The Last to Vanish(23)

“Give me a minute to think,” he said, shaking his head, stumbling into a bench beside the fireplace.

A noise from upstairs jolted us both. My gaze went to the second-story balcony, a shadow stretching and disappearing down the hall, which served as a reminder that this place was full of guests, and it was nearing midnight, and Trey was on the cusp of making a scene.

Trey stood, stared out the windows, into the dark. “That place, in the photo. That’s where you’re taking me in the morning, right?”

Were we really still doing this? How had this discovery not altered his plans? But maybe the images only tightened his resolve. Confirming the belief that his brother had set out on that trail, and now Farrah Jordan was leading us to the same spot. A connection; a possibility. It was the one certain path he could continue to follow.

“Yes,” I said, after a pause, knowing there wouldn’t be anything there after all this time. Nothing solid for him to bring to his family, or the police, or the press, or wherever he was planning to go. Visitors never seemed to notice that the mountain range was a living thing all on its own. The landscape was constantly shifting, purging itself of what had existed before, showing you only this moment and what it wanted you to see. A season later might as well have been a year. A year might as well have been a decade. Time moved faster up there.

Trey circled back to the reception desk, where he removed the flash drive, storing it in the pocket of his pants. “I just feel like…” He trailed off. “Look, the police had their shot four months ago, and did absolutely nothing.”

He wasn’t here. Of course it wasn’t nothing—they combed over this place, over all the steps that had brought Landon West to the Passage Inn, searching his apartment, his car, that cabin. But the sheriff probably hadn’t made the best first impression on Trey at happy hour, showing up unannounced, catching him off guard. I could understand why Trey distrusted his intentions.

“If you want to go, it has to be early,” I said. A pointed remark, that he should go back to his cabin.

“Okay,” he said, growing more confident. “Tomorrow, we go to the falls. If Farrah took these pictures, and my brother had them, then he must’ve gone out there, too, don’t you think? He must’ve wanted to see it for himself.”

We had all searched these places, back when it counted. But it couldn’t hurt to go again. The sheriff would be sleeping anyway, and this would not count as an emergency. Contacting him at this hour would, however, spread news faster than I could stop it.

“Six a.m., then,” I said. “You should get some sleep.”

“Okay, yeah.” Even though I knew he wouldn’t. Neither of us would.

“He was looking for them,” he said. “Six missing visitors,” he mumbled, hand in his pocket, where I imagined it clenched around the flash drive, his brother’s words. Trying to chase his thoughts, follow them to the right path. Tell us what he was trying to say. To warn.

I didn’t bother correcting him. That his brother made seven.

I waited until the front door fell shut behind him, and his footsteps faded into the distance, before saving the copied images in a password-protected folder with my name.

The truth is—

The truth is, I felt a pull, too. Farrah, gesturing for me to follow, from the other side of the dark window, red scarf blowing in the night wind. Who knew where she might lead? All these strangers who had come so close. All these people who could’ve been us.





CHAPTER 7


AFTER TWO A.M., MY senses were on high alert. Unnerved, even, by the bugs that flew into the bedroom windows at night, imagining, instead, someone gently tapping. I kept my eyes trained to the dark, the stars hidden behind the clouds tonight. And then: a light flickering in the distance, on the other side of the rocky outcrop just outside my window. I bolted upright in bed. A flashlight? More likely, I decided, a path light, slowly dying, on the other side of the rocks.

There was no way I would be getting any sleep—not before I had to be up to take Trey down to the falls. And not with the past suddenly rising up in figments, one by one—first Landon, then Farrah—out of the dark.

Instead, I was thinking of all the things Trey had seen in this place. The way people turned up at the happy hour as if coordinated: the sheriff, Marina, Celeste. The noises he’d heard the night before, coming from the next room—he’d been so sure that someone had been in the cabin beside his, listening in. Maybe even watching him. And I couldn’t convince myself that he was wrong. Not anymore. Not now, with Farrah Jordan’s photographs turning up in that very room.

I picked up the phone in my room, just to check—this was the number I left on a sign at the lobby, where guests could reach me during my nights on call. The dial tone connected, and I felt something unfurl inside my chest. Relieved that the issue with the phone lines did not stretch across the entire property. That we were not being targeted by some unseen force or threat.

The flicker of light outside the windows finally dimmed to nothing. I left the lights off, suddenly aware of all that might be out there instead, looking in.

When I’d first arrived, a decade earlier, it was easy to feel isolated and removed from everything and everyone, to let my imagination run wild. The drive into town alone was narrow and winding, the trees stretching over the asphalt. We were fifteen miles from the next town, but it felt like longer on the mountain roads. Alone at the inn, with the spotty cell phone service, that feeling only grew, especially in the bad weather, especially when a heavy windstorm cut us off from the rest of town.