“He was still griping about it the afternoon I met him. He stopped by The Major’s house during our first pre-interview session. He made me feel that I should apologize for all the inconvenience I was causing him. He was a little more mellow about it when he came by my motel room.”

Trapper gave a start. “First I’ve heard of this.”

“It was on Friday evening.”

“Courtesy call?”

“In a manner of speaking. He was following up to see if his department was doing a good job of keeping autograph hounds at bay.” She smiled. “Actually I took advantage of his being there to run past him the list of questions I was preparing. The Major had insisted on seeing them in advance of the interview.

“I asked the sheriff’s opinion on whether I should omit any mention of you. He told me that would be his recommendation, that the interview would cause enough fireworks after I sprang my big surprise, that adding you to the mix would—”

Trapper sat bolt upright and held out his hand to stop her from saying anything more. “He mentioned the big surprise?”

“Honestly, I was miffed that you’d told him.”

“I didn’t.”

She sat up so she could see his face, which was taut with concentration.

“I warned Glenn of the interview, but I didn’t give away your secret.” For a time, he sat so still that he startled her when he abruptly threw off the covers and lurched off the bed.

He grabbed his jeans from where he’d slung them onto the floor, stepped into them, then shook a shirt from the Walmart sack, ripped off the tags, and pulled it on. Responding to his urgency, she came off the bed and began dressing as hurriedly as he.

“In the wee hours of Monday morning,” he said, “when you regained consciousness, Glenn and I were in your room.”

“Yes, yes.” She crammed her feet into her shoes. “I woke up to the two of you talking. He was describing the crime scene.”

“Right. He asked if I knew prior to the telecast who you were. I confessed I did. He acted pissed off that I hadn’t told him, acted like he’d learned it along with everybody else in the TV viewing audience. Yet you say he knew on Friday night.”

“The Major could have—”

“If The Major had told him, why not just say so? Why did he pretend to me that he didn’t know?”

She processed that, but couldn’t come up with a logical answer.

“Glenn knew before Sunday night, but he didn’t want me to know that he did.” Trapper checked the clip in his pistol, then replaced it in the holster and attached that to his waistband.

Kerra grabbed her handbag. “If neither you nor I told him, and if it wasn’t The Major, then who?”

Trapper pulled her coat off a hanger in the closet, tossed it to her, then picked up his own. “Good question.”

Chapter 29

Hank answered the mudroom door to Trapper’s knock.

Peering at them through the screened door, he said, “We aren’t exactly up to having company tonight.”

“We’re not company.” To include Kerra in that, Trapper placed his arm across her shoulders.

He hadn’t even considered leaving her behind. Not after discovering the tracking device on her car, and not after having Jenks show up coincidentally at The Major’s house, and not after learning that there was something hinky about the timing of when Glenn became aware of her connection to the Pegasus Hotel bombing.

He wanted Glenn’s explanation for all these peculiarities, and he didn’t care if he had been rushed to the ER today, he wanted to hear what the sheriff had to say now, even if he had to drag him from his bed.

Hank still didn’t invite them in. “How’s your cheek?”

“It’s not terminal.”

“You probably should have had it stitched.”

“Is Glenn still up?”

Hank sighed. “Trapper, the last thing Dad needs—”

“I need to talk to him.”

“What for?”

“That’s for him to know.”

“Can’t it wait till morning?”

“If it could wait till morning, I wouldn’t be here now.”

Hank looked from him to Kerra as though seeking her support, which she didn’t lend. Going back to Trapper, he said, “Don’t you have a filter, any sense of propriety?”

“You have to ask?”

“He’s not going to go away.” The gruff voice reached them from beyond Hank in the direction of the kitchen. “You had just as well let him in.”

With unconcealed reluctance and dissension, Hank flipped the latch on the door, pushed it open, and stepped aside. Kerra went in first. Trapper followed, and, when he walked past Hank, said under his breath, “You ever hit me again, you’ll be preaching through extensive dental work.”

When Trapper entered the kitchen, Glenn was holding one of the dining chairs for Kerra. The kitchen smelled like the baking dish of lasagna that had been left on the stovetop. And of the whiskey in the glass on the table in front of the chair Glenn dropped back into.

Trapper was shocked by his appearance. He was disheveled and seemed to have aged twenty years since this morning during the questioning of Leslie Duncan. Trapper wondered if Glenn hadn’t suffered something more serious than an anxiety attack. It must have been one hell of one. It was also obvious that the drink in front of him wasn’t his first. Or even his second.

“Kerra, something to drink?” Glenn asked. “Soft or hard? Coffee?”

“Nothing, thank you.”

“Trapper?”

“Believe I will.” He excused himself to step around Hank, got a glass from the cabinet, and returned with it to the table. He sat down across from Glenn and adjacent to Kerra. Hank took the fourth chair.

Trapper asked where Linda was. Hank said, “She was exhausted. I made her go to bed with the promise that I would stay here overnight in case Dad needed anything or took a turn.”

“I’m not going to take a turn,” Glenn muttered.

Trapper poured himself a whiskey, shot it, then set the empty glass on the table and clasped his hands. Addressing Glenn, he said, “The next ten minutes or so aren’t going to be any fun for me. I want you to know that.”

Glenn topped off his glass and took a drink.

Trapper didn’t waste any more words. “Who told you that Kerra was the little girl in the picture?”

“Thomas Wilcox.”

Trapper thought his heart might stop. He hadn’t expected Glenn to come forth with an answer so readily. And although Trapper had had a premonition that this would eventually lead to Wilcox, it was a jolt to hear his name right off the bat.

As upsetting as it was to learn that Glenn had an association with the man, it was even more alarming to learn that Wilcox had known in advance of Kerra’s interview with The Major that she was a survivor of the Pegasus bombing. For all they’d talked about in Trapper’s office, he hadn’t mentioned knowing that when he and Kerra had first met.

Why not? Trapper wondered.

He could tell by Kerra’s expression that this disclosure troubled her, too.

“Who’s Thomas Wilcox?” Hank asked.

Trapper ignored him and focused on Glenn. “When did Wilcox tell you who Kerra was?”

“The night you told me about the upcoming interview. Soon as you left, I alerted Wilcox to it.”

Trapper leaned forward across the table. “Why would you do that, Glenn?”

“What is going on?” Hank said.

Glenn turned to him. “Hank, stop asking questions and let me talk. You had just as well hear this, too.”

“This what? What?”

Glenn went for his glass of whiskey, but Trapper moved it and the bottle out of his reach. “Start at the beginning, Glenn, and tell me everything. What’s your link to Wilcox?”

“It goes back several years.”

“I’ve got all night.”

“You wearing a wire?”

“I don’t work in law enforcement.”

Glenn held his gaze. “You wearing a wire?”

Trapper shrugged off his coat and raised his shirt. “Neither is Kerra.”