Free Liquid Fear by Scott Nicholson Page A

prosecuting attorney salivate, Roland still believed he was one of the good guys. At least until proven guilty.
    And I’m not David Underwood. Only Roland can feel this shitty and scared.
    The gravel road gave way to twin muddy ruts, and Roland wondered how Steve navigated the driveway in his BMW. The neighboring goat farmer, whom Steve said took pride in monitoring the row of mailboxes for signs of vandalism and theft, had no doubt observed the unfamiliar vehicle passing by.
    The Ford Escort was not exactly the wheels of choice for a deer hunter or fisherman, and there was a slim chance the farmer would jot down the license-plate numbers just in case. Nosy neighbors could be just as much a blessing as a curse, but Roland figured he’d be safe as long as he didn’t poach any goats.
    The key fit the lock, which was comforting. Further proof that he indeed was Roland who had a brother named Steve who owned a cabin near Logan. It may as well have been a jail cell, however, because Roland was imposing his own sentence.
    Although his plan was to think the problem through, inaction would be seen as the resignation of a guilty man. The DA would have a field day retracing his movements in court.
    Stale, musty air, with a wet-fur accent, wafted from the cabin’s interior as the door opened. Steve rarely visited it, and Roland hadn’t been there since a business stopover two years before.
    The cabin was stocked with the usual rodent-proof fare: canned beans, a rusted tin of coffee, and powdered milk on the shelves; sherbet, ice cubes, and a graying, cellophane-wrapped hunk of mystery meat in the freezer; and a half-bottle of flat ginger ale and a crusted mustard jar in the refrigerator.
    The cabin had no telephone, even though cellular reception was spotty in the mountains. “Part of getting away from it all,” Steve had said.
    Roland was afraid to even switch his phone on, much less make a call, fearing the signal would somehow be traceable. He didn’t know if the police had ways of tracking phone locations using global-positioning satellite data, or whether the rental car contained such technology.
    All he knew was that someone had planted links to the pills, the murder, and the car, and if one person could connect the dots, then so could the cops.
    A distant dog brayed, a lonely sound that reminded Roland that he had no one to trust. Steve, the younger, overachieving brother, was almost his polar opposite, too slick to take on serious problems. Their father was dead, hammered by a coronary thrombosis, and Mom was living in that fragile state of denial that afforded no room for adversity.
    The close friendships of his early twenties had given way to the forced camaraderie of coworkers and business clients, all his old buddies poured down the drain with the contents of that last half-bottle of whiskey. Only one person would have shared this dark burden, even at risk of being charged as an accomplice to murder.
    No, he couldn’t think of Wendy. That was over, a marriage killed by his selfishness. One of the sayings in his twelve-step program was that drunks didn’t have relationships, they took hostages. And Wendy had paid her ransom with dignity and two years of counseling.
    Roland checked the bedroom, wondering if he should air out the blankets. Even in March, the mountain air was humid. As he sat on the bed, he realized how exhausted he was. The adrenaline that had fueled him during that morning’s discovery and subsequent flight had receded, though his thoughts still raced down the same avenues of the past few hours.
    Had he killed someone? What had happened during the missing chunk of memory? And who was David Underwood?
    He pulled the pill bottle from his pocket, a solid link to what had happened in Cincinnati. It had been over four hours, but damned if he was taking any more pills.
    It was only after he’d stretched out on the bed that he realized he had no course of action. Too wired to doze, he stared at the