The Smoky Mountain Mist. Paula Graves
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the bridge the night before. She wouldn’t have been likely to survive that fall.
Maybe the guy had slipped her something hoping it would make it easy to get lucky with her rather than to make her go off the deep end and hurt herself, but that distinction sure as hell didn’t make drugging her any less heinous a crime.
And there was still the matter of the murders. Over the past two months, four women connected to Rachel Dav-enport had been murdered in what had initially seemed like random killings. Until investigators found the perpetrator and learned he’d been hired to kill those women and make the deaths look random. With his dying words, he’d admitted that it was “all about the girl.”
All about Rachel Davenport.
Joe came back from the cluttered office just off the bar bearing a slip of paper. “Guy signed his name ‘Davis Rogers.’”
The name wasn’t familiar. Could have been someone Rachel knew from Maryville or even an old friend in town for her father’s funeral. He’d ask her about him when she got back from the hospital.
The thought of her trip to Knoxville made his chest tighten as he left Smoky Joe’s Saloon and headed toward the road to Maryville. He’d taken the past two days off work, but he was scheduled to work the next four. He had some vacation time coming to him, and he figured this might be the right time to take it.
He was surprised to find Paul Bailey in the office when he asked to see whoever was in charge while Rachel was out. Bailey had the account books open and looked up reluctantly when Seth stepped inside.
“Mr. Bailey, I’ve had a family situation come up. I know it’s short notice, but I have a couple of weeks of vacation built up, and I’d like to take them now if possible.”
Bailey’s gaze was a little unfocused, as if his mind was still on whatever he’d been doing before Seth interrupted. “Yeah, sure. Nobody else has any days off scheduled, and they’ll be happy to have the extra hours this time of year, with the holidays coming up. Just let Sharon at the front desk know what days you’re taking, and she’ll put it on the schedule.”
“Thank you.” Seth started to turn away, then paused. “I’m real sorry about Mr. Davenport.”
“Thank you,” Bailey answered with a regretful half smile.
On impulse, Seth added, “By the way, do you know a Davis Rogers?”
Bailey’s gaze focused completely. “Why do you ask?”
“I just ran into a guy with that name last night at a bar,” Seth lied. “He mentioned he knew the family. We drank a toast to Mr. Davenport.”
“Last night?”
Seth kept his expression neutral. “Yeah. He mentioned he was thinking about selling his car, and I know someone in the market. I should’ve gotten his phone number, but I didn’t think about it until afterward.”
“He’s not from here,” Bailey said with a dismissive wave. “Probably couldn’t work out a sale anyway before he heads back to Virginia.”
Seth had a vague memory that Rachel had gone to college somewhere in Virginia. So, maybe an old college friend.
Maybe even an old boyfriend.
A sliver of dismay cut a path through the center of his chest. He tried to ignore it. “Thanks anyway.” He left the office before Paul Bailey started to wonder why one of his fleet mechanics was suddenly asking a lot of nosy questions.
He stopped in the fleet garage, where he and the other mechanics shared a small break room. The three mechanics working in the garage today were out in the main room, so he had the place to himself.
Grabbing the phone book they kept in a desk drawer, he searched the hotel listings, bypassing the cheaper places. Joe Breslin had described Davis Rogers as a slicked-back frat boy, which suggested he’d stay at a nice hotel.
Was that Rachel’s type? Preppy college boys with their trust funds and their country club golf games?
Drop it, Hammond. Not your concern.
She wasn’t exactly what he considered his type, either. She was attractive, clearly, but quiet and reserved. And maybe if he hadn’t begun to put clues together that suggested the recent Bitterwood murders were connected to Davenport Trucking, he might never have allowed himself to think about Rachel Davenport as a person and not just a company figurehead.
But ever since he’d given up the con game for the straight and narrow, he’d shown an alarming tendency to take other people’s troubles to heart. And Rachel Daven-port’s life was eaten up with trouble these days.
An old twelve-step guy he knew had told him overcompensation was a common trait among people who felt the need to make amends for what they’d done. They tended to go overboard, wanting to save the whole damned world instead of fix the one or two things they could actually fix.
And here he was, proving the guy right.
Using his cell phone, he called Maryville hotels with no luck. He was about to start calling Knoxville hotels when he remembered there was a bed-and-breakfast in Bitterwood that offered the sort of services a guy like Davis Rogers would probably expect from his lodgings. The odds were better that he was staying in Knoxville, but Sequoyah House was a local call, so what would it hurt?
The proprietor at Sequoyah House put him right through to Davis Rogers’s room when he asked. Nobody answered the phone, even after several rings, but Seth had the information he needed.
He had a few tough questions for Davis Rogers, and now he knew where to find him.
Chapter Four
On the ride back to Bitterwood, Rachel realized she had no idea where her car was parked. Seth had said he’d found her on Purgatory Bridge, so it made sense that she’d left her car somewhere in the area. Delilah agreed to detour to the bridge to take a look.
Sure enough, as soon as they neared the bridge, Deli-lah had spotted the Honda Accord parked off the road near the bridge entrance, just as Seth had said.
“Do you have your keys?” Delilah asked as she pulled the truck up next to Rachel’s car.
“Yeah. I found them in my pocket.” God, she wished she could erase the last twenty-four hours and start fresh. But then, she’d have to face her father’s funeral all over again. Feel the pain of saying goodbye all over again. The stress of staying strong and not breaking. Not letting anyone see her crumble.
What would those mourners at the funeral have thought, she wondered, if they’d seen her acrobatics on the steel girders of Purgatory Bridge last night?
She shuddered at the thought, not just the idea of making a spectacle of herself in front of those people, but also the idea of Purgatory Bridge itself. Crossing the delicate-looking truss bridge in a car was nerve-racking enough. Standing on the railings with land a terrifying thirty feet below?
Unimaginable.
The morning rain had gone from a soft drizzle to sporadic showers. Currently it wasn’t raining, but fog swirled around them like lowering clouds. As Rachel crunched her way across the wet gravel on the shoulder of the road, Delilah rolled down the passenger window. “You sure you feel up to driving?”
“I’m fine,” she said automatically.
“Take care of yourself, okay?” Delilah smiled gently as she rolled the window back up, shutting out the damp coolness of the day. Rachel watched until the truck disappeared around the bend before she slid behind the wheel of the Honda.
The car’s interior seemed oppressively silent, her sudden sense of isolation exacerbated by the tendrils of fog wrapping around the car. Outside, the world looked increasingly gray and alien, so she turned her attention to the car itself, hoping something would jog her missing memory.
What had she done the last time she was in her car? Why couldn’t