Sam didn’t hesitate. “Sure.”
He turned and headed around the side of the building.
Luke followed.
The noise faded as they rounded the corner, gravel giving way to packed dirt and then grass.
And then it opened up.
Pasture rolled out behind the building.
Cattle scattered across it, heads down, grazing.
A pond sat off to the right, still from the morning rain, catching the low, heavy sky.
Beyond that—a house. Not big, but nice.
A barn behind it, everything kept up without being showy.
Luke took it in.
“Nice place,” he said.
Sam shrugged. “Does the job.”
They walked to the fence line and stopped, forearms settling on the top rail.
“Wanted to talk to you about a missing persons case.”
“After all these years,” he said, almost to himself. “You’re looking into it now?”
Luke nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Sam glanced over. “Why?”
Luke shrugged a little.
“We’ve been looking back through some old cases,” he said. “Ones that didn’t get much attention the first time around.”
“This one came up. Some folks found paintings out at the cabin. Got curious.”
Sam let out a quiet breath.
“Yeah,” he said. “That sounds about right.”
They stood there a moment, wind moving through the pasture.
“She came up here summer of ’98,” Sam said. “Said she wanted to paint. Get out of wherever she’d been.”
He shifted his weight.
“We got along,” he added. “More than that.”
Luke didn’t say anything.
“Next summer…” Sam went on, voice steady but thinner now, “we had a picnic planned out at the barn. Nothing big. Just us.”
He looked down at the fence rail.
