The Last to Vanish(11)

It wasn’t hard to say nothing. But Georgia asked every time, as if someone could trick her into revealing something new. As if she had done anything wrong, and was just waiting to be found out.

I assured her she hadn’t. But when someone goes missing, I had learned, every action is reevaluated, our motivations probed and judged. So that, at night, alone, when it’s just you and the dark, it’s hard not to do the same. To revisit not just the things we had done, but the things we had missed.

In truth, all of us at the inn had done exactly what had been expected. Georgia had only entered Cabin Four when Landon West missed his checkout. It was then that she found the luggage, the laptop, all still in his room. His car was still in the lot. We all searched the grounds, and I called the Last Stop Tavern before Celeste called the sheriff. He could’ve walked into town just as readily as he could’ve walked into the woods.

But the woods were what everyone was worried about.

Still, the inn was not at fault.

There was a guidebook in each room, with brochures for bicycle rentals, river rafting trips, horseback excursions. We included a map of all the surrounding trails, with details on the difficulty of each. And we took extra precautions in warning about the dangers one might encounter on the mountain. Bears, snakes, poisonous plants, and dangerous terrain. We offered walking sticks at the front desk, made sure everyone knew that there was no cell phone signal; we told people to travel together, to pack food and water, to stay on the trail. We even offered guided hikes, free of charge.

All these things, to keep them safe.

We reminded them that the number one cause of death out there was exposure, which could only happen if you made a mistake or got lost.

We did not mention the second cause, or the third.



* * *



IT WASN’T YET NINE a.m. when I pulled my car out of the small employee lot, coasted down the drive, and headed toward the center of town. I didn’t bother calling first; I knew exactly where everyone would be at this time on a Thursday morning. The guests who rented apartments over the storefronts would be checking to see what was open for breakfast; the tourists from the campground would soon begin walking across the bridge into downtown, just as the huts on the border of the town green opened up to sell tickets and check people in for excursions; and Sheriff Stamer would be making his morning rounds:

A coffee to go from the Edge, where tourists stocked up on both caffeine and supplies; a paper from the stand outside Trace of the Mountain Souvenirs; and then a seat at the bar at the Last Stop Tavern, where he’d catch up with the owners before their official opening.

By the time he finished his circuit, he’d know anything worth knowing about the day prior, and anything to look out for in the day to come. I kept an eye out for his uniform as I looked for a parking spot along his route.

Up ahead, Jack Olivier was loading the back of his van with a few tents, probably making a personal delivery from the Edge.

Jack was a twentysomething lifer of Cutter’s Pass who split his time between leading Outward Bound youth programs and working at the outfitting store, his hours flexible enough that you could often rely on him to lend a hand when needed. He was tall and thin, all gangly limbs, so it wasn’t hard to imagine him scaling the face of a rock or lunging across a crevasse.

He climbed into the driver’s seat of his van, leaned his head out the window, and called something across the street. Rochelle, another lifer, was out there now, heading toward the sheriff’s office, where she’d worked for as long as I’d been here.

Rochelle pushed her long dark hair over her shoulder and shook her head with a small grin, never breaking stride.

I pulled into the spot Jack had just vacated, and circled back to the tavern, deciding to wait for the sheriff at the end of his route. Marina and Ray never minded if you sat at one of their outdoor tables off-hours.

But when I passed the front of the tavern, Sheriff Stamer was already visible through the front window. He was seated at the bar, a newspaper rolled up on the counter beside him, hands circling a to-go coffee cup, while Marina and Ray worked on the other side of the counter. Marina had a laptop propped up on the surface, and Ray moved quickly and efficiently behind her, unloading crates from a delivery.

I knocked on the glass beside the door, and Marina startled before raising one hand. I couldn’t hear what she said to the others, but they both watched as she crossed the room, unlocked the door, and propped it open on her hip.

“Speak of the devil,” she said with a wide, gap-toothed grin. Her brown curly hair was held back in a haphazard ponytail, pieces falling forward. “The line at the inn has been busy all morning.”

I pictured Georgia, her worried face, the phone lines out again. I pictured a string of callers, all asking for information about Landon West, and her leaving the phone off the hook, to escape.

“Sorry about that. I think the storm messed up the phones,” I said.

She nodded. “Power surge took out the entire left side of the street last night. Sheriff’s got Harris rebooting systems down at the office, if you need him to take a look.”

“I’ll check it out first,” I said. Besides, if Harris’s van was in sight, he’d probably end up working his way up and down the street all morning, people stopping him to just take a quick look at something, while he was around.

“I was hoping to catch the sheriff here, actually,” I said, tipping my chin to the bar, where Ray kept glancing in our direction.