Page 49 of Vanished in the Mist
She snorted.
He laughed.
“Since this is the road into town,” she said, “and according to the clock in your truck it’s past, oh wow, two thirty in the morning, we’re either going to the police station—”
“Nope.”
“Or…out of town?”
“Too far a drive right now through a creepy, dark two-lane road for an hour to reach Chattanooga. I’m half-asleep myself. We’ll figure out our next steps in the morning, after we get some rest and both have a clear head.”
“Ah. We’re going to Stella’s, the B and B.”
“Best hotel in town.”
“The only hotel in town.”
He smiled. “I called ahead. The desk clerk said he’d leave our room key under the cookie jar on the counter.”
“That sounds really secure.”
“I’ll clear the room before we go inside. And the police station is just across the lake. If we need them, they’re less than a minute away.”
“You sound like a cop yourself lately. ‘Clear the room.’ I think you’ve been around far too many police officers this week.”
“I couldn’t agree more.”
“All right. The B and B. We’ve got about fifteen minutes before we get there. Well, the way you’re driving, maybe only ten. Plenty of time for you to tell me what happened after I humored you by locking myself in the cabin. Speak, Kaden. I’m about out of patience.”
By the time he made the turn at the end of Main Street and headed around the end of the lake in town, she was numb with shock over what he’d told her.
He and Dawson had tracked Troy into the woods and found him tied to a tree, his throat slit.
Beside him was Sam Morton. Tied to the same tree, covered in blood. But it wasn’t his. It was Troy’s. Sam had numerouscuts and scrapes, and was covered in bug bites. But there was nothing more serious wrong with him, physically at least, except for stun-gun burns on his neck.
Just like Jessica.
He’d seen the killer slice Troy’s throat and was hysterical and blubbering behind a gag over his mouth when Dawson and Kaden found him.
When they’d calmed Sam down, he told them he and Jack had been taken at knifepoint and with the threat of a stun gun by the killer behind the public boat ramp, as the police had theorized. He’d forced them to hike endlessly through the mountains. Eventually, he’d brought them to a side-by-side, a four-wheeler hidden in the woods. He’d tied them to the seats and blindfolded them before taking them on a long, winding ride that seemed to take hours.
Sam didn’t know where Jack was. Jack had been taken away while Sam was left handcuffed to a tree. This morning the killer brought Sam to the woods behind Cassidy’s cabin. He’d heard in town that Shanna had some stalker bully after her. In his own sick way, the killer had planned to kill Sam—someone he considered to be a bully, too—and leave him as an offering of justice for Shanna.
When Troy showed up, he became the perfect target. Instead of killing Sam, the killer had murdered Troy. After slicing Troy’s throat, he’d warned Sam, “This is what happens to bullies.” Then he’d taken off before Kaden and Dawson could catch him.
Shanna shivered as Kaden pulled the truck into a parking space behind the B and B.
True to his word, the clerk had left the key under the cookie jar. And Kaden, with a gun in his hand that must have been given to him by Dawson, made her wait just inside the door while he checked out the huge walk-in dressing room closet, under the bed, the attached bathroom—anywhere he thought a killer couldpossibly hide. Only then did he allow her to move freely around the room.
She immediately sank onto the bench at the end of one of the two double beds, her horrified and confused mind full of questions. But she only asked one.
“Kaden.”
“Hmm.” He’d just finished putting their toiletries in the bathroom and set the bag on a chair in the dressing room before sitting beside her.
“Who is this man who exacts his own form of perverted justice against people that he thinks are bullies? Who is he?”
His voice was subdued, tired, as he answered. “He told Sam he was the Phantom.”
