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Chapter Sixteen

Zach insisted on going with Shelby to the sheriff's department. The sheriff, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, met them at the back of the dark building. He frowned at Zach, but didn't say anything and allowed him to follow Shelby to a cramped office. Zach settled into one of the two chairs facing the desk. Walker sat behind the desk and tapped the keyboard to wake up his computer.

"Thomas Chalk is Charlie and Christopher Chalk's nephew, is that right?" Shelby asked. "I remember the name from our files, but I can't recall anything about him."

"Great nephew," Walker said. "He's the grandson of their older brother, Carter Chalk."

"Carter isn't involved in the family businesses," Shelby said. She turned to Zach. "Carter made a point of cutting himself off from the rest of the family as soon as he was out of college. He operates a ranch in Wyoming and, as far as we've been able to determine, has no involvement with any of their affairs."

"There's more," Walker said. "Thomas has an older brother, Martin." He angled the computer screen toward them to show a photograph of a dark-haired young man with a prominent nose.

Gooseflesh rose on Zach's arms. "That's the man I saw outside the Britannia Pub the night the judge was killed," he said.

"You're sure?" Walker asked.

"Yes, I'm sure."

"Martin Chalk is dead," Shelby said. "I remember now. He drowned six months after Judge Hennessey was killed, before Charlie and Christopher's trial. It was ruled an accidental death."

Zach sat back, trying to sort out the thoughts spinning in his head. "Do you think Martin was killed to silence him about whatever he saw at the restaurant that night?"

"His death was never investigated as a possible murder," Shelby said. "I'd have to review the file, but the only mention I remember seeing was that he died in an accident when his boat was swamped on a lake where he was fishing, and that he had nothing to do with the Chalk brothers' crimes."

"Why was Thomas Chalk here?" Zach asked. "Did he kill Camille?"

"We sent his hair to the FBI lab to see if it matches the one you found at the campsite," Travis said. He turned the computer monitor back to face him and typed. "Now take a look at this photo." He turned the monitor again, this time to show a photo of a beautiful blonde.

"That's Janie!" Both Shelby and Zach spoke. He leaned closer, but there was no mistaking the woman in this photo for anyone other than the woman who had pursued him.

"Her name is Janelle Chalk," Travis said. "She's Thomas's twin sister."

Z ACH TRIED TO focus on the road on this short drive to Shelby's hotel room, where she wanted to retrieve her laptop and files. But everything Travis and Shelby had told him kept pulling his thoughts away. "What were Janelle and her brother doing here?" he asked. "Did they kill Camille? Were they stalking me or something? And why?"

"Maybe they found out you saw their brother at the pub that night," Shelby said.

"But what difference does that make if their brother is dead?"

"I don't know." She stared at her phone, typing furiously. "I'm trying to log into my files at the Bureau, but the system isn't exactly set up to be read on a phone screen." She laid the phone in her lap. "I texted my boss with the news about the twins, though I don't know if he'll read the message tonight."

"You said they aren't involved in the Chalk brothers' crimes."

"Not that we know of. But maybe that's changed."

"Maybe Martin was at the pub that night to try to stop the killing," Zach said. "He got frightened and ran away."

"Or maybe he was the killer," Shelby said. "Maybe the Chalk brothers were right, and they didn't pull the trigger after all. Though that doesn't mean they didn't orchestrate the whole thing. Maybe Martin wanted in on the action, and killing the judge was the price of admission."

"Then why kill him six months later?"

"Maybe his death really was an accident. Or maybe he got cold feet and threatened to turn himself in. Or Charlie and Christopher were afraid he would cave under pressure and decided to eliminate the risk."

"So what were Thomas and Janelle doing in Eagle Mountain? Were they following Camille?"

"Or they were here to kill you," she said. "Maybe that's what led Camille here. I don't know. But we'll do our best to find out."

At the motel, Shelby fired up her laptop and scrolled through her files. Zach couldn't sit still, so he paced, mind and heart racing. "Where is Janelle now?" he wondered. "Is she hiding from whoever killed her brother? Or did she kill him?"

Shelby shook her head. "My files have almost nothing on those two. They're on a list of Chalk relatives, but as far as the FBI knows, they're both living quiet lives in Wyoming. This says that Thomas works on the ranch with his father and Janelle is a dental hygienist." She glanced up at him. "They both sound so ordinary."

"I wasn't really worried before," he said. "But now I feel like I'm waiting for the next terrible thing to happen. And I know the sheriff said he had contacted the police in Junction about protecting my parents, but maybe I should go to them."

"That wouldn't be a bad idea," she said. "It would get you away from here, someplace safer and with a law enforcement presence twenty-four hours a day."

"What will you do?" he asked. "Do you still have to be in Houston Monday?"

"I don't know. I would think this would change things." She closed the laptop. "Let's go back to your place. You can pack to go to your folks while I keep trying to get more information on the Chalk twins."

It probably would have been easier for her to stay at the motel and work alone, but he appreciated that they would be together a little while longer. He took her hand as they walked out to his car. "I'm going to miss you while I'm gone," he said.

"I'm going to miss you, too." She leaned against him. "But I promise, we'll talk every day."

And what about when this is all over? he wondered, but didn't dare ask out loud. What about when she went back to Houston, and he tried to settle in once more to life here in Eagle Mountain? Would they try to keep up a long-distance relationship, something that seemed to him doomed to fail? Or would they part as friends? The idea made his chest hurt. Better not to dwell on that uncertain future. He needed all his attention on now.

He parked in the lot in front of his townhouse and led the way down the path to his front door. But when he tried his key in the lock, it wouldn't go in.

"What's wrong?" Shelby asked.

"The key won't go in. It's like something is jamming the lock." He leaned down for a closer look but was unable to make out anything in the dim light.

A gasp from Shelby made him look up.

Janie—or rather Janelle Chalk—smiled at him. She held a pistol pressed to Shelby's side. "Don't try anything," Janelle said. "Or I'll kill her, then finish you off."

S HELBY TRIED TO remember the self-defense training she had received earlier in her career: How to overpower an opponent. How to evade capture. How to use your opponent's weaknesses against them. But none of those lessons applied here, with the barrel of a pistol pressed hard against her ribs and Zach standing across from her, his face bleached of color and eyes filled with horror.

Janelle patted her down and found Shelby's pistol and pocketed it. "Get back in your car," she ordered, grabbing Shelby's arm and marching her forward, the gun between them. She wore black pants and a black hoodie, the hood pulled up to hide her blond hair. She had a small black daypack on her back. Anyone seeing her would describe a tall, slim figure—the same description the camper had given the sheriff of the "man" he had seen running from Camille's campsite the day she died. "You drive, Zach," Janelle said. "But remember what will happen if you start thinking you're smarter than I am."

"Where are we going?" Zach asked as he opened the driver's door of his truck.

Janelle led Shelby to the passenger side and shoved her in. Shelby was grateful for Zach's bulk beside her, somehow comforting. Of course, it also meant that if Janelle decided to fire the pistol in these close quarters, both she and Zach were likely to be hurt. "Where do you want me to drive?" Zach asked again as Janelle shut the door behind her.

"Go to the Pi?on Creek campground. I think it's fitting, don't you, that we end everything there."

The small town of Eagle Mountain was so much darker than Houston at night, without thousands of streetlights, traffic lights and the glow from homes and towering office buildings shutting out the night. But away from town, on the Forest Service road, they were plunged into a new kind of darkness. The headlights of Zach's truck cut a narrow wedge out of the inky blackness, revealing nothing but closely growing trees and the narrow strip of red dirt road directly in front of them.

Zach drove slowly, clutching the steering wheel in both hands as if he might rip it from the column. He stared straight ahead, and Shelby wondered what he was thinking. Her own mind raced, searching for some avenue of escape. But shaping a coherent thought was liking extracting bolts from a vat of molasses. The effort drained her, and nothing she could assemble made sense.

"What are you doing here in Eagle Mountain?" Zach asked, breaking the silence and making Shelby jump. "Did you come with your brother?"

"I followed him here because I knew he was going to screw up," Janelle said. "Not that he minded me being here. I've always been the only one of us with any real backbone. He just went along with Uncle Charlie and Uncle Christopher because he was afraid of them."

"What was he doing here, then?" Zach asked. "Was he really writing a book about the Chalk brothers?"

Janelle laughed. "No, he wasn't writing a book! That was just a story he made up to get close to you. He had this idea that we should find out what you really knew about what happened that night at the pub before we killed you. I told him it didn't matter what you knew because the uncles wanted you dead, but Thomas felt he had to know if the killing was justified. He actually said that. As if it matters."

The casual way she spoke, as if murder was a mundane topic of conversation, sent an icy chill through Shelby. "I saw your brother, Martin, running away from the pub that night," Zach said.

"I knew it!" Janelle looked around Shelby to smile at him. "Martin told us there was a truck parked in front of the restaurant that night. He thought it was empty, but I was sure you were there, waiting on your sister. Of course, no one would listen to me for the longest time. After all, I'm just a girl." The smile turned to a sneer. "My uncles wasted so much time focused on Martin and Thomas, even though I was right there—the only one with guts enough to have a real role in the family organization. But because I'm female, I have to work so much harder to prove I'm capable. All my brothers had to do was stand around looking the part, when neither one of them had the nerve to actually do the work necessary."

"Martin looked really afraid the night I saw him," Zach asked. "What was he doing at the pub?"

"He was terrified," Janelle said. "All he had to do was show up, fire one shot into that worthless judge and Charlie and Christopher were going to hand over a whole chunk of their empire. Legitimate businesses, most of them. He would have been rich. Instead, as soon as he shot the judge, he fell apart. He ran away like the coward he was, all the way back to Wyoming. He told my uncles he had changed his mind and wanted to stay on the ranch. He promised not to say anything about what happened that night, but they couldn't trust him. How could they? He was liable to fall apart the first time anyone came to question him." She turned to Shelby. "But you never did. The FBI never figured out there was someone else in the pub that night, even when Charlie and Christopher's attorneys kept insisting my uncles never fired a shot. They told the truth."

"Why didn't your uncles tell the authorities that Martin killed the judge?" Zach said. "Especially if he wasn't around to implicate them?"

"Family loyalty and the family name are everything to them," Janelle said. "It's why they were so keen on getting my brothers involved. The two of them only have daughters. One of them has never married, and the other is a lesbian. They figured if they were going to find a man to run things when they decided to retire, my brothers were the best candidates. They couldn't see that I was the one they really needed."

Silence wrapped around them, broken only by the crunch of the truck's tires on the dirt road. Shelby watched Janelle out of the corner of her eye. The other woman was smiling slightly. She looked so pleased with herself.

"Who killed Thomas?" Zach asked after a moment.

"He couldn't follow through on the job he was sent here to do, and he was becoming a liability," Janelle said.

"So you shot him?" Shelby asked.

Janelle's look was withering. "I did what I had to do," she said.

"Did you kill Camille, too?" Zach asked.

"I did. But I promise, she didn't suffer. She wasn't even supposed to be here, but she must have found out what Thomas and I had planned and came here to warn you. Under different circumstances, the two of us might have been friends. I always felt she was a strong woman, like me." She leaned forward a little. "Your turn should be coming up soon. The sign can be hard to see."

A few minutes later, the headlights illuminated the brown Forest Service sign that identified the campground. "Turn in and drive to the back," Janelle ordered. "Stop at number 47."

The campsite where Camille had been killed. "Is this where you killed Thomas, too?" Shelby asked.

"It is. The sheriff will have moved his car and his body by now. I like the symmetry of having everything take place here. I hope my uncles appreciate it."

Zach turned into the campground and bumped along the rutted road, past parked vans, RVs and tents set up next to stunted trees and stone fire rings.

Yellow crime-scene tape still fluttered from the last campsite on the road, and the broken tree still lay across the parking area. Zach pulled alongside the tree and cut the engine. The lights remained on, shining into the darkness. "If you shoot us here, the campers will hear," Zach said.

"There's no cell service here," she said. "By the time they call for help, I'll be long gone. I left my car in another campsite nearby. With a tent set up and everything. So the other campers probably think I'm sleeping. I hitchhiked to your place. It's not hard for a woman who looks like me to get a ride." She opened the passenger door. "Get out. We're going to take a little walk. And remember, if you try anything, I'm not going to miss at this range."

Zach squeezed Shelby's arm as she started to slide across the seat away from him. She glanced back at him, but couldn't read his expression in the darkness. "Go on," he whispered.

She wanted to tell him to run. She would distract Janelle and probably die in the process. But Zach could disappear into the darkness and would have a chance of getting away.

"Come out on this side, Zach," Janelle said. "I don't want you out of my sight."

He maneuvered his big frame awkwardly over the center console of the truck and joined them beside the vehicle. The headlights blinked off and darkness surrounded them. They could use the darkness to their advantage, Shelby thought. If they could get even a few feet away from Janelle, she wouldn't be able to see well enough to hit them.

And then what? They could try to get help from one of the campers, and possibly involve innocent bystanders in a firefight. They could run, but where? From what she remembered from her visits in the daytime, the area around the campground was a wooded mountainside along the river, full of uneven terrain, fallen trees, loose rock and other hazards. For all her law enforcement training, she had spent most of her career patrolling, interviewing, researching and compiling reports. She didn't feel prepared for a situation like this.

Z ACH ' S MIND RACED through all the possibilities in their situation. They were at the very back of the campground, away from most of the campers. In the darkness, he had only noticed a few sites occupied, and at this hour most people would be sleeping. He could hear the murmur of the river to their right. The terrain beyond the campground was rugged woods, scattered boulders and fallen trees from the recent storm ready to trip up anyone trying to flee in the darkness. If they did succeed in breaking free, they would have to run a long way before they got to a place where they could call for help.

They had darkness and numbers in their favor, but the pistol in Janelle's hand and her determination to use it evened the odds, or put them in her favor. He could try to distract her and allow Shelby to get away. He would probably be wounded or killed. And then what? Janelle would go after Shelby. Shelby was from the city. She didn't know the terrain around here. He didn't like her chances alone in this remote area with a killer after her.

He had to keep Janelle talking. As long as she was talking to them, they would still be alive. "Do your uncles know you're here, doing this for them?" he asked.

"They think I'm back home on the ranch where I belong." Bitterness colored her words. "When they find out I've accomplished what my brothers couldn't, they'll see me in a new light."

Zach eased one step back, moving as soundlessly as possible. Every foot away from her would make it harder for her to see him and easier for him to make a break if he got the chance.

"Come over here closer to me." She gestured with the pistol. "I don't trust you. You're probably thinking you're a big guy. You could overpower me. But I won't hesitate to shoot, and I'm a very good shot. There's not a lot for me to do on the ranch but practice."

Reluctantly, he did as she asked, moving not only closer to her, but to Shelby. He would do all he could to keep her safe. Keeping the gun aimed at him, she turned to Shelby. "Get some of the police tape that's around the campsite and tie up Zach," she said. "Ankles and wrists. And remember, if you try to run or scream or do anything suspicious, he dies."

Shelby turned toward the road. "How am I going to see what I'm doing?" she asked. "Even with the moon, it's so dark."

Janelle shifted and slipped her pack off her back. "Look in there, and you'll find a flashlight."

Shelby opened the pack and, after a few seconds, drew out a small flashlight.

"Give it to Zach," Janelle said. "Zach, you keep the light on her. I'll keep the gun on you."

Shelby's fingers brushed his as she handed him the light. They were ice-cold. Then she moved away, toward the tape strung on the far side of the camp.

The light was small, not heavy enough to use as a club. He trained the beam on Shelby. A powerful blue-tinged glow cut through the blackness. There was another campsite directly across from this one, but it was empty.

Zach shifted his stance and the back of his heel struck something solid. The broken tree. He pictured it in his mind, five inches across and shattered into two pieces. Could he pick up one of the pieces and use it as a club? He thought he could do it. Could he knock Janelle off-balance before she shot him? At this range, one shot could be deadly.

"Do you have a knife or scissors?" Shelby asked, her voice sounding loud in the stillness. "I can't undo these knots, and this stuff is designed to not tear."

"Keep working at it," Janelle called. "I'm not going to hand you anything that could be used as a weapon."

Keep her talking , Zach thought. Keep her distracted.

Shelby grunted and tugged hard on the tape. "It's not coming loose," she called.

"That's because you're making the knots tighter," Janelle said. "If you keep being difficult, I'm just going to go ahead and shoot you." She was frowning in Shelby's direction, and though the pistol still pointed at Zach, the barrel had dropped slightly. He swung the light up, aiming for her eyes, the brilliant light blinding her.

Janelle swore and put up a hand to shield her eyes. Zach bent and hefted the log. The gun went off, the bullet striking the log in his hand, the impact forcing him to take a step back to regain his balance. But he recovered quickly and swung the log at Janelle, aiming for her head and shoulders.

The impact of the heavy wood striking flesh and bone shuddered through him. Janelle screamed, and the gun went off again, then she crumpled to the ground. He dropped the log and retrieved the flashlight from the ground.

Shelby ran to him and scooped up the gun Janelle had dropped. They stood for a moment, staring down at the woman on the ground. She was curled in a fetal position, moaning.

"Hey! What's going on over there!"

Zach directed the light toward the sound and saw a man in shorts and sandals standing in the road. Shelby moved toward him. "I'm with the FBI," she called. "Please drive until you get a cell signal and call 911. We're going to need the sheriff and an ambulance."

The man hesitated, staring. "Go!" Shelby urged. "Please. It's important."

He nodded and ran back down the road. Zach knelt beside Janelle and felt at her throat for a pulse. She opened her eyes. "I think you broke my shoulder," she said.

"It will heal," he said. "Lie still. The ambulance will be here soon."

She groaned and closed her eyes again.

Shelby came to stand beside him. "I can't believe I was wrong about everything," she said. "The Chalk brothers didn't kill the judge or your sister."

Zach put an arm around her and pulled her close. "They orchestrated the judge's killing and ordered Camille killed, too," he said. "That makes them responsible."

She continued to stare at Janelle. "She killed her own brother. That's so horrible."

"It is. But it's over now."

She glanced at him. "Is it? The Chalk brothers will say they didn't know anything about this. They're very good at making people believe them."

He blew out a breath. Was she right? "Let's just focus on now," he said. "We're safe. We're together. That's all I want to think about." That was all that really mattered, wasn't it?

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