Page 124 of Trapper Road

The fact that she can joke makes me feel a little better about her condition. I look back to the house. It writhes under the flames. They lick up the sides, starting on the roof. Smoke billows into the air thick and roiling. Only the front is relatively untouched, though that won’t last for long. Light flickers through the broken windows with the promise of fire.

I close my eyes, hang my head. I’m spent. My muscles tremble from exertion. I don’t know how much more I have in me. But I have to try.

“I’m going back for Willa,” I tell Vee.

She clutches at my arm, her grip surprisingly tight. “The fuck you are.”

“She’s still in there. She’s tied up. I have to help her.”

“You can’t. It’s too dangerous.” There’s panic in her voice.

I place my hand over Vee’s. “I have to.”

“She’s a monster,” she gasps.

I think of my father, his smiles and hugs and the way his voice softened when he told us he loved us. He was also a monster. But I still choose to believe there was something more to him. I choose to believe that he loved us. That we mattered to him. And if I believe that about him, then I have to believe it about Willa too.

I choose to believe there’s no such thing as monsters. There are people who make bad decisions, sometimes really terrible decisions, but they’re still people.

“I know. But she’s still a person too.”

Her fingers dig into my arm. “She’s not worth risking your life.”

“If I let her die, what does that say about me?”

Her grip loosens. “Please don’t, Connor.”

I think about Sister Harmony, bleeding and hurt, stabbing her knife into the neck of the man who was about to shoot me. I remember promising myself that was the kind of person I was going to be.

It’s time for me to fulfill that promise to myself.

“I have to.” With a groan I push to my feet, unsteady as the world spins, my skin prickling with a sickly numbness. Ahead of me the house looms, a horror show come to life. I stumble toward it.

42

GWEN

I stand in the motel room, clutching Connor’s phone and hoping it might give me some sort of clue to his whereabouts. I swipe it open, entering his usual code, but the lock screen blinks and resets. It’s the wrong password. I try another of his usuals, but that doesn’t work either. If I try again and fail, it will lock me out. I don’t want to take that risk.

Instead I swipe down, accessing his recent alerts, desperate for anything that will help. There’s a notification from his QuickBikes app that his rental has expired and asking if he’d like to renew.

My pulse picks up. QuickBikes are the yellow bikes for rent around town. We have the same ones in Knoxville. We all created accounts with them earlier in the year, before I was injured, when we rented bikes to ride along the greenway one weekend. With trembling fingers, I pull up the app on my phone.

It shows the most recent rental, including where the bike was picked up and where it was left. I zoom in on the latter and frown. It’s a spot in the middle of the woods. Why would he go there?

Something in the back of my head triggers. I scramble back to my room, diving for Juliette’s file. Toward the back there’s a map of the town marked with key locations. One of them is the Shadow Shack. I compare it to the map on my phone. It’s the same place.

A dull throb of panic begins inside me. The Shadow Shack is where Willa and Mandy claimed to have taken Juliette the day she disappeared. I don’t care if it’s a coincidence, I don’t want my kids anywhere near a place frequented by those two girls.

I shove both phones into my pockets and sprint to my car. I don’t need my intuition to tell me everything about this is wrong. Something horrible is about to happen.

It’s the feeling that’s been dogging me since Leonard Varrus emailed earlier in the week. I’d known then that things were about to go bad. I just had no idea how much.

My phone automatically connects to the car and I hit the voice controls as I peel out of the parking lot. “Call Sam,” I tell the car. It’s pure instinct that has me reaching out to him first. It isn’t until the phone rings several times and flips to voicemail that I realize of course he can’t answer.

He’s at the station. He may not even have his phone on him.

Doesn’t matter, I still leave a message. “If you get this, you need to call me. Connor and Vee are missing. I’m worried something’s happened.” I don’t know what else to say. He’s hours away, realistically there’s nothing he can do to help me even if he can leave.

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