She walked towards Jason with the foil emergency blanket wrapped around herself, more for comfort than warmth.
“How are you?” Jason asked as he moved towards her.
“Good. Ok,” Sam said. “The cop said she would give us a ride to our car.”
The short ride to their SUV was silent except for the brief, sporadic chatter over the police radio. The car pulled into the lot beside Jason’s SUV and parked. The officer unclipped her seatbelt and threw open her door. She opened the back door so Sam and Jason could exit.
“Here is my card. We will be in touch. We recommend not leaving the state.”
The cop gave the couple a stern look and closed the back door of the cruiser behind them.
“Also,” she said, “you may want to speak with a shrink or someone. Might help.” She nodded, got back in her car, and headed back to the investigation. Jason and Sam stood quietly, half bewildered. Their SUV was the only vehicle left in the darkening lot. The last piece of sun sat waiting on the horizon, finally becoming engulfed by the dusk.
* * *
There was little conversation on the two-and-a-half-hour drive back to Seattle. The radio played music quietly while the engine droned along at its constant pitch. Samantha longed for a hot shower and warm food.
She tried, without much luck, to block the disturbing images from her thoughts. It kept playing over in her mind: she is running along the dirt path. A thin branch clips her cheek with a poker of hot pain, the evergreens blurring in the background. She sees Jason; he looks shaken. She sees the body, lying there, motionless. The jacket an odd shade of reddish blue. Over and over the memory played, like a short, disgusting video clip stuck on a loop. She shook her head to clear her mind and hoped that the thoughts would fall out of her ears.
She looked over at Jason.
He was gripping the wheel with both hands; not anxiously, just alert. His eyes were relaxed in the darkness, occasionally pierced with daggers of light from oncoming vehicles. He hated driving at night.
They weren’t even supposed to be out this late, Sam thought. Jason didn’t have to wear glasses when he drove, but that’s usually the only time he wore them. Just a small prescription. Just enough to sharpen everything up. Samantha liked how he looked in his glasses and secretly wished he’d wear them more. So smart and sophisticated.
He seemed calm now as the passing headlights rolled over his face. His beard was getting long—she liked that too.
No need to shave in lockdown, he had said. Samantha had had to put her foot down just before their trip. The scraggly beard needed a trim. He knew it too, so Jason hadn’t put up a fight.
Samantha remembered how she had complained that he trimmed too much. Such complaints seemed so trivial now.
Who cares how he looks? she thought, as long as he loves me.
Jason could feel Sam’s gaze. He looked over at her. “You ok, babe?” he asked.
Samantha nodded, placed her hand on his leg, and gave it a gentle squeeze.
“Love you.”
* * *
When Sam and Jason entered the apartment, the familiar smell of home hit their nostrils. Sam felt safe for the first time since the incident as she closed and locked the door behind her. They threw their bags down in the entranceway, removed their jackets and boots, and left it all in a pile on the floor.
They peeled their clothes off as quickly as they could, leaving a trail of garments on their way to the bathroom. Samantha cranked on the shower, and water burst from its head. She tested the stream and waited.
Jason opened the lid of the toilet and sat down with his phone in his hand.
Deciding that the temperature was acceptable, Samantha entered the shower.
Jason stared at his phone.
“Like, how do we tell our parents about this? How do we tell anyone?” he mused.
He set his phone down on the counter, uninterested in the device.
“I don’t know,” Sam replied. “That was insane.” Samantha stood still under the shower, allowing the hot liquid to soak her hair. The warm water saturated her thick, dark hair and poured over her naked body. She worked to block the video loop from her mind and relax, visualizing the memories running from her body and down the drain.
* * *
“Are you serious?” Denise asked.
The bad phone connection broke her voice up a little at the end.
“It was so crazy, Mom,” Sam said. “Like, I’m still shaking a bit.”
Samantha had called her mother shortly after dinner. The thought of reliving the day’s events had almost stopped her, but she needed to hear her mother’s voice. Samantha didn’t usually complain to her parents. Nor did she tell them about the more challenging parts of her relationship with Jason. She didn’t want to affect how her family felt about him and didn’t want them to worry.
So what if she and Jason had a few fights every now and then? Doesn’t everybody?
But this phone call was different. Samantha needed to dump verbal diarrhea into the cell.
Sam told her mother about the beautiful drive and the stunning lake; how the trails had smelled like Christmas. She described the fresh mountain air and how it had a way of energizing you. Then, how it was all ruined by what they found in the woods.
She didn’t go into any great detail about it.
She didn’t describe the pooling blood or the sick feeling she had gotten when she saw the hiker’s colorless, agony-stricken face and dull eyes. Samantha did say that the hiker was a middle-aged woman and that she could have been beautiful when she was alive.
Denise had put her phone on speaker at some point during the conversation, and Sam’s father’s voice came through now and then, his tone colored with shock and concern.
Sam’s phone was
