Chapter 14
Walker
Confusion racked my brain. Had she lied? Why in the hell would she? Anger stirred in my gut. Had she been playing me all along?
“I’m sure…”
“You never told her you were coming up this mountain to research ghosts or strange occurrences?”
He huffed. “No. Of course, people might think that because of my involvement with the show, but this story I’m working on is different.”
My feet crunched on the snow as I whipped around again to look back at the woman following behind us. “What exactly were you working on?”
“I can’t say,” he answered.
“Not good enough,” I growled. “I brought Destiny up here to find you. She came in the event you were lost and I found your research book full of coded entries.”
Putnam grabbed my arm and pulled me to a stop. “She knows about my book and my code?”
“Isn’t that what I just said?” I asked.
Putnam let out a breath. “This is not good. Not good at all. If she found my other books and knows about the code, then she knows exactly why I’m on this mountain.”
“Listen. I don’t give a shit about your story and have no intention of telling your competition. But if you don’t tell me what the hell you were doing up here, we’re going to have a problem.”
Putnam glanced down at his feet. “You have to understand that I’m tired of people thinking I’m crazy. I needed a story with more substance, and I found it.”
“And what exactly isit?” I asked, pulling out bottled water from my pack and handing one to the girl and then one to Putnam.
“She talks in her sleep,” Putnam said, uncapping the water.
I glanced at the girl who was halfway finished with her bottle.
“Not her,” Putnam said as if realizing where my train of thoughts had led me. “Destiny. We dated, and she talks in her sleep.”
I knew that. Not that I’d share how I knew that with this guy. “And?”
“She’d mentioned the girl and the ghost before but not because she got a tip. She’d actually seen the ghost herself while camping with her parents.”
“I don’t understand. She said you’d seen the ghost. She said that you’d been the ones camping with your parents.”
“She lied,” Putnam said.
I held back my need to knock this guy on his ass. Doubt crept in like the beginning of a snowstorm, stealthy and possibly destructive. I did my best to tamp down the feeling. Destiny wasn’t a liar. She had no reason to hold things back from me and when I got back to the cabin, I’d get to the bottom of exactly where she got that picture on her phone.
“Listen. Maybe she just doesn’t remember. Maybe that’s a stored memory that she only brings it up when she’s sleeping.”
“What did she say?” I unfolded my hands and put my hand on the gun beneath my jacket.
“Well, I’m not sure if you know. No, I mean, why would you?” He gestured to my body. “You probably live on the mountain without televisions.”
I raised my brow. The need to throttle this man was getting stronger.
“She’s the daughter of a senator.” He leaned in and lowered his voice. “Only she isn’t related by blood.”
I shrugged. “Okay, a lot of people are adopted. What does that have to do with anything?” I led the way down a rocky ravine and started up the other side, checking over my shoulder to be sure they both made it okay.
He shook his head. “You aren’t getting it. Let me spell it out for you. She has a birth certificate, claiming the senator and his wife are her biological parents. There is no trace of how they came to have her. When she was little, she saw a ghost on the mountain, but it wasn’t until she found a picture in her father’s study that she realized the truth.”
