"The day before yesterday? They haven't heard from this kid in almost three days, and we're just now finding that out?”
“As you said, they're adults. Apparently, she called in the first day but was told there was nothing that anybody could do. He's eighteen years old, he doesn't have to answer the phone for his mother if he doesn't want to,” she pointed out.
There was a hint of attitude in the words that made the detective’s teeth grind against each other.
“So, what changed? Why am I here?” he asked. “Maybe they are just walking around on the other side of the park.”
The officer shook her head. “After they still couldn't get anything from him, his parents started searching through his social media. Apparently, he is pretty active posting about his life.”
“How original and unexpected,” the detective said flatly.
“He’s really into photography,” the officer said. “He likes to take pictures of everything that he's doing. He says it's how he connects with the world around him. The mother said he doesn't talk a lot. Doesn't communicate well. But he tells stories with his pictures. So, she started following the pictures. One of them had a cabin in it and she recognized it as…"
Her voice trailed off.
"As the one Violet Montgomery was staying in," Detective Fitzgerald finished.
"Yes."
The officer was holding out an enlarged printout of the picture and Detective Fitzgerald took it. He looked down into what he could only describe as a generic teenage face. It could be any boy. Just pick him up off the weathered wooden steps of the abandoned cabin and he could be put into any setting. A library. A shopping mall. Fast food restaurant. He was nothing more than the boy you walked past every single day.
And that was what made the detective's stomach turn when he looked at it. The boy wasn't extraordinary. He wasn't anything that stood out. He might be a talented photographer. He might be smart and kind. His family loved him. His friends loved him. But there was nothing distinct about him.
Which meant this was what he would be remembered for. Rather than a glowing memory, he would be remembered only as one of the four who trespassed into a shutdown campground and disappeared. He would likely never be seen again. Most of them weren't.
Fitzgerald was long past the stage of optimism. He’d learned he wasn't the kind of detective who smiled at the families of victims and reassured them that everything was going to be all right. He didn't even tell himself that anymore. He made only one promise. He would do everything he could to find out what had happened.
"Did you find anything in the cabin?"
"The door was open and there appears to be a small amount of blood, but it needs to be analyzed."
"Anything in the surrounding area?"
"Nothing so far. Looks like some others have come this way, but not in the last few days."
"And this is the last sign of any of them?"
"Yes. Jason Zapinski posted that image at two forty-five in the afternoon. Twelve minutes before that, Gregory Zapinksi, his cousin, posted a picture of his feet on a trail, and the caption 'You're It'. The others hadn't posted anything since arriving at the park."
The muscles along the sides of Fitzgerald's neck tensed. He knew what those boys were here doing. The same thing as the others. They weren't the first to come this year. They were just the ones who wouldn’t get to leave.
More would be coming. It didn't matter to them that the trails were blocked and the campground closed. That was what brought them there. Not this year. Not again.
"Lock this place down," he said. "I want surveillance around the entire perimeter of the campground. Every trail, every passage. I want eyes on every cabin and officers by the lake. No one comes near this campground. No one passes through it. No one even looks at it. And not a single person on this team is to breathe a fucking word of what's going on to anyone. Do I make myself clear?"
"Yes, sir."
The officer hurried off to pass the information on to the others who were investigating the area, while the detective took out his phone to call for more manpower. When he put it away, he looked out over the lake and the sun setting behind it. It sent ripples of orange over the top of the water toward the empty stretch of sand and the stark wooden frame where the canoes once waited.
At any moment, he expected to see one of the sleeping cabins that dotted the tree line to open up and campers to run out toward the old pier.
He could almost still hear the laughter there.
Chapter One
NOW
“Emma, if I was camping in Treat Hollow, your cinnamon rolls would be my sleeping bag.”
“Thank you, Xavier.”
“Treat Hollow?” Sam asks, reaching over me to run his finger across the bottom of the baking dish and scoop up a wayward glob of cream cheese frosting left behind when I took the roll to put on the plate in front of me.
“Located on Snack Mountain, a territory of Candy Land,” Xavier explains.
Sam contemplates this for a second, then gives half a shrug and nods.
"I'd camp there."
“So, Xavier,” Bellamy starts from where she sits at the kitchen table. Her own pan of cinnamon rolls is beside her and she's already made a sizeable dent in it. “This expanded universe Candy Land of yours. Is there a Wedding Cake Woods or a Charcuterie Chalet anywhere?”
Her eyes slide over to me, and I shake my head at her.
“As much credit as I'm going to give you for Charcuterie Chalet, I see what you're doing,” I comment. “Subtlety is not your best attribute.”
She runs her hands over her round belly and sighs, looking down at it. “I can't even see my attributes anymore.”
“There’s a couple
