The Last to Vanish(41)

“What’s going to happen next?” I asked.

“Nothing, Abby. Anyone could’ve found it out there. It was over three years ago. We don’t know how it got to Landon West. We’ll likely never know.” He put a hand over mine briefly, which was maybe the first time he’d ever done so. “Just wanted to let you know, this is an old case. It might feel like a new clue, but it really doesn’t tell us much that we didn’t already know. As much as his brother might want to hope otherwise, it’s not really a break in the case.”

As if the last person in possession of these photos hadn’t disappeared four months earlier. As if he hadn’t been staying in the place I oversaw, and I had missed it. As if history hadn’t shown it was possible to happen again.

“You really believe that?” I asked. He looked over his shoulder quickly, then turned back. I lowered my voice. “That it’s nothing?” Wishful thinking doesn’t help anyone, Marina had told me. “Did Trey also tell you where he found it? Hidden, in that room.”

His expression tightened, his mouth a flat line. “I know it’s not nothing, Abby. It’s just not gonna get us anywhere.”

And with that, he ran his hand down his tie, turned to face the room, and strode toward the exit. That was all I was going to get from him. That was all he was going to do.

I watched him go, seeing him as an outsider might, as Trey might, for the first time in a long time. The man who couldn’t solve the mystery of what had happened to Landon or Farrah or Alice Kelly. Who had let the investigations come to a quiet, unsatisfying conclusion. Who didn’t want to invite outside scrutiny and needed to keep me on the same page. I wasn’t sure whether he believed what he was saying.

The night came to a close as it always did—and soon I was cleaning up in the silence of evening, doors latching shut, lobby lights dimming.

I stepped out into the night, listening to the sounds of the forest come alive: crickets and a distant barking and the sound of things moving in the branches overhead—a wild cacophony. I crept to the edge of the lot, where the path snaked toward the cabins, hoping to catch sight of Trey. His car was still in that same spot, but there was no sign of him otherwise, and I couldn’t bring myself to knock on the door to Cabin Four—Did you get what you came for? What did the sheriff say? Did you believe him?

He was a black hole, and I was falling in. Remembering things I’d long since put out of my mind, declared irrelevant. Farrah’s pictures had kicked everything back to the surface, and now I was circling the memories from three years earlier, thinking about the pictures—there was something that had seemed unsettling about them. Something wrong.

The truth is—

The truth is, Farrah still haunted me.

The truth is, she’d come into the inn that day before continuing on to the trailhead. We’d been closed for renovations, but the doors were unlocked, and visitors had kept coming in, despite the sign out front.

I’d been painting the baseboards of the open stairwell, leading to the second floor, and I was already on edge. A simple patch had turned into a ruptured pipe, and suddenly there was drywall work, wood work, electrical work. Contractors had been coming in and out, but not in the right order, and the emergency-work calls cost a premium we hadn’t budgeted for.

So I was already poised to snap when the door opened again, but it wasn’t one of the workers we’d hired. I’d felt her standing in the lobby, just behind me. I’d had paint on my knuckles, a brush in my hand, and I was irritated. I’d told her we were closed, but she’d still stood there, not moving.

I didn’t ask how I could help her. I recognized her type from the way she stood with the camera bag over her shoulder, the way she looked around the place like she owned it. I knew before she opened her mouth that she was here for our notoriety. She was here to look around, to pry back the layers, to find something.

Were you here, she began, when Alice Kelly disappeared?

I didn’t answer at first, but I figured the truth wouldn’t hurt. No, I said, dragging the paintbrush across another section of the board. I wasn’t here for that.

I met her once. A long time ago.

As if that entitled her to anything more than all the rest. As if crossing paths with someone seven years earlier gave her any special insight.

Like I said, I wasn’t here.

But she didn’t stop, instead taking a step closer, one foot on the bottom stair. I stood, three steps above her, peering down.

Do you know who saw her? she asked. Who were the witnesses at that tavern?

As if we were all in on the information. As if I would just hand it over to her, this stranger. Instead, I said what Cory would’ve said, understanding, then, exactly why he did—thinking of all the people he was protecting. These strangers, nothing but trauma tourists who saw entertainment in our existence. Seven years in Cutter’s Pass, by that time, had dulled me to the intrigue. We were just a group of people, wrapped up in the outskirts of a mystery against our will. As if the town were a puzzle to solve, and we were the pieces. And so I said, in an echo of Cory’s own words: You won’t find any secrets here.

And those were presumably the last words ever spoken to Farrah Jordan.

Three days later, when her car was found, when her picture was passed around, and Celeste said she saw her at the trailhead, I admitted to her that I’d seen Farrah, too. That she had stopped by the inn, asking about Alice. It’s not relevant, she’d told me, with a sort of finality that made me believe her. We don’t need the inn at the center of this, do we? And then, with a shake of her head: Poor girl, what was she doing out there, in the snow, all alone?