As Darren climbed over a log, his foot came down on a fallen branch and snapped it in half. The man’s head shot up. Before Darren cursed his carelessness, the man took off running up the hill. Darren cut across the forest, tree limbs whipping his face as he fought to keep up. He was in good shape, fitter than he’d been as a Syracuse police officer. But his quarry seemed to take two steps for every one Darren took, the stranger pulling away.
“Hey! Come back here!”
Darren leaped through bramble, the thorns tearing red streaks into his flesh. He knew shortcuts that would take him to any of the park’s trails. But the man was too agile and fast. Near the campgrounds, Darren leaned against a tree and caught his breath. He’d lost sight of the stranger.
Wiping the sweat off his brow, he batted away a swarm of gnats and backtracked to where he’d first seen the unknown man. Maybe he’d dropped an item that would help Darren identify him. Darren’s gut told him this was the state park thief. But a chill rolled down his back when he considered an alternative—he’d chased the killer who murdered the young woman beside the creek. Darn his incompetence with technology. Had he properly set up the trail camera application, he could have checked his phone. It was possible the man appeared on multiple cameras in the woods. If the stranger visited the grave site below Lucifer Falls, he’d have evidence this was the killer.
Darren edged down the ridge, walking sideways so his shoes didn’t slip on the loose soil. Blues from the lake siphoned through the woods, as though an endless sky lay beyond the forest. He spotted the group of trees where he’d first seen the man. Darren knelt down and squinted at the footprints. This was where the man stared through his binoculars. Darren snapped a photograph with his phone. Then he stood in the man’s tracks and parted the saplings. Darren flinched when he followed the man’s sight line.
The stranger had been staring across the water at Thomas’s house.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Friday, August 13th
7:15 p.m.
Water dripped, the darkness bleeding.
Justine jolted awake. The manacles snared her wrists and dragged her back to the wall. Stretched to the point of popping out of joint, her shoulders screamed. She’d hung forward, unconscious, with the chains yanking her arms back while she dozed. She didn’t know her location or the day. But the fading light creeping around the window told her it was almost sunset. Soundproofing foam covered the rest of the window, and a reinforced door at the top of the basement staircase locked her in this black hell.
A tray of food lay at her feet. She’d refused the man’s food since he abducted her from the parking lot and tossed her in the cellar. Now her stomach ached with acidic hunger, and she wished for anything to quell the stomach pangs. Her eyes dropped to the tray—a baked potato and a chicken thigh that smelled of vinegar and pepper. Reaching out with her foot, she dragged the tray closer, unsure how she’d retrieve the meal with her arms chained. Something scurried through her food. She pulled her feet back and retched when a cockroach the size of her thumb skittered across the chicken and beneath the washing machine.
A shiver rolled through her body. The basement gloom would only thicken after sunset. Soon the basement would become a black abyss, and she wouldn’t see the roaches and spiders coming for her.
Justine wondered about her abductor. He’d hung within the shadows so she didn’t recognize him. Why take her? Was she just a random victim in the wrong place at the wrong time, or had he followed her through the store, patiently waiting until she ventured into the fog? This was fate’s way of torturing her for her wrongdoings. Karma coming around to snatch her in its needle-fang jaws.
She’d asked for this. Not by returning to Wolf Lake, but by her inaction when Paige bullied Dawn and drove the poor girl to commit suicide. Justine could have stopped the madness. At the very least, she should have turned her back on Paige, as Skye had done months before. How ironic that Skye paid the price for their sins, when she was the only one brave enough to tell Paige she was out of control. Even then, it was already too late. Dawn hung herself in her bedroom, while her classmates looked forward to their final schooldays and applied to universities. It should have been the happiest times of their lives.
Exhaustion and a malnourished body dragged her toward an unconscious state. It was silent above the ceiling. No footfalls scuffling across the floor. Perhaps her kidnapper had abandoned her to starve and die in this nowhere world. A whoosh drew her eyes to the far wall as the water heater turned on. A moment later, water poured through the pipes as the shower ran somewhere in the house. She wasn’t alone, after all.
Be strong, Justine.
The words floated inside her head as she hallucinated Skye speaking to her. It wasn’t the first time she’d imagined her friend in the same room. Since the weekend Skye disappeared, Justine heard the girl talking from the shadows when Justine teetered on the edge of sleep. Skye came to her in dreams and told her she was alive, that someday they’d be together again. Justine could show her faith and keep Skye’s memory alive by wearing the friendship bracelet. Donning the bracelet brought Justine closer to her lost friend. It wasn’t a tribute to Paige.
Her head bobbed and dropped to her chest. The manacles stretched her arms taut as she pitched forward. Numb, she no longer experienced pain.
As her eyelids
