Hidden Falls (38 page)

“What’s to break?” Nicole said. “We just need to find out if the window still opens.”

“I’m not twelve years old,” Ethan said. “I’m not climbing three stories up to an attic window.”

“Lauren needs Quinn’s notes,” Nicole said, “and we might find a clue about where Quinn went.”

“I am
not
going to climb that tree.”

Lauren was on hands and knees looking for Nicole’s single shoe under the sofa. “Well, I’m not going to do it, and Nicole is in no condition. That leaves you.”

“I don’t recall putting this to a vote.” Had they lost their capacity for rational thought? When he was a neglected preadolescent, Ethan lacked the sense of danger he felt now. And while he kept himself in good shape, he wasn’t as nimble as he was at twelve—and weighed eighty pounds more than the last time he climbed the tree. He wasn’t even sure if the branches that high up would support his weight. Testing the notion had no appeal.

“Come on, Ethan,” Nicole said. “
Four days.
If you’re going to leave in the morning, then let this be your parting contribution to the cause.”

“Getting arrested will not be a great career move.” Neither would falling out of a tree and breaking his back. He wasn’t going to listen to this nonsense. Ethan put both hands up. “Lauren, I’ll take you to get Nicole’s stuff, but that’s it.”

“I vote we take Nicole with us. Once you get in and get the door open, it won’t be that hard for her to hobble in the back door.”

Ethan squeezed his head between his hands. “You’ve lost your minds. Why don’t you just call Cooper and tell him there’s a way in?”

Nicole waved off the suggestion. “He’ll make a fuss about needing a search warrant or something. An officer of the law can’t just go into somebody’s house. He’s a by-the-book guy.”

“Well, maybe there’s a good reason for the book.”

“Nicole, do you need a jacket?” Lauren asked. “I’ve got a spare.”

“Good thinking.” Nicole was upright now, leaning on crutches and holding her booted foot off the floor. “What did you do with my house key when we got here yesterday?”

“In my bag.” Lauren opened the front closet and pulled a dark jacket from a hanger. “Where are you parked, Ethan?”

“Look, I’m taking you to Nicole’s house,” he said, “but Nicole does
not
need to come.” She might get a crazy idea like trying to climb the stairs.

Nicole laughed. “I’m not missing this for the world.”

Twenty minutes later, Ethan stood at the base of the mature maple tree in Quinn’s backyard. He judged the attic window to be at least twenty-five feet off the ground, maybe closer to thirty. Nicole sat on the deck with a flashlight. Lauren stood directly below the window in question with another light. The tree was closer to the house than Ethan remembered. He was surprised the roots hadn’t caused issues with the home’s foundation, but the proximity meant it wasn’t as far from the tree’s trunk to the window as he’d pictured. This wouldn’t be the first time he’d climbed in the dark—only the first time he did so knowing the ludicrous danger of climbing at all.

They should have left this to Cooper and his team. If Ethan got any whiff of a four-day-old decaying body in the house—he banished the thought. Cooper had sent a squad car to the house within minutes of Quinn’s disappearance at the banquet. The premises had been undisturbed.

Ethan checked to make sure the flashlight app on his phone was working. Though he knew its rays would be a pitiful weapon against the darkness inside the tree, Ethan didn’t want to carry anything heavier. He intended to stop every few branches to shine the light and get his bearings and make sure he was on a path toward the window and not above it or behind it.

Sweat plastered his shirt to his skin before Ethan was ten feet off the ground. Where had his twelve-year-old self gotten such bravado? The higher he got, the more slowly Ethan climbed. He didn’t look down at Nicole’s flashlight beam and then Lauren’s without first grasping a branch with both arms. If this had been the middle of summer when the tree was in full leaf, he would never have seen the house from the interior branches. When he was fairly certain he had reached the right height for the window, he began scooting slowly out on the thickest branches he could find, making sure he also had a good grip at all times on a branch other than the one he sat on.

Inch by inch, Ethan by turn held his breath and deliberately exhaled. The branch he slid out on thinned. Finally, he saw the glass in the window reflecting the beams angled from the ground.

Ethan couldn’t get it open with one hand. He counted to three under his breath before releasing his security grip and leaning his weight into pushing the window up with both hands.

Its resistance felt like it hadn’t been open since the last time Ethan made this climb.

But it gave.

He slid off the end of the branch and was in.

Ethan closed the window behind him and leaned against the wall to wait for his heart to stop pounding. He turned on his phone light and gave his eyes time to adjust before finding his way across the attic, down the stairs, and into the upstairs hall. There he paused long enough to send a text message.

I
’M IN.

Without turning on more lights, Ethan descended the carpeted stairs, paced to the back of the house, and unlocked the patio door.

“No lights,” he said to Nicole and Lauren. The last thing they needed was someone in the neighborhood calling the sheriff’s office because of suspicious activity in a house everyone in town knew was locked and empty. After what he’d just been through, Ethan wasn’t interested in answering Cooper Elliott’s questions.

“Let’s check his den first,” Nicole said. “He used to spend a lot of time there.”

Lauren pointed her beam at the floor, keeping it one step ahead of Nicole’s crutches. Ethan followed, ready to catch Nicole at the first sign that she had put a crutch down on the edge of a rug or another spot that wasn’t clear and level. Cutting into someone’s brain was less nerve-racking than this.

In the den, Lauren rifled through the papers on top of the desk while Nicole started on a file cabinet.

Ethan just wanted them to finish whatever they were going to do so they could all get out of there.

Lauren gasped.

“What is it?” Nicole closed a file drawer.

“I think I found his notes.” Lauren held her light steady. “Yes! Booths, supplies, volunteers. It’s not very organized, but it’s all here.”

“Good,” Ethan said. “Let’s go.”

“I’m not finished.” Nicole pulled open another drawer. “Lauren, bring your light over here.”

Lauren folded the papers she took from the desk and stuffed them in her bag. Then she held her light, the brightest one, over the drawer Nicole had open.

Nicole flipped through files with a rapidity and efficiency that astonished Ethan. Obviously she’d done this sort of thing before.

“Bingo,” Nicole said.

“What?” Lauren asked.

Even Ethan couldn’t deny his curiosity. He was in too deep now to claim not to be party to the search.

“It’s a photograph.” Nicole laid the picture flat on top of the contents of the drawer.

Lauren looked at the photo, at Ethan, and then back to the photo with disbelief in her eyes. “Do you see what I see?”

Thursday
6:54 a.m.

T
hree more days.

The good news was that Dr. Gonzalez, surgical chief overseeing Ethan’s neurosurgical residency, decided to follow a conference with a long weekend. Ethan had bartered his shifts to gain three more days in Hidden Falls.

The bad news was he would be in serious debt to his colleagues when he returned to Columbus in time for Monday morning rounds, exactly one week after his scheduled return.

And there would be Gonzalez to deal with. Ethan reasoned he had three days to produce an explanation that the chief might accept. Somebody who survived four years of medical school and five years of a six-year residency should be smart enough to come up with something, even if he would probably be on probation for the entire final year of his residency.

What mattered at the moment was Quinn. And Nicole. And what Ethan had let her drag him into last night. He was going to need some help getting out of this mess.

Walking away wasn’t an option. Not this time.

Ethan glanced at the clock in the motel room. Instead of guzzling bad coffee and hitting the interstate, Ethan now planned to drive across the bridge above the falls, go into town, and find the house Dani Roose lived in when she wasn’t incognito up at the lake. Ethan left his half-packed suitcase on the bed and went out to his car.

The night had been late. Ethan could have used some coffee, but he didn’t dare delay or he could spend all day guessing at Dani’s movements. He wanted to catch her before she left.

And he would do it without remorse in repayment for the morning she banged on his motel room door not much later than it was now. She’d needed something he had. Now he needed something she had.

Ethan pulled up to Dani’s house on the north edge of downtown, wagering that her fishing habit was temporarily curtailed by the loss of her boat and that seven in the morning was too early for Dani to be working on a project in someone else’s home. At her front door, he knocked sharply twice before stepping back to await her response.

When she opened the door, she was dressed and her long hair was braided. One hand gripped the handle of a large mug. She stared at him and sipped coffee.

Ethan’s envy magnified his sense of morning caffeine withdrawal.

“I need your help,” he said.

Dani turned around and walked back into the house. Since she left the door open, Ethan followed her through the sparsely appointed living room and into the kitchen, where she took another mug from the cabinet and filled it. She set it on the table and sat down to finish her half-eaten breakfast.

When he picked up the coffee, Ethan knew he had lost the edge he’d felt a few minutes ago. With the first sip, he was in her debt.

“My day is scheduled.” Dani used a corner of toast to scoop eggs.

“Then I need you to reschedule it.”

She scoffed. “You’re a piece of work.”

He plunged in. “I’m guessing you’ve worked on Quinn’s laptop.”

She raised one shoulder about an inch and let it fall. “That’s not exactly a secret.”

“Recently Quinn’s computer has been … transferred to a new location, and it doesn’t seem entirely happy with the change in locale.”

“I can’t help you if you’re going to talk in code.” Dani took a long draft of coffee.

“We took Quinn’s computer to Lauren’s apartment.”

“We?”

It hadn’t been Ethan’s idea. He’d argued against it—vehemently—to Nicole and Lauren. No doubt by taking it they’d added some technical degree of theft to a particular form of illegal entry. Cooper Elliott would know the specifics, but Ethan hoped the whole business would be cleared up long before Cooper needed to know anything about it. Ethan decided not to mention the spare house key that Nicole knew where to find inside Quinn’s kitchen and had dropped in her pocket.

“The computer won’t power up,” he said.

“Doesn’t surprise me.” Dani put the last of the eggs in her mouth.

Good. If she recognized the computer’s behavior, then she probably knew how to resolve it.

“Perhaps I was chewing too loudly to hear you,” Dani said, “but I think you skipped over the part about why you stole Quinn’s laptop.”

Ethan didn’t know Dani well, and he was tiring of parrying every time they conversed. But he needed her on Team Find Quinn.

“So the computer is not dead?” he said.

“Quinn refuses to let it die with dignity. There may still be some extraordinary measures worth trying.”

“I want you to come to Lauren’s and try them.” Ethan took a deep breath. “And then I want you to help us find some information that may be on the computer.”

Dani laughed. “No. I think I have a Styrofoam cup around here if you want to take your coffee with you.”

Ethan didn’t move. “I’m serious.”

Dani stood and set her breakfast plate in the sink. “Let me see if I have this straight. You broke into Quinn’s house. You stole his computer—and who knows what else. Now you want me to join your ring of thieves to gain access to private information to which you are not legally entitled.”

“We didn’t break anything.” Ethan swirled the coffee in his mug. “And I prefer to think of the computer as borrowed.” Since they had a key now, they could put it back.

“And the private information?”

“It might help us find Quinn.”

“I have somewhere to be by seven thirty. And it sounds like you have a busy day of criminal activity ahead of you.”

Had Dani been this harshly unsympathetic when she was in high school? Ethan couldn’t remember. At the time, he hadn’t known her well enough to care.

“Think about it, Dani,” Ethan said. “It’s been five days now. Even you have to admit that’s extremely unusual for Quinn. If he’s not up at the lake, where else would he be?”

She hesitated, a brief interruption to her motion of reaching for her orange North Face vest.

“No,” she said. “I have to go, and so do you. No offense, but considering what you just revealed, I’m not comfortable leaving you alone in my house.”

Ethan followed her out. She started up her Jeep and backed out of the driveway.

Ethan banged a hand against his steering wheel. He was never going to persuade Gonzalez to forgive his transgressions if he couldn’t even persuade someone who cared about Quinn to help with a simple skill. His car lurched as Ethan backed out of the driveway and turned the wheels to follow Dani before he lost sight of her Jeep.

She headed southwest of town. Ethan tried to remember the geography and what might be out that direction or how far she might drive. He made no effort to disguise his efforts to follow Dani because he knew he wasn’t any good at stealth, and he didn’t want to risk losing sight of her vehicle among the rural back roads. When she pulled up in front of a house in a subdivision that had not existed when Ethan lived in Hidden Falls, he was right behind her.