Some of the photographs were fanned out across the surface. Crime scene shots. The girl's body. Close-ups of wounds.
"Hey. Mia wants picking up tomorrow at ten. I'll..." Natalie stopped. She looked at the photos, then at Noah. "What the hell?"
Noah gathered the photos and slid them back into the folder. “Sorry. Um. I have to go out."
"Noah."
He stood and grabbed his jacket from the hook near the entrance. Natalie followed him.
"I thought you were taking a break from all of that," she said.
He pulled the door open and stepped into the rain without answering. The evening air was warm and wet, a rain that felt like it could go all night. He climbed into the Bronco, started the engine, and pulled out, his headlights washing over the trees that lined the road as he left.
The driveto the north side of High Peaks Lake took longer than Noah remembered. The night pressed close, the rain streaking across the windshield in sheets that the wipers barely kept up with. When he turned into the gravel curve of the old property, the Bronco's headlights swept across the stone fountain and the white columns, throwing everything into sudden brightness before the dark folded back in.
A few lights burned upstairs, warm and shallow against the brick face of the house. The lake behind it was a sheet of black glass, the far shore invisible. Noah cut the engine.
He stepped onto the porch. "Dad?" His voice felt small, swallowed by the open water and the night air. No answer. A light breeze carried the smell of pine and wet earth.
He circled to the side flower bed and found the flat stone where it had always been. Beneath it, the key. Cold and gritty. He slid it into the lock and stepped inside.
The alarm woke immediately. Three soft tones and a blinking red light. Noah moved down the hall and punched the code from memory. The beeping stopped. The house settled.
"Dad?" he tried once more. The word echoed up the staircase. Nothing.
The place smelled of cedar polish and wine. Hugh had filled it with pieces Noah recognized from the old home on Mirror Lake Drive. Same oak table. Same framed photographs. But the arrangement felt off, like someone had rebuilt a room from memory and missed something they couldn't name.
He found the basement stairs and went down. The steps creaked under his boots. The air was cooler, the walls lined in olive green, shelves stocked with bottles Hugh would never finish. For a moment Noah thought Ethan had been wrong. Then he saw the door to the back storage room, half open.
Inside, the air was thick and still. Stacked against the far wall were plain corrugated boxes, ten or twelve of them, eachstamped in faded black ink: PROPERTY OF ADIRONDACK COUNTY SHERIFF'S OFFICE.
Noah crouched and pulled the nearest one open. There were folders inside, case files, the paper worn soft at the edges from years of handling. It took him close to twenty minutes before he found it. He read the top labels. K. ELLISON. Then his hand stopped. CARTER LYLE.
He pulled the folder and opened it on the concrete floor. A mugshot clipped to a police report. Beneath that, photocopies of arrest records dated four years back. Then photographs, harsh flash images of a knife sealed in an evidence bag, the blade stained a dark brownish-black. The final pages weren't photographs at all. One was a charcoal sketch, rough and heavy, the strokes dragged hard across the paper as if the hand behind them had been shaking. It depicted a wooden bridge, low and crude, sitting over dark water that pooled beneath it like something held open. The planks were warped and gapped. Beyond the bridge the landscape was flat and empty, the horizon so low it barely registered. No trees. No landmarks. Just the bridge and the water and a silence that came off the paper like cold from a window.
A flyer beneath the sketch was a missing person poster. Kara Ellison. Twenty-one. Brown hair. Last seen on Route 73.
Noah sat on the basement floor with the folder open across his knees, studying the sketch, then the mugshot, then the knife.
Something felt off. He couldn't say what yet. But the pieces in front of him didn't fit together the way they should have, and the feeling that settled into his chest was one he'd learned never to ignore.
5
The contract sat on the passenger seat in a clear plastic sleeve, three pages stapled together with a yellow sticky note on top that read SIGN AND RETURN. Fiona had read it twice already, once at her apartment and once in the parking lot of the Strutz Agency when Samuel had handed it to her, and both times the numbers had made her stomach flip in a way that felt closer to excitement than fear. Five hundred dollars for a four-hour catalog shoot. Another three hundred if the client selected her images for print. She'd made less than that in two weeks at the lodge.
There was additional money she could make if she was interested in another option. She knew what that meant. A little risqué environment.
She pulled into the Stewart’s Shops in High Peaks and filled the tank of her blue Ford Focus, watching the numbers climb on the pump. The evening was warm; a night where the air held the heat of the day. She went inside to pay and stood in the snack aisle for a minute, reaching for a bag of peanut M&Ms before putting it back. Then picked up a granola bar. She put that back too. Samuel had told her the shoot would include wardrobe andthat the clothes ran on the smaller side. She bought a bottle of water instead and a pack of gum and left it at that.
Back behind the wheel, she checked her phone. A text from Ruby, sent an hour ago.You nervous?
Little bit,Fiona typed back.Excited though.
Text me when you get there. And when you leave. And if anyone is weird.
Fiona smiled. Ruby worried enough for both of them, which was one of the reasons Fiona loved her. She dropped it into the cupholder and pulled out of the station, turning east toward Elizabethtown.
The drive was forty minutes on a good night. Route 73 wound through valleys and along the edges of state land, two lanes bordered by dark walls of pine and birch that closed in tight on both sides once you left the last cluster of houses behind. Fiona had driven it a dozen times, mostly in daylight, mostly with someone else in the passenger seat. At night, alone, the road felt longer. The headlights carved a tunnel through the dark and everything beyond it was solid black.
