The Last to Vanish(74)

Maybe all of this was my imagination. Every bit of it. And Celeste was just as I had always known her—fierce and loyal and independent—and she’d come downstairs to borrow my cell to call about the lines.

I walked into my bedroom to check the apartment line—it was dead. Shit. But I remembered what Harris had done last time to fix it. It seemed all it took was a cable being reconnected, if it had managed to come loose.

I didn’t want to think about that too much, about how it had happened, accident or otherwise. I just wanted the phones back, as quickly as possible.

I headed down the hall, to the storage closet that shared a wall with the outside. The one that didn’t require a key, with the cleaning supplies and furniture gathering dust, stacked along the wall. The room was dark and shallow, with unfinished gray cinder blocks, and it smelled like chemical cleaner and earth.

I opened the phone box near the entrance that Harris had pointed out last time, trying to find the issue. All the wires appeared connected. Just in case, I pushed them in securely, one by one. I should’ve asked for more specifics when he was here.

Maybe there was another box in the other storage area. I used my key to access it, since this one was typically kept locked—filled not only with the linens and the lost and found bin, but with records and finances and the history of this place. There were no other electronic boxes along the walls, that I could tell. All I noticed now were the empty spaces that had been left behind when Cory cleared out some of Vincent’s boxes, earlier in the week.

The room felt so much larger, open and light. I peered behind the vacant shelving now, checking any visible wall space, but there was nothing.

I left the door open and checked the storage area next door again, thinking I might’ve missed something, with the lack of light in the unfinished space. There was nothing along these walls either, but I noticed how much smaller this room was than the one next door. How the back wall, behind the piles of furniture and the bucket and mop and chemicals on a corner shelf, was left raw and unfinished, as opposed to the one next door. As if this room was closer to the earth.

And then I was thinking of Landon West poking around. The things Georgia might’ve told him, showed him. In the upstairs hall, he’d been looking at the blueprints, asking questions. Looking for me. Asking if Celeste and Vincent had built this place all on their own.

What could he have seen in here? What was it, in the blueprints, that had him so curious?

What was it that had prompted Celeste to remove them from the wall soon after, claiming they needed a new frame?

Had Landon called her on her home line? Stopped her in the hall? Did he go to her house, or catch up with her on a hike?

I felt every hair raise slowly across my arms, my legs, the back of my neck, thinking through the possibilities. A faint buzzing sound, and I didn’t think it was from any overhead light.

There was no record of any interview between the two of them, but there was a check mark next to her name in his journal. He must’ve called. He must’ve asked something.

Had he asked if she’d met the Fraternity Four? If she’d taken their picture? Had he pushed harder, asking if there was something hidden within the walls of the inn itself, and not lost out in the woods? Your imagination is running away with you again.

Be careful, Abigail.

She was so small. In a decade, I’d seen no sign of threat, or force. She tended a garden, and walked a mountain path, and handed off the long hours and hard work to me and, more recently, to Georgia.

I wasn’t sure how long I’d stood there, the room buzzing, my imagination running away from me. I stared at that far wall, breathing too shallow, feeling the room contract on me. And then I slowly backed away and closed the door behind me.



* * *



I COULDN’T GET ENOUGH fresh air into my lungs. Imagining what could be hidden in the space behind the cinder-block wall. Thinking about who had built it, and when. Why.

I stumbled along the perimeter of the inn, hand to the wall, to steady myself. Trying to talk myself down—my overactive imagination getting the best of me yet again. My feet kicked up gravel as I walked up the incline from the employee lot, to where I could get the best cell service.

And for the first time in a long time, I wondered who I could call. Like Georgia must’ve felt when she figured out who that camera belonged to, I considered reaching out beyond the boundaries of Cutter’s Pass. Saying There’s something wrong, something very, very wrong here—

I caught sight of movement in the windows of the inn that faced my way, from the back office behind the lobby. You couldn’t see through them well—too much reflection, too much protection—but I could just make out the outline of a person at the window, staring out. I recognized her posture, her movements, the hand she raised toward me. Celeste, watching me.

Everything within me stilled. I raised my cell toward her, pointed to it, so she would know—I’m handling the phone lines, just like you asked.

I could see the outline of her as she nodded in return. Then I turned around, keeping my back to her as I called Harris.

As often happened, my call went to voice mail. But seeing as it was Sunday, I wasn’t sure when I’d hear back from him. He must take a day off on the weekends. He must take time for his family. I debated leaving a message at all, except he’d told me, as we’d both stood in front of his home, that I could call him any time. That I should.