The Last to Vanish(82)

She placed her hands on the table, pushed herself to standing. “Okay, listen, let’s get back to the inn. Get some rest, and let’s talk again tomorrow, in the light, in the open air. You need some time.”

“They’re not down there,” I repeated, needing it to be true.

“I promise you,” she said at just over a whisper. “They’re buried somewhere out there.” She gestured behind her, to the mountain.

“One day,” I said, “someone might find them. Someone will see that they didn’t die of exposure or animals or an accident.”

She ran her hand down her braid, a faraway look in her eyes. “Yes, Abby. One day, they might.”



* * *



I RETURNED TO THE inn in a daze. Went through the motions on autopilot.

Every door slamming shut sounded like a shot. Bam. Every voice, and I imagined my father, the words he’d pleaded with, for his life. Every peal of a man’s laughter, and I imagined Brian in that picture in the tavern, head thrown back, no indication that by the end of the night, he’d have killed the others and be dead himself. This person I could never bring to justice, for all he had taken from me.

That is, if what Celeste had told me was true. But she wasn’t the only one who had been out there that night.

There was a sheriff who knew more than he ever said. Who was stuck. Haunted. Who knew that Landon had been asking questions, and what could happen if he found them. Who knew everything that had happened or would happen in town by nine a.m. on any given weekday. Who, I had to assume, knew who I was, too.





CHAPTER 22


IT WAS LATE, AND the inn was quiet, and I was thinking of all the people with something to hide. It wasn’t just me, who had been so careful, because, as I had learned, Families made people nervous. The way they kept digging, beyond reason, even when there’s nothing left. Driven by something deeper.

I was thinking of Cory’s parents, lying for him, without even asking whether they needed to. And a young Patrick Stamer following Celeste into the woods, when she was covered in blood. And Celeste never asking her husband or the sheriff what they did next, after they sent her away.

No one here seemed to want the answers. Not then, not now. Not really. As if they were scared of what they might uncover about one another, or themselves.

I was locking up the safe for the day, my phone balanced on the ledge of the back window, in case Georgia reached out, when there was a knock at the lobby door. Which was unusual. We didn’t lock it.

Just as I stepped out from the back office, the door pushed open, and a head poked in, peering around the lobby—curly brown hair, a beard that matched. Harris smiled when he saw me there. “I was worried it was too late,” he said, stepping inside.

“No, perfect timing. I was just about to close up for the night. You’re a lifesaver.”

He strode across the room, reached over the registration desk, and picked up the phone, listening to the dead air. “Hmm,” he said, brow furrowing. “Can I check out the basement again?”

“Of course. I just need to finish shutting things down at the front desk.” I led him down the hall slowly, aware that most of our guests were sleeping, the rooms locked and quiet for the night. I stopped just before the employee door. “Can I ask you something, in confidence?”

“Go for it,” he said.

“What do you think of the sheriff?”

His eyes drifted to the side, and he ran his tongue behind his teeth. “I think,” he began, with the tiniest smirk, “that he hires me sometimes. And that he’s the reason I’m hired by others.”

“Fair enough,” I said, pressing my employee badge to the lock.

He pushed the door open, then held it there, pausing. “What are you really asking me, Abby?”

He knew exactly what I was asking. And I remembered how Cory told me I needed to be careful about that. “I feel like I don’t really know what people are capable of,” I began, edging my way into it. “I feel like I missed so much, not being here for all the disappearances.”

“Well,” he said, “neither was I.” He took a step downstairs, turned around. As if the privacy of the stairwell kept him safe, allowed him to say it. “What I think about the sheriff is, there are people who are everything to him. And there are people who are nothing to him.”

I nodded once, in thanks and in understanding.

I finished securing the lobby, waiting for Harris to finish up so I could go downstairs, to my apartment, process everything Celeste had told me. Decide what I was going to do with it all.

Walking into the back office, I saw an alert on my cell phone. I had hoped it was Georgia, sending some sort of message. An explanation; an apology. Or Sloane, checking in, reminding us both that we were safe.

But the notification on the screen was for a new message that had just arrived from AliceKellyWasHere.

I perched against the windowsill, feeling the cold of the night against the glass on my back. I navigated to the message: I don’t know their last names, sorry. But I remember them. They’re in that group shot. I know it’s hard to see, but here’s a closer picture: Lacy on the left. Caroline on the right. They were the ones on the hike.

She didn’t have to say which one. The hike where they left her, let her go off on her own. Where she disappeared, never to be seen again.