Cold Case Witness. Sarah Varland

slumped as he sat down on the other end of the couch and looked at her. “I know I told you we wouldn’t talk about it...”

      He trailed off. Gemma looked away.

      Since she was looking at the wall, studying the mounted fish trophies that somehow looked not awful in this cabin, she didn’t see Matt reach out.

      But she sure felt his hand cover hers and squeeze.

      She swung her head back around, eyes meeting his with no hesitation. She’d expected him to yank his hand away quickly, but he let it stay there.

      “I want to keep you safe, but I don’t know how to do that when I don’t have the whole story. He’s going to be one step ahead of me, Gemma, trying to get you, if I don’t know at least what you do about who he could be.”

      This time the skipping of her heart had more to do with the emotion in his words, the words themselves and how he cared, than with fear. Something deep inside her felt...something.

      “And, Gemma, I’m willing for this to go both ways. You tell me what really happened that night, trust me with that, and I’ll keep you in the loop on my investigation.”

      He didn’t break eye contact as he said it. Everything about his body language backed up his words—he was telling the truth.

      An inside look at the case, through his eyes? That would keep her close to it. Ensure that she could do everything possible to guarantee all the loose ends were tied up this time, that she really got closure and her life back.

      Her self back. She was tired of being known as the girl who’d been through this or that related to the trial.

      She wanted to just be Gemma Phillips.

      Ending this case would let her do that, at least she hoped so. Which was why she nodded. Took a deep breath.

      “You already know I was on a walk on the Hamilton property when I saw those men. I guess maybe I was curious, I don’t know, but once I saw movement, I studied them for a minute while I was walking, just curious about what they were doing. They were burying things in the ground, which struck me as odd.”

      Matt nodded. “I remember this part. I paid attention at the trial—I knew you’d tell the truth about what really happened and I wanted to know.”

      “Really?” Gemma had known Matt was there, but had assumed that when she’d talked he’d probably tuned her out. It went right along with her assumption that he would probably always hate her for her part in putting his dad behind bars. Now he was telling her he’d listened? And...appreciated what she’d had to say?

      When had she ever felt as if anyone had appreciated the sacrifices she’d made to testify?

      “I always wanted to tell you,” he admitted, his eyes not wavering from her.

      Somehow it gave her the strength she needed to keep going. Gemma squeezed her eyes shut, then forced them back open. Stood up and started to pace.

      “I saw them burying boxes. You heard all of that testimony, so there’s no need to go over it again.” Anytime anyone brought it up she saw the whole thing in her head all over again. Saw them behind the hanging Spanish moss, thinking no one saw or heard them as they talked about what they’d done, how many estates they’d stolen things from. She’d recognized a couple of them. Matt’s dad, for one, and Rich Thompson, who’d worked at a gas station not far out of town. Several of them were unfamiliar to her, but she could tell by their accents that they were mostly local. Not necessarily from Treasure Point, but at least from this corner of Georgia.

      “I ran back toward the Hamilton House, but I tripped. The doctor told me later it was the worst ankle sprain he’d seen in his career. In any case, I fell.” Hard. The pine straw on the forest floor must have muffled her fall. Either that or the men she’d seen next had been too distracted by their own disagreement to notice a little bit of noise in the woods...

      Her own heartbeat had been the loudest thing in her ears then, even when the men’s fighting had grown louder. They couldn’t have been standing more than thirty feet from her, off the little game trail she’d been using. She’d only seen the other men a minute before—they were close enough that she assumed they were together, even before she heard what these men were saying.

      “Gemma?”

      She had to blink to see Matt and his living room, rather than the dark, thick Southern woods she’d been lost in, in her mind. When she finally focused she noticed she’d stopped pacing. She was standing in the middle of the room, suddenly afraid to go on, afraid to move.

      Somehow afraid that someone was watching...

      Listening?

      “Gemma.” Matt was up from his place on the couch now, moving toward her. All she could do was shake her head.

      “What is it? You can trust me. You know that. I know you do.”

      He was right. She did trust him, for reasons she couldn’t explain even if she tried. But she couldn’t shake her sudden uneasiness.

      What she was about to say she’d only said out loud a handful of times. Once the police had decided that this part of her testimony was questionable, that it had too many gaps to be useful, she’d stopped telling this half of her story.

      “They were fighting.” She lowered her voice. Looked around the room again. No one was eavesdropping. Gemma tried to use logic to calm her fears. Matt was inside and hadn’t noticed anything else unusual since the text message, and Clay Hitchcock was out there somewhere in the night.

      No one else was here. She took a deep breath. Time to be brave whether the emotions were there or not. “They were fighting and I interrupted them. Harris Walker is the only one I could identify for sure. The other man had his back to me. His voice sounded familiar, but I never could place it.”

      “That’s not uncommon in situations like these. Sometimes the trauma makes it too much for the brain to process.”

      Gemma nodded. That was what she had assumed. “Anyway, when I fell, my ankle hurt too much for me to move right away, and I could hear them talking. Their voices were tense and it wasn’t long before their fight got out of hand. Harris wanted more money—I assume from his part in stealing the antiques I’d seen the other men hiding—and the other man wouldn’t give it to him. The argument grew more heated. The last thing I heard was Harris threatening the other man. Even though my ankle felt as if it was on fire, I got up and ran anyway. I was afraid that if they saw me, they’d kill me. All I could hear from then on was my heartbeat and the pounding of my feet as I ran. I don’t know if he was shot or killed some other way, I just know that no one ever saw him again. And I think I was yards away when he was murdered, the second-to-last person to see him alive.”