Page 56 of Dark Roads
He didn’t understand, and she wasn’t sure if it was because he wasn’t used to a girl giving him the brush-off, or if he just didn’t get it. All she knew was that she felt panicked to get him away from her. If he stayed a minute longer, she would invite him back into the tent.
“Last night. It was just a thing… but I didn’t mean…”
“Right.” He nodded, his eyes shifting to somewhere over her shoulder.
“I like you.” She hesitated, trying to find the words. “I’m not good at people.”
“That’s a new one.” He shifted his face into a smile, farm-boy white teeth flashing, and she still couldn’t tell if he was genuinely unfazed or faking. “No worries. I have to fix the dirt bike today anyway.” He spun around and strode toward his truck. She took a step. She wanted to call out,Stop. Let’s do something, but he was opening the door and then drove off with a small wave.
She busied herself around the campsite, sweeping away the fir needles that had fallen on everything, organizing supplies, tidying her clothes in the tent. The air still smelled like Jonny, some indescribable scent. Skin warmed in the sun, cedar trees, a hint of fresh-cut grass. She caught herself staring at where they’d slept, and abruptly crawled out of the tent.
The dock looked inviting, the wood glowing nearly white in the morning sun. She made a coffee, grabbed a magazine she’d bought at the store, and walked to the dock, but she only skimmed a few pages. Mostly she stared at the cabins on the other side and sipped her coffee, thinking about Vaughn showing up at the campground. The visit from the dog. Anything other than Jonny. Once, she thought she heard something in the bushes and wondered if the dog had come back. When she spun around, she caught a glimpse of something small scampering up a tree trunk. Chipmunk.
The woods were so dark and dense. It was hard to see anything farther than a few feet. The dog could be watching her right now and she wouldn’t know. It was a creeper’s paradise. Beth looked around, thinking. Amber and Hailey were together at the lake a couple of weeks before Hailey disappeared. Shannon Emerson had probably been at the lake all the time. What if the common denominator wasn’t the highway, but thecampground? All the local teenage girls hungout here. Someone could be watching them swimming, undressing in their tents.
Her sister’s car had been found down a logging road. How did the killer know she was parkedthere, unless he had followed her from the campground? He even could have been at the memorial. Shannon had disappeared from a field that was only a few miles from the campground.
Everyone was so sure the killer was a trucker, but there could be someone new. Someone who lived off the grid. Vaughn said lots of people camped out of bounds, and the murders always happened in the summer. It could be a drifter, a mountain man who hated people and society. She envisioned an unkempt, bearded survivalist type with wild hair and evil eyes.
How did Jonny know for sure that the dog was a stray? He might belong to this man, who would have to drive into town for supplies. He probably had a truck or camper that could travel the logging roads. Her breath locked in her throat at the sudden image of a slow-moving vehicle, her sister standing alone by her car. Beth made herself think of something else, anything else. The sandy beach in Hawaii. The aqua-blue water.
Water.Riverwater.
The night before, Jonny had told her that the lake was fed by a river that ran through the mountain. Then he pointed up behind the campsite and said something about good fishing.
If someone was hiding in the woods, parking near a river would make sense. It would provide water for drinking and bathing, fish for food. There would be signs of human activity. An old campfire, footsteps in sand, beer cans, paper, or a piece of aluminum wrapping.
Maybe her empty cereal bag.
She didn’t have to hike far. She’d look around and see if she could find any paw prints to follow. Back at her campsite shescrawled a note and left it on her windshield.Gone to hike the river.She stared at the note. What if Vaughn came back? The idea of running into him in the middle of the woods was as disturbing as discovering any mountain man. She crumpled up the note.
She didn’t want him looking for her.
CHAPTER 22
Beth shoved things into her backpack—binoculars, a bottle of water, granola bars, an apple, the compass, and the bear spray. Then she slathered sunscreen on her bare legs and arms. Her boots were new, the leather smooth and stiff, so she pressed a Band-Aid around each heel and did a few lunges, rising on her heels, then down on her toes, trying to make them more flexible.
She entered the woods where she’d seen the dog disappear, and followed a narrow trail, ponytail swinging, shoulders back. It wasn’t long before her face and neck were sticky with sweat. She’d taken off her shirt, tied it around her waist, and was now hiking in a black sports bra—she kept the gun in her backpack and the bear spray hooked to her front belt loop.
She stopped to whistle a few times, called out, “Come here, boy!” and clapped her hands—she’d read that loud noises scare off bears, but it hadn’t seemed to worry the dog back at the campsite. She was hoping he’d recognize her voice and come looking for more food.
She drained the last of her water within the first hour and had to keep stopping to adjust the straps of her backpack, which were rubbing her shoulders raw. Her legs and calves were beginning to turn pink—even in the woods the sun streamed through the branches like iron swords and she’d sweated off all the suntan lotion. Her shorts kept her cool, but she hadn’t thought about how her skin would get scratched and that the forest was thick with blackflies. Soon her arms and legs were streaked with blood.
The underbrush got even more dense as the trail narrowed, brambles and thorns on either side, fir trees crowding together. She was dying of thirst. She knew the river ran through the forest somewhere off to the west. She held her compass, turning one way and then the next. The arrow wavered atW. She glanced up, saw the path she’d have to follow. Was it even a path? She readjusted her backpack and hiked on. The air grew cooler the deeper she got in the forest.
She heard something in the distance. Wind? No, it was the rush of the river. Now she was walking faster. When she reached the top of a hill, she could see through the trees and down into a gulley. She stopped when she caught a glimpse of dark green water.Thatwas the river?
She’d imagined the river to be wide and flat, with a sandy shore. Not a wild undulating beast that cut its way through the land. The banks on either side were sheer rock and steep gravel inclines. Snarled logs crisscrossed over deep pools and underbrush lined the river, forming an impenetrable wall. No one could camp there. Maybe the river flattened higher up.
She kept climbing. When she reached a ridge that had been logged at one time, she staggered over to a rotten tree trunk, gray from the sun. The clearing was wide and covered in slash like bony toothpicks. Stumps were blackened. Fireweed and berries fought for survival.
She tried to massage her aching calves, but that set the sunburn aflame. She settled for stretching her legs out in front of her and resting her feet. When she took off her pack, her shoulders were red, with white stripes where the straps had protected her skin from the sun.
She turned her face to the cloudless blue sky. An eagle let out a screech that startled her through her spine. She pulled out her binoculars and watched the eagle swoop, then loweredher view to the valley below. She didn’t see any obvious places where someone might camp.
She put the binoculars away, then used her shirt to pat sweat off her face. Checked her watch. Eleven. She’d been in the woods for two hours. It felt like a lifetime. She tied her shirt over her head like a bandanna, then started back down the trail. Enough was enough.
She thought that going downhill would be easier, but as she continued, the sun moved higher and now hung directly above her head. How much longer until she made it to the campsite? She glanced at her watch. Noon. If she kept walking at the same pace, she’d be out of the woods before the hottest part of the day. As soon as she got back to her site she was going to leap into the lake. She stopped to pick berries for moisture in her mouth, and realized she was staring at a small, overgrown animal trail that ran alongside the blackberry bushes. Maybe deer used it to get to the river for water. She gave the backpack a little lift, adjusting it on her shoulders, and winced at the bite of canvas against her throbbing sunburn. She pushed through the greenery.
