Odd Man Out

But she could feel him studying her, and when she glanced over at him, she saw what could have been regret in his gray eyes. Probably just lack of sleep, she assured herself as she concentrated on the next curve, waiting for the campground phone booth to come into view. As she came around the corner, her foot pulled off the gas pedal unconsciously.

The phone booth stood in the darkened pines, door closed. The overhead light glowed inside. She stared at it half expecting someone to materialize inside it. The pines swayed in the wind. The booth stood empty. Had that been where he called from?

“I think you’d better tell me what’s going on,” J.D. said, frowning at her as she hit the gas again and barreled past the campground. Denver glanced back into the darkness, then took a sharp curve on the snowy, narrow road with the familiarity of someone who’d driven it for years. J.D. hung on. “Come on, Denny, I’m sure you have a good reason for trying to kill us. I’d feel better, though, if I knew it before the wreck.”

She smiled. “You were the one who insisted on coming along.”

“So true.”

Freewheeling around the next curve, Denver shot down a straightaway and looked back. No headlights. “I got a call tonight from what sounded like a man. He claimed he knows something about Max’s murder. He told me to meet him at the fire tower.”

“I’m sorry I asked.” J.D. let out a breath after Denver successfully maneuvered the Jeep around another sharp curve in the road. “Let me ask you this—are you completely crazy?”

Denver looked over at him for just a second, then back at the road. Yes, she’d been crazy once. Crazy in love. Then just plain crazy when she realized J.D. had walked out of her life and not even looked back. Meeting a possible murderer in the middle of the night was nothing compared to that.

“I know it probably sounds foolhardy to you,” she said.

J.D. let out a laugh. “No, it sounds suicidal to me. Have you considered you might be driving right into a trap?”

Why had this made a lot more sense back at the cabin when she was half-asleep? A sudden chill raced up her spine and the first stirrings of real fear made the Jeep seem even colder inside.

The dark pines that lined both sides of the road blurred by blacker than the night. Occasionally the moon broke free of the clouds to lighten the slit of sky where the road made a path through the trees. Her headlights flickered down the long, narrow tunnel of a road. Behind her, darkness fought the silver-slick reflection of the snow hunkered among the pines.

“If you wanted to kill someone, can you think of a better place than an abandoned fire tower?” J.D. asked.

“No.” She reached over to bang on the heater lever; the darned thing wasn’t even putting out cold air. When she looked up, she saw the reflection of a large mud puddle dead ahead. She tried to avoid it and plowed through a pile of deep slush instead. The windshield fogged over. Hurriedly she rolled down her window. As she wiped a spot clear on the glass with her mitten, she heard what sounded like another vehicle close behind her. Her caller? Or just a reverberation in the trees?

“What’s wrong?” J.D. asked, glancing over his shoulder.

“I think we’re being followed.”

“Great.”

Not slowing down, Denver leaned down to rummage under her seat.

“What now?” J.D. asked.

“You don’t happen to have a weapon on you, do you?”

“I’m a guitar player, Denny, not a gunslinger.”

She dug blindly until she felt the screwdriver, then pulled it out and held it up to the lights from the dash.

“Get serious,” J.D. said.