This was her tipping point. She could crumble under his disdain, his confusion. She could let herself be swayed.
But then whoever really killed Cass was still walking free. And if Abby’s suspicions were right, he was going to hurt another girl.
She had to rise. To stand strong.
She had to do the one thing that she knew he couldn’t resist. Because Paul Harrison was a lot of things, but he was also still that little boy who used to tug her pigtails and chase her through the orchard rows. And he’d walk away from a lot of things. But he couldn’t walk away from a challenge.
She met his eyes, her gaze steady and unflinching. “I loved Cass,” she said, the truth in her words an almost painful, physical thing, hanging between them. “She was my sister in every way but blood. I’ve lost a lot in this world, Paul. But losing Cass will always be the hardest. I would never do anything to dishonor her or her memory or what happened. I didn’t set out to find this. All I wanted to do was tell Cass’s story. The problem is the story of her murder doesn’t make sense when you have all the pieces spread out in front of you. And if you actually went into my study with an open mind, you would see that. So maybe you should come inside and actually use that big, bad FBI-trained brain of yours to do some real police work.”
She could see a muscle in his jaw twitching as he ground his teeth together, fighting the urge to walk away.
So instead of waiting, she walked back up the porch steps and went inside. She didn’t need to turn around to know he was following her.
She knew him.
She was still running on anger as she entered her father’s—well, now it was hers—study. She was simmering with it, but when she slid open the double wood doors, something inside her began to settle.
She was right. And if he was any kind of FBI agent, he’d see that.
The boy she’d grown up with had been smart. He had a keen mind paired with a protective instinct that sometimes got him into a little too much trouble. He’d taken on bullies and badasses, anyone who picked on the little guy or the vulnerable. Half of the girls in their high school had been in love with him, and when Cass chose him—because Cass was too independent to be chosen, she was the one who did the choosing—it had made sense, the two of them together.
“Where do you want to start?” His voice was like ice, and his expression was even colder as he stalked into the study, folding his arms across his chest. Every part of him was stiff and guarded, like he expected her to attack with her body, with her words, with whatever truth he didn’t want to believe what she’d found.
“Two years ago,” she said, going over to the first whiteboard and flipping it over to reveal the other side. The beginning of her time line, the one that had set her on this path. “Mr. Martin died. Did you know?”
He nodded. “I sent flowers.”
Of course he did. Along with a handwritten note, she was sure. He probably called Cass’s mom after the funeral, to check in on her. That was the way he was.
“Mrs. Martin asked to see me, after the funeral,” Abby explained. “She said that out of respect for Earl, she’d promised herself she’d never ask unless he went first.”
“Ask what?”
Abby gestured to the chair, an old oak rolling chair from the ’30s, with studded leather and worn arms from generations of her family patriarchs, from her great-grandfather to her father, sitting in it. He sat down, still grim and unresponsive. Abby bit her lip, knowing she had her work in front of her, convincing him. But at least he was listening.
“She asked me to write Cass’s story,” Abby said. “She wanted me to write a book.”
“And you decided to take the angle that Wells didn’t kill Cass?” The incredulity was thick in his voice. It made her skin prickle with irritation. Like he thought she was some pulp writer out to get a scandalous story.
“I set out to write a book about how Cass lived, not how she died,” Abby said. “But in order to do that, I had to know everything about the days leading up to that night. About Wells. About the case.”
“So you went digging, and like all amateurs, you think you find something the pros overlooked,” he said.
She gritted her teeth, telling herself that this had come as a shock. That he was processing. She hadn’t wanted to believe it at first, either. There was comfort in knowing that Cass’s killer was behind bars, that he was being punished. The idea that he was walking free . . .
It had made her sick to even contemplate it at first. The only thing that got her through it was the knowledge that if the truth still needed to be uncovered, she was the only one searching for it. This was her mission now. It was a promise she’d never made to Cass, but one that was the solemn vow to her memory that now led her life.
She would find Cass’s killer. And she would make sure he paid.
“Okay, just tell me what your smoking gun is,” Paul said, yanking his hand through his hair in that agitated way that told her he wanted to be anywhere but here.
“It wasn’t just one thing,” Abby said. “Not at first. Have you ever looked at the case? The FBI files on him? You must have access to it.”
Something in his eyes flared, something that made her stomach leap like she’d just missed a step down the stairs and was falling in the worst way. “I worked hard to move on, Abby.”
So he hadn’t ever looked at them? God, she wouldn’t have been able to resist. But she guessed that was the difference between them. She had that curiosity, that burning need to know, to uncover, no matter the cost to herself. She’d never been very good at self-preservation. It was what had led her to this mess she was in now. But if he’d never even looked at the files . . . that made what she needed to ask him to do even harder.
“Sheriff Baker is the one who did the initial processing and questioning of Wells,” Abby said. “I got my hands on the video. It took me a few views to see why it was weird.”
“Show me,” Paul said.
He probably wanted to just look at the video so he could dismiss it and her theories, but she didn’t care. If he saw the video, he was going to see what she’d seen.
She hurried over to her laptop on the desk, turning it around so it was facing him, bringing up the video file and pressing Play. She circled around the desk, standing behind him as it began to play.
The video was old and light was bad, but Howard Wells was sitting there, handcuffed in the Castella Rock sheriff’s station. Sheriff Baker, a tall, lean man with a somber face who always reminded Abby of a melting candle, came into view. He sat down across from Wells, shuffling the paper for long moments before he finally spoke.
“Do you know why you’re here?”
“Why don’t you tell me?” Howard asked.
Another long silence, more paper shuffling. Even after watching the video what felt like hundreds of times, Abby still felt annoyed at the obvious way the sheriff was trying to intimidate him. It was pitiful, and she could see it on Wells’s face. What he thought of Baker. What he thought of this whole thing.
He wasn’t panicked. He wasn’t scared.
No, he was amused.
Abby watched as the sheriff began to question Wells. As he pushed the photo of Cass across the table, his voice rising as he demanded that Wells admit that he’d killed her.
“Why would I kill such a sweet thing?” Wells asked.
“She has the mark on her,” Baker said on the video. “The X. Your mark. And we found dirt from the orchard she lives on in your truck, along with blood. So how do you explain that?”
“There,” Abby said, pointing to the screen.
Wells’s face shifted. It was just a flash, so subtle that she’d almost missed it the first time.
“He made a face,” Paul said. “Lots of people make faces when they realize they’re caught.”
“Wait,” Abby said, pressing Play again. They watched as Baker basically lobbed question after question about Cass to Wells for a good ten minutes. And then a man in a black suit came into the interrogation room, clearly an FBI agent, and the video suddenly cut off.