stared out the window at the harsh gray of a cold March. The clouds and constant rain, the rough water of the Hood Canal, part of Puget Sound, and the woods. Endless miles of Olympic National Forest. At least here, in the Pacific Northwest, the lush forest green brought a sense of hope.
Evergreens might lose their dead needles, but they continued growing new ones and never appeared bare, no matter the harsh conditions. And Jo needed to be more like that. She needed to have that same perpetual fortitude. She needed to be like an evergreen.
