I couldn’t leave before now because I didn’t know where Eve was. But now I do. I’m paying attention to the details. I will take care of the last things. And then I’m going to go.
No one’s here yet. They should be soon. Then I can tell them whatIknow, and we can figure out what to do next. Go to the police?
I flip through the photos one more time. Yes, there he is, Dr. Stewart. It’s definitely him.
But wait. As I keep flipping through the photos, my eyes catch. How did I miss this before? In another photo, something else.
My jaw drops. “Ohno,” I whisper.Did I make a mistake?Do I have the wrong idea about…everything?
Footsteps. I left the padlock on the front door of the chapel unlocked for them. It creaks open, but my eyes are glued to the photo. “Hey,” I say. “You won’t believe what I found.”
“Try me,” a voice says.
My heart ricochets off my ribs. My stomach drops and I look up.
No.
It’s not who I was expecting.
It’s not Hope Hanover.
It’shim.
The person from the photo.
The person who killed Eve.
62
HOPE
HOPE IS NOT DEAD, but she is going to die. He gave her something that knocked her out, and now she is awake and it is very clear, from the way that her hands are tied and her mouth is gagged, from the way that he dragged her here and left her behind the chapel, that he doesn’t plan on her being able to tell anyone about any of this later.
A thin line of birds hangs in the sky.
They are moving, but not, to her eye, forward. They seem to be hanging there, undulating, but waiting. Why?
Are they waiting for her?
A whisper of a breeze crosses her face, and she closes her eyes.
Who else is here?
63
CARO
“DID YOU CALL THEpolice?” Caro asks. The gravel crunches under the tires of the car, and a dust cloud rises around them. She’s going too fast.Slow down, she thinks.Anyone near Afton is bound to see and hear us coming.But isn’t that what she wants?
She doesn’t know, she doesn’t know. She doesn’t know a damn thing in this world.
Why does her dad have so many pictures of Hope Hanover on his phone?
And why did he have an old newspaper clipping in his wallet about a young woman named Eve Herriman who went missing twelve years ago? The year they madeThe Last Portal? She remembers the case. Everyone wondered if someone from the film had been involved becausebad things don’t happen around here. Even though they did, they do. It was the same year her dad couldn’t save that girl who fell in the canyon.
“I’m waiting until we get there, and then I’m going to send Officer Flanigan a pin,” Ash says. “I’ve got her cell number.”
“Okay.” Caro doesn’t push for Ash to message sooner or offer to do it herself. Because does she really want the police there? Her dad’s tracker began working again.
