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.Loyalty is admirable but it can also be a weakness.” Lowell suddenly seemed awkward.“We saw Sean Cameron yesterday.I’m surprised he’s let you out of his sight.”Hannah felt her cheeks burn despite the cold.“I won’t keep you.”She noticed Poe had collapsed in the van and gone to sleep and left Lowell standing in the snow as she headed to her car.Every bit of heat had gone out of it.She kept her gloves on as she put the key in the ignition.She noticed an odd smell and looked over her shoulder into the backseat.Her car blanket was pulled up over something.She hadn’t seen it earlier.Had Dominique or Beth left goodies for her to take to the McBanes?The smell wasn’t shepherd’s pie or brownies—or any kind of food.Lowell.He’d been in the guesthouse when she arrived.He’d let Poe out, or Poe had slipped out on his own.She hadn’t locked her car.Lowell would have had time while she was tramping through the snow after Poe to set whatever it was on her backseat and toss the blanket over it.A bomb.Hannah recognized the smell now.Gunpowder.Black powder.The lingering odor of Lowell’s sweat.She reacted instantly, pushing open her door and leaping out onto the snowbank.She landed on her stomach and hurled herself over the bank and down the hill, into the soft snow under the branches of a white pine.Her car exploded above her, the concussive impact of the blast sucking the air out of her, propelling her farther down the hill.She heard metal ripping apart, smelled the fire—felt it—as she landed hard on her side, striking a boulder that jutted up out of the snow.Stifling a moan, she rolled back up onto to her feet.She’d lost her gloves in the snow, but grabbed them even as she reached for her cell phone.With a jolt of panic, she realized her phone was still in her burning car.She couldn’t call for help.Was Lowell telling the truth and Bowie was at the farmhouse? Was Bowie with Vivian? Had they heard the blast?Hannah pushed back the assault of questions and, aching with the cold, with fear, headed through the woods along the far edge of the duck pond, toward the river and the Whittakers’ farmhouse.Her first job was to keep Lowell from seeing her.He couldn’t know she’d escaped the blast.She started to put on her gloves but they’d filled with snow.She shoved them into her jacket pockets and glanced back through the trees, wincing at her trail of boot prints.If Lowell saw them, he’d know she was still alive.He’d be able to follow her.Was he inspecting her burning car even now, discovering where she’d leaped free of the explosion into the snow?She moved as fast as she could through the knee-deep snow, every step torture.Her head throbbed, and she could smell the smoke from her burning car and glanced back, seeing it rising in the air.Where’s Lowell?She couldn’t see him through the trees.How long had he been planning to frame Bowie? Days, weeks—months? Lowell had been to Rose’s house several times and would have known Black Falls Lodge was visible from her driveway.He’d just needed binoculars to see Melanie Kendall get in her car at the lodge and a cell phone to trigger the bomb.Had he planned, even then, to blame Bowie?Hannah didn’t slacken her pace.She had to get to Bowie.She needed him as an ally.And she needed to warn him that Lowell Whittaker meant to frame him as an accomplice—even a mastermind—to murder.Thirty-ThreeLowell tried to stay close to the old stone wall that ran along the edge of the road that led down from the farmhouse and, ultimately, to Bowie’s place on the river—and the old logging road at the base of Cameron Mountain.A line of Scotch pines a previous owner had planted grew along the wall.The pines were gnarled and overgrown, but they helped block the wind.He fought tears, stumbling as he made his way up the road, clutching the cell phone in his bare right hand.His ears were ringing from the blast.He could smell the acrid smoke of the fire but refused to look back to see it, to check if the flames had spread—if Hannah had died instantly.Was she in the burning, twisted metal now, fighting for her life?He sobbed, his heart pounding.No.She was dead.He would no longer see her lovely face at the café.He had no desire to see the results of the simple dialing of a number on a cell phone.He had to make his next move.There was no time to waste.Sean Cameron was besotted with Hannah.How far behind her could he be?Lowell choked back more useless emotion.He’d had no choice but to kill Hannah.He didn’t have the base, violent impulses of a Kyle Rigby or a Melanie Kendall.Drew Cameron and Alex Bruni—even Melanie—would be alive now but for the threat they’d posed.Lowell hadn’t killed them out of any deep yearning to commit violence.He’d hoped with each of their deaths that he could avoid the situation he was in now, with his exposure imminent if he didn’t act.He was prepared.His plan was airtight.It would confirm everyone’s suspicions about Bowie O’Rourke.The bar fight.Bowie’s combustible anger.His troubled past.He’d been ripe for recruitment by Melanie and Kyle, and after their deaths, he’d gone solo and carried out his own plans in an attempt to exact revenge on those who’d wronged him.His simmering resentment of Hannah Shay and the role she’d played in his arrest, her obvious love for Sean Cameron and her suspicions of his actions in November had all led Bowie to place a bomb in the backseat of her car.Bowie was a stonemason and an ex-con [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]