“What?” Layla called. “What happened?”
For long seconds, Ben stayed frozen to the rock, muscles tensed and straining as he tried hard to blink, to look anywhere else, to come up with something,anythingto explain away the ugly bruises that looked like… like… fingers.
But there was no other explanation. Big, rough hands had been around this girl’s neck.
“Daddy?”
Ben flinched at the sound of his daughter’s voice. He had to get down, had to get to a phone, had to tell someone else, someone who would know what to do and could bring the proper equipment to get this poor woman off the rocks.
Limbs trembling, Ben descended. The footing was far worse on the way down, and his eyes were useless, burning with sweat that just wouldn’t quit.
It seemed hours before the heels of his boots touched the ground and he found himself standing before his daughter again, her small face creased with concern and fear.
“What’s wrong with her?” Layla’s voice was high, frightened, but inquisitive with the morbid curiosity of all ten-year-olds.
“She’s… I saw… she’s… she’s up there.” Ben reached for the water bottle in the side pocket of Layla’s backpack.
“Is she dead?”
He pulled the top off the bottle and drained it in long gulps, as though he could wash it down, the painful twist in his throat reaching right through his belly into his guts. When he’d finished drinking, he handed the bottle back and bent at the waist, supporting himself with his hands on his knees.
“Yeah,” he said, unable to meet his daughter’s eyes. “She’s dead.”
Chapter 1ANNIE
Four weeks earlier
Annie Heston mashed the toe of her boot against the gas pedal, pressing it harder than was strictly necessary to slingshot the Wagoneer around a green Jetta and whip it back into the fast lane. A moment later, the angry dual flash of high beams flickered in the rearview mirror, but Annie ignored them as she pressed the pedal harder, giving the V-8 more gas.
It was reckless, driving like this. Reckless and stupid and rash, and she knew better, but still, the speedometer stayed well north of eighty as she flew past dark fir groves and rolling acres of velveteen farmland. It felt good, speeding like a lunatic, fleeing north as though putting as many miles between her and Bend as possible would somehow lessen her heartache, even though the rational part of her brain knew it wasn’t so.
Ahead on the horizon, a low, gray city ringed with emerald hills was rising up to meet her, and Annie glanced at the half-folded map on the passenger seat. Portland. Good. She was almost to the border. Once she was through the city, she would cross the Columbia River and enter Washington State, and from there, it was just ninety minutes farther on a remote highway that led northeast to the blink-and-you-miss-it mountain town that no one, including her, had ever heard of.
Annie flicked the lever that spritzed the windshield with fluid and cleared the constellation of bugs from the glass with a sigh. She had to quit doing that, mentally tearing apart her new hometown before she’d even set foot there. No more framing it negatively. There was no going back now, so she might as well make the most of it. After all, she’d asked for this, outright, marching into her supervisor’s office and slamming her hands down on his desk.
“I’m putting in for a transfer,” she’d said without preamble or hesitation.
“What do you mean?” he asked, flabbergasted. “A transfer to where? Why?”
She ignored the first and last questions, but answered the second through clenched teeth. “Timbuk-flippin’-tu, Allen. I don’t care. Anywhere. Anywhere that has a game-warden position open.”
Allen, somewhat bewildered, had fired up the Macintosh on his desk and scrolled through the listings in the database, reading out the first one in a tone that was more question than recommendation.
“Lake Lumin, Washington?”
He looked up from the computer with his eyebrows raised. Nope, she hadn’t heard of it either.
“Perfect,” she said, and drove straight home to pack.
And now here she was, three hours into the drive with Portland rising swift and leaden around her, small houses in muted colors giving way to the brick and concrete of old downtown.
A mile before the river, northbound traffic snarled into a jam, and Annie rolled down the window, draping an arm onto the sun-warmed wood paneling of the Jeep. After a few minutes, the crawling cars ceased moving forward in short spurts and came to a complete standstill, leaving Annie parked next to a green exit sign that she stared at with a depressing case of déjà vu. How long had it been since she was right here, stuck in Portland traffic, staring at this very same sign?
HWY 26
ASTORIA, OR
Annie gazed at the seven-letter word with a lump in her throat.
