Page 66 of Dark Roads
“Are you okay?”
“Seeing the phone…” He hooked his thumbs into his belt loops, showing a strip of golden brown skin. Just last night she’d run her fingers along that line. So intimate. So close.
“Brought back memories,” she said.
“It just hits me hard sometimes,” he said. “And I need a couple of days to get my head together, you know? But I don’t want you to think I’m trying to get rid of you.”
“I don’t think that. We’ll just play it by ear, okay?”
“Cool.” He stepped back, giving her room to open her door.
She smiled and gave a wave as she drove off. When she was out of sight, she dropped the smile and frowned at the road. What did he mean,cool? It was what Beth had wanted. Noncommittal. But now that Jonny had denied trying to get rid ofher, she was starting to wonder if that was exactly what he was trying to do. She couldn’t follow her own thoughts anymore.
She turned the radio up. Fine. If he wanted space, she’d give him space.
Beth stacked dirty dishes into the plastic tub, wishing the day was over already so she could get some sleep at the campsite. She was thinking about her conversation with Jonny. What would it be like to be a suspect in the disappearance of your best friend? He’d called Hailey his voice in the dark. Beth smiled, remembering the memory he had shared—Hailey dragging him out of the silver mine.
Beth hoisted the tub onto one hip and glanced up at the photo of the miner’s cabin. She still couldn’t shake the feeling that the dog belonged to someone living on the mountain. They could be using that cabin. Hailey and Jonny had found the mine a few years ago. It couldn’t bethathard to locate the cabin. Tomorrow was her day off. She could look for it then. Beth thought about texting Jonny for more details, but he’d made it clear he needed space.
After work, she drove to the small local history museum and pretended to look around. The clerk didn’t know anything about abandoned mines. Unfortunately, he knew a lot about logging, and the declining forestry industry. When Beth finally escaped, she found a coffee shop with Wi-Fi and Googled on her phone until her eyes burned. There was one reference to a silver mine in an ancient newspaper article, the wording stiff and overly formal, and the description of the topography was confusing—Black Bear Bluffs, the Deep River Pools, Burnt Fir Tree, Horseshoe Trail, and comments like, “along a pine-edged meadow of wildflowers.”
She used the library’s printer to make copies of some satellite maps and a few rough drawings of decommissioned logging roads.
That night she sat by a lantern and pieced the maps together. The Black Bear Bluffs were a rock formation that ran perpendicular to the river, starting from its widest point. She guessed those were the “deep pools” the newspaper had mentioned. Maybe the Horseshoe Trail led from the river to the cabin, which had to be built into those rocks. It didn’t look far away, but she’d learned during her last hike that the forest could be deceiving. She needed to be prepared.
Jonny texted at ten. The chirp surprised her as she dozed in the backseat of her car.
Long day, heading to sleep, hope you’re okay.
She read over his message a few times, but she wasn’t sure if he wanted an answer. He hadn’t phrased it like arealquestion. Was he checking in out of politeness? Before she could overthink it, she tapped out,I’m fineSomeone kept me up late last night so I’m going to bed too!
She waited for a few minutes, but he didn’t text back.
In the morning she made herself choke down some mushy oatmeal. Then she coated herself with bug spray and slid her feet into cotton socks. Loose-fitting hiking pants would protect her legs, and a long-sleeved shirt would cover her arms. She pulled her ponytail through a baseball cap. Two bottles of water went into her backpack. Sunscreen. Plus an emergency blanket. She attached bear bells to the straps and hung a whistle around her neck. The handgun she tucked into the side pouch and practiced pulling it out, but felt silly, like she was playing at being a cop.
She drove her car up the logging roads until they got too narrow and rough, then she parked and started walking—following the map she’d made. The bush was thicker than she expected, and the terrain steep. Her quads and hamstrings burned from the strain. After an hour of hard hiking, she was down to her sports bra—the shirt tied around her waist—and she’d unzipped the bottom half of the pants, so they made shorts. The air smelled sooty from forest fires, black smoke blowing west. It gave the sky a heavy feeling and muffled the woods.
The sun rose higher. She’d been following the river for what seemed like miles on an overgrown logging road that ran above it when she noticed a natural dam. The fallen trees were old, the wood long grayed, forest debris crammed against them. Ferns and huckleberry bushes grew out of the mossy, rotten parts. She pulled out her binoculars. The curve of the river matched the area she had marked on her map, but there were probably a thousand bends to this river. Still, it was worth a second look.
Nearby she found a narrow deer trail that cut through the brush. She crawled under logs, and picked her way through the forest, grasping at roots and branches on the steep bank. When she reached the bottom, she quickened her pace alongside the shore, leaping from rock to rock, until she found a shallow area. She waded to the other side, and narrowed her eyes at some rock cliffs that jutted out over the river upstream. They could be the start of the Black Bear Bluffs, but how was she going to get to them? The shore ended, and the dirt bank rose straight from the water. She wasn’t risking another fall. She’d look for another away around.
She turned and headed into the woods. She kept straight until she saw a way through the trees to the north. It should curve toward the bluffs. The trees were sparser now and there wasn’t as much underbrush to force herself through, but she stumbledwhen her foot caught on a root. She glanced down. Something pale and long. Bones, and there were more scattered around. She froze. Human? She forced herself to look closer. She saw a rib cage, not big, but she couldn’t tell with the other pieces. Moss had grown over some, and dirt obscured the rest. There was no skull.
Then she spotted the jawbone. Long, with a row of teeth. Too many to be human. The panic settled to a hum. Something had died in that spot, maybe a deer, but it wasn’t Hailey. Still, she had an uneasy feeling. It was the way the trees shrouded her. The quiet of the forest.
She moved on quickly, her steps fast as she weaved around the timber. So fast that she couldn’t pull back when she stepped onto something that gave way with a loud crack. She crashed through dirt and branches and landed hard on her back, staring up at the sky.
She stayed sprawled out, sucking at the air until she caught her breath. She rubbed dirt from her eyes, spat some out of her mouth. She must have fallen into some sort of hole, a natural erosion.
She sat up straight and saw the branches that had fallen with her. They’d been cut. This was man-made. A trap—maybe dug by a hunter. She got to her feet, clawed at the sides of the pit. Chunks of dirt crumbled in her hands. She jammed the toes of her boots into the walls and tried to pull herself up, but she kept falling backward. She stopped. There had to be a better way. She could use the gun to dig steps into the soil, or create an angle with extra dirt, like a ramp.
Noise above. Something walking? Animal or person? She held herself still to listen. Twigs snapping, the rustle of leaves. She tugged the handgun free from her backpack and pointed it toward the sky. Sniffing sounds, moving around the pit. She followed with the gun. What the hell was it? Bear? A blacknose appeared over the edge, pink tongue lolling. The rest of his furry head came into view. One blue eye, one brown—her granola thief, the black dog.
He let out an excited yip that ended in a long warble, then turned to look over his shoulder. A slim figure stood in the shadows, just out of sight. The mountain man.
“I have a gun,” Beth shouted.
The shape stepped forward. The sun slanted across his shoulders, blocking his face. He raised something in his hands. Beth’s finger trembled on the trigger. The shape took another step closer, and the sun shifted away, flashing for a moment on cheekbones, a mouth. It was a girl. Black hair cut into a ragged pixie, windblown. Green eyes stared down the barrel of a rifle.
