“Dad—”
“Shut up, Claire. Get inside. This is not your business.”
Claire’s jaw dropped. Her eyes flashed with anger. She turned to Angie, the heat of emotion burning red into her face. “I’m sorry about him. I—”
“Get inside, Claire,” her father growled. “I’ll speak to you later.”
“It’s okay, Claire,” Angie said quickly. “Thank you. For everything.”
Garrison showed agitation, shifting his weight foot to foot as he waited for his daughter to enter the lodge and shut the door behind her.
As soon as the door closed, he pointed his wrench to the logging road. “You’ve got enough light to get back down to the highway before we get socked in. Your bags are in the rental.”
“It was you, wasn’t it?” Angie said, holding her ground. “In the red Ford truck. You know who tried to run me off the road.”
“It was hunters. Brake line failure. That’s all.”
“Really? What were their names?”
“It’s time to leave, Ms.Pallorino.” He took a step toward her. Her shoulders stiffened.
“What are you all hiding, Garrison? What’s the big secret? Was Jasmine Gulati pushed to her death? Do you know who killed her? Is that what this about? Who are you all protecting? Was ityouwho pushed her?”
“Don’t make this difficult. I don’t want to have to call the police.”
She flicked a glance at the lodge, then lowered her voice. “You slept with Jasmine that night, Garrison. The women in the motel room next door knew it. The guys in the pub knew it. You screwed your client. On the very first night. I think even your wife suspected.”
He faltered, blinked. His gaze ticked up to the lodge windows. Angie thought she saw a blind move.
“I have footage of you huddling in that pub booth with Jasmine Gulati. I have footage of Shelley, your wife, entering the pub. I have screenshots of Shelley looking directly at you sitting cozy and intimate with Jasmine Gulati. I’ve also got footage of Jessie Tollet and Tack McWhirther trying to step in and save Shelley from the indignity of seeing you with Jasmine, unsuccessfully. Because Shelleydidobserve you two cuddling in that booth. Would you like to see the screenshots I took from that footage, Garrison? They’re in a folder in my rental.”
Blood drained from his face. The paleness of his complexion made his black hair seem darker, his ice-green eyes more stark.
“Or maybe Shelley wants to see the images. Did she perhaps confront you when you returned to the lodge? Did your wife ask if you’d fucked Jasmine Gulati in the motel that night?”
His body language changed. It was as if some of the fight had leaked out of his muscles. Angie had gained the edge. She took it and moved a step closer to him, getting in his face.
“Here’s what I know. Tack McWhirther was your wife’s guardian, her protector. He cared fiercely about Shelley, and he did not approve of you being with Jasmine that night. I think he blamed the beautiful and provocative Jasmine more than he blamed poor, seduced you for not being able to keep your dick in your pants. Tack’s also a fine hand with a banjo, I hear. So he and the Tollet twins—BoJo—and maybe Wallace Carmanagh, too, conjured up scenes ofDeliverance, terrorizing the women along the river for the duration of their trip. Primarily to teach the wickedly evil Jasmine a lesson about the dangers of mocking the rednecks in these woods. Am I right?” She paused, watching his face.
“One of thatDeliverancegroup wore a red hat and a black-and-red-plaid jacket, and the others matched the description the women gave me. I also know Wallace did time for violently assaulting a woman in his past. I know about Porter Bates, too.” Her gaze bore into his green eyes. “I know the lengths some of these guys—including you—will go to protect one of their own. Like you protected Axel Tollet.”
Her final words seemed to deflate him fully. He took a step back and sat heavily on a willow bench near the lodge door. He dropped his face into his big work-hardened hands and rubbed his skin.
She stepped closer. “Why did you do it, Garrison? Why did you sleep with Jasmine?”
“I was young.”
“Forty-two?”
“She ... she was beautiful. She came on to me. She offered it all to me. I ...” He looked up, his eyes raw. “Shelley and I were having a rough time with the marriage. We’d just taken over the lodge from my dad, and we were trying to expand the guiding and tourism side of the business. But we were short on cash. We’d also been trying for kids for a long, long time. Shelley had suffered two miscarriages, and she’d collapsed into herself. She’d become distant. She no longer enjoyed physical intimacy. It was just a goddamn fling with Jasmine, something I needed to get out of my system. That woman just handed it to me on a plate, attracted, lured me. Trapped me.” He sniffed and wiped his nose.
“She gave me a chance to see if I could still be a man, for Godssakes. I knew I’d screwed up the moment I did it. I knew what was going on with the guys and the banjo on the ridge—I kinda wanted her to pay, too ... all of those women. I didn’t like them. Intellectual, holier-than-thou, rude, feminist liberals from the city. They figured they had the answers to the world and that us rural folk were put on this earth expressly to be used by them. But we also needed them. We needed the documentary to go well. It would’ve brought huge positive exposure to the region and to our lodge. More business. You can’t buy advertising like that. I thought, what harm could it do if Wallace and Tack and BoJo want to play some stupid head game with them? Jessie and I were in the boats with the women. We knew they would come to no harm.”
“Did you really know that?”
Angie let that hang while she filed away his admission that all four men had been stalking the river trip. The women had reported seeing only three at any one time. But with four in play, one could easily have pushed Jasmine into the water that fateful evening.
Wind rushed like the sound of an ocean through pines around the lodge. Flakes shimmied into the carport, turning thicker. A sense of time ticking by fast tightened in Angie’s chest.
