Chapter 12 - The Frozen Pond
We reached the pond at dusk.
The snow had started again, thick and windblown.
A set of tire tracks ended beside the old pump house.
Richard’s SUV was parked there empty.
Sheriff Molina drew her weapon. “Everyone except Ethan stays in the vehicles.”
I ignored that for exactly thirty seconds.
Then Ghost started barking toward the pump house.
I got out.
“Mara!” Ethan hissed.
The door opened from inside.
Richard stepped out with both hands raised.
“I came because Voss called me.”
Molina aimed at his chest. “Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why did you run from my deputy?”
“Because if I told you he called, you would have stopped me.”
“That was the idea.”
Richard looked exhausted. Smaller somehow.
“He said he had Claire’s ledger. He said if I wanted it destroyed, I had to come alone.”
Ethan stared at him. “Wanted it destroyed?”
Richard swallowed.
There it was.
Not denial anymore.
Confession beginning at the edges.
“Yes,” he said. “I wanted the ledger gone.”
“Because you killed Thomas?”
“No.”
“Because you killed Claire?”
Richard’s eyes filled with something that looked almost like grief.
“No.”
A shot rang out from the tree line.
Richard dropped.
For one horrible second I thought he was dead.
Then he grabbed his shoulder and rolled behind the SUV.
Molina fired toward the woods.
A figure ran between the pines.
Ghost tore free from my hand.
“Ghost!”
He vanished into the trees.
Ethan ran after him.
I followed until we reached the edge of the frozen pond.
Ghost stood in the snow, growling at a hole cut through the ice.
Beside the hole lay Dad’s recipe box.
Inside was one folded ledger page.
And beneath it, a photograph I had never seen before.
Claire was standing beside my father.
On the back she had written:
Daniel, if I don’t survive tonight, tell my daughter the truth about Richard.
Ethan read it over my shoulder.
“What truth?”
A voice behind us answered.
May you like
“The truth that I wasn’t the one who killed her.”
Richard stood ten feet away, blood soaking through his sleeve.
