Page 33 of Dark Roads
“Yeah, me too.” It was a nice idea. Vaughn being held accountable. Then he’d feel that sick shame that I’d carried around with me since I’d seen those photos. But I didn’t think it would really happen, and I couldn’t tell Jonny that. I needed him to believe justice was possible.
We talked for a while, about dirt bikes, the cabin, Wolf, and Amber. We made a plan for the next time Jonny and I would meet. I wanted to know about his last race, but he said it had been postponed because of my going missing. He was evasive, though, and I worried that he’d really just skipped it. After he left, dust hung in the air, the faint smell of gasoline. Wolf and I jogged after him, following his trail through the woods. I stopped partway and listened to his bike fade.
CHAPTER 11
The summer stretched into late August. My skin was golden brown, my freckles like nutmeg. Wolf filled out—and spread out. Each night he moved farther up the bed, gradually taking over my pillow and pushing me with his paws until I woke crammed against the log wall. I’d have to roll over and nudge him to the other side, while he grumbled and huffed, and we eventually settled with my body curved around his back. So tight I felt like his heartbeat was my own.
Jonny and I met one more time near the river. He snuck away from the guys at the campground, telling them he was fly-fishing the upper pools. He didn’t like us not being able to text in case of emergencies—it was impossible to get a signal on most of the mountain—so he bought handheld VHF radios. I’d be able to pick up a weather station, music, and listen in on the logging companies. It had a decent range, but if there was a thick cloud cover or bad weather, he might only hear static from me. We found a private frequency and came up with the code names H150 and H250—the numbers on our bikes.
The searches were over, and most people had decided I was another victim of the highway killer, even though the police hadn’t confirmed it one way or the other. I felt a strange mix of relief and guilt. Jonny said missing posters were spread around town, on telephone poles, gas stations, mailboxes. He hated walking past them. Mason had two in the diner’s window.
Amber and Jonny talked, and he assured her I was okay—I wasn’t a murder victim. I figured by the middle of Septemberit might be safe for me to reach out. I could write her a letter. We might even be able to meet. The idea filled my dreams. I’d be able to touch her, hold her.
Jonny heard rumors that Vaughn had officers patrolling the highway twice a day, in case the killer struck again or my body showed up. Volunteers had searched the ditches on both sides of the highway. Jonny went to Thompson for updates. We figured that was what he would have done if this was real. Not that Thompson had much to say other than, “It’s still an active case.”
Those weren’t the only rumors. Emily, the girl I’d seen in the diner the day Vaughn walked me out, showed up at the lake one night.
“A few people were sitting around Andy’s camper drinking beer,” Jonny said, “and she kept asking me if I wanted to buy anything stronger than weed. Pushing, you know?”
“So she’s a dealer?”
“I think she’s in deep. I checked around about her later and someone said she was a narc. She’s working for Vaughn. Ratting people out for money.”
“Serious?” Maybe it wasn’t fear I’d seen in her face. Maybe it was something darker, an anger of sorts. Like a person might get if someone was controlling them.
“Yeah, and she asked me whether I thought you were still alive, which pissed me off. I don’t care how drunk she was. Don’t worry. I’m keeping her away from my new place.”
In a stroke of good luck, Jonny’s grandparents found an available spot at a retirement home and moved out of their old house. They offered it to Jonny to rent. It used to be a sheep farm, with a workshop, gardens, fruit trees, and chickens. He could keep his dirt bikes in the shop; the neighbors were miles away. Behind his house, trails connected with the mazeof logging roads. In the future we’d be able to meet with less risk, but he still got security cameras.
“Maybe you should make friends with Emily.”
“No way.”
“She might know something.”
He groaned. “I’ll think about it.”
I sped down the logging road with Wolf behind me in his seat—a milk crate that I’d fixed to the back. He was a good rider, shifting his weight when I took corners. When he was really excited, he’d stand in the crate and rest his front legs on my shoulders, huffing the wind in long snorts that he would then sneeze all over the back of my neck. Sometimes he preferred to run in the woods parallel to me, weaving in and out of the trees. Once, he was running on a high bank, and he launched himself into the crate, which nearly sent me into a crash. After that, I drove slower and learned how to brace for the impact, and he learned how to time his landing better.
First week of September, and my classmates had gone back to school. I thought about how I had once been like them, getting textbooks, finding my locker. I was glad to be free but worried about the mountain. It was hot, no sign of autumn coming. Fires were still burning up north and the air smelled of charcoal. Each morning I checked the VHF radio for the latest reports. The sky was shaded gray, while ash fell like snow through hazy sunbeams. Twigs and leaves crunched under my feet as I traveled toward the lake area. The river was running low and the timber was so dry it would only take one spark to set the forest alight.
It was early in the day, but the air was already stagnant with heat as I hid my dirt bike a mile up the mountain. I walked therest of the way, crossed the highway through a culvert, then climbed the ridge on the other side. I wanted to check the wind and see from which direction the smoke was blowing.
By the time I reached the top—where I could look down on the highway, the entrance to the lake, and the mountain range—I was out of breath, sweaty, and gasping with thirst. Wolf and I shared some water. As he slurped from his bowl, I stroked the hot fur on his side. He’d filled out with better food. I couldn’t feel his ribs anymore, and his haunches were hard muscle. When he’d drunk enough, he flopped down in the shade of a fir tree, his tongue out as he panted.
“We won’t be long, buddy.” He sighed, stretched his head across his legs, too lazy to even sniff around for squirrels. I studied the sky, used my binoculars to narrow in on the haze in the distance. The clouds were low and dark, drifting to the west. At the moment the wind was in my favor, but I’d keep checking the weather channel on my radio. The biggest risk was stupid people, smokers on the highway, and campers who thought they were immune to the danger.
I crawled closer to the edge of the cliff and aimed my binoculars at the lake campground. I wouldn’t be able to see much through the dense canopy of trees, but I wanted to make sure no one had left a fire smoldering overnight or decided that they justhadto have one for their morning bacon and sausages. So far it looked clear. I swooped the binoculars to the left, scanned the long-yellowed grass alongside the highway, the dust-covered bushes. I studied bits and pieces of garbage, take-out containers. Glass bottles in ditches could also start fires.
Through a thin crop of trees, where an old logging road ran parallel to the highway, I caught a glimpse of something shiny. Metal? I pulled the binoculars away from my face, wiped at the sweat dripping into my eyes, and refocused. The circle viewbounced up and down. I steadied my hand, thinking it had been a trick of the light, but then a shape came into sight. The straight lines of a silver car. I scanned the binoculars down the side of it, trying to see in between tree trunks. The car was sitting at an angle. The back end low. Something wrong with a tire?
The owner was bound to come back, but they might have left something inside. Clothes, spare change, food. I grabbed my backpack and made my way down the ridge with Wolf slinking beside me. When I reached the highway, I listened for oncoming traffic, then bolted across.
It took me a few minutes to weave through the brush and follow along the logging road until I came around the corner and could see the front of the car, the silver grille shining. Tucked behind a tree, I lifted my binoculars and zoomed in on the windshield. Something dangled from the rearview mirror. I focused again. White plush, silver horn. A unicorn.
Amber’s car?
I gripped the binoculars, swung them around, searching for her. Just trees and brush and the distant gray of the road. I turned back to her car, sharpened the focus. No sign of her inside the car either. Had she had a flat tire on her way back from the lake and gotten out to walk? The thought of seeing her, even for a brief instant, thrilled me.
