We spread out in all directions from the cabin, yelling her name. My hands and feet were numb from the cold, but I was so wired with adrenaline I didn’t care. I yelled Lila’s name until my voice was hoarse.
After an hour of searching, Kai stopped suddenly. “I’m going back. Someone needs to call the police.” The rest of us kept searching, filled with a new kind of terror.
The first police car showed up a half hour later. “The K9 unit is on their way,” the officer said.
I overheard him turn and mutter something to a fellow officer. “Let’s get a search team out five miles in every direction. But we’re going to need the dogs to find a body in all this snow.”
A body.The officer’s words hung in the air. My stomach turned as I realized—he didn’t expect to find her alive.
Daisy and I pushed through the snow, sweat dripping under our jackets, exposed skin on our faces burning with cold. I scanned the ground in front of us, straining for any color among the fallen branches and pine needles, scared to miss a lock of red hair, the corner of her sweater.
As we ventured deeper into the wilderness, searching for any sign of Lila in all this snow, time seemed to stretch. The snowfall, the cracking sounds of ice, the officers’ words, all floated in the distance. The snow was so thick, it seemed to have covered up any prints. Even the dogs struggled to find her scent.
It took until dusk before a member of the search and rescue team found her—five miles from the cabin, covered by snow in a ravine. By then the sun had long gone, and a cruel bitter wind circled the cabin. We waited for what seemed like an eternity…and then we saw them: a group of EMTs exiting the woods with a stretcher.
I stood very still, watching through the window as a horrible fear seized my chest and snaked down my limbs, but I couldn’t look away.
Daisy was the first to run out, and I followed close behind.
What happened next had a muted, slow-motion quality, as if it were happening in a dream.
I would remember her hair first: frozen solid and dark red with blood, matted with twigs and dirt. A bloody gash split her head, and yet her expression was calm and serene…as if she were asleep, her pale skin glittering unnaturally as sunlight reflected off the tiny flakes of ice, like a shattered porcelain doll.
I stared. Captivated. Anchored to the snowy spot where I stood.
But then I blinked and the panic rushed in. She was closer now—her skin ashen, bruised, lips a jaundice yellow and purple the color of mold—and then they pulled the sheet over her.
My vision swam, and for a moment I was confused.
What were they doing?The EMTs were taking their time hauling her into the ambulance. They weren’t giving her oxygen. They weren’t trying to save her.
Someone grabbed my hand, and I began to hyperventilate as they shut the ambulance doors. She was gone. She was really gone.
Cold sweat coated my armpits, the back of my neck, as someone brought me inside and handed me a glass of water. I stared at it in my hand. In the living room, Daisy sank into a chair, head dropping to her hands, and sobbed.
Fear and guilt twisted my insides.Lila was dead.And it was my fault. My stomach lurched, and I heaved in the hallway. The glass slipped from my grasp and shattered on the floor.
—
“Maya Mason.” thedetective’s voice cut through my skull. I looked down at where the glass I’d been holding had shattered moments ago. But it was already gone. Someone had cleaned it up.
I swallowed. “Yes?”
“I’ll need you to come with me next. We need to ask you a few questions.”
I nodded as the blood drained from my face.
Cecily, Kai, and Daisy stood behind him, cheeks flushed from the cold, jackets dripping onto the floor—like I’d found them this morning. They stared at me, each one as pale as the snow outside.
—
No one saida word as we packed our bags the next morning.
I was still in shock, disoriented from lack of sleep and a throbbing headache. The past twenty-four hours felt like a nightmare. One from which we couldn’t wake up. We drove down the same snowy road on which we came, but this time we rode in bone-chilling silence.
It wasn’t until Daisy touched my arm that I realized I was crying. No one had said it, but I knew Lila must have gotten the shot intended for Professor DuPont. That was the only logical explanation. And that meant…it was my fault she was dead.
But something about it bothered me.How had she made it five miles into the snow?I’d put enough GHB in that drink to knock out a horse—how could someone as thin as Lila have made it more than a few steps with that much in her system?
