Behind them a twig snapped.
Ellie jerked around.
George stood there, his hands jammed in his pockets. “I couldn’t sleep,” he said, walking toward them.
Ellie studied him. “I guess only Alice can.”
George stared out at the forest. Quietly, not looking at them, he said, “I’m afraid of what we’ll find.”
If it was an act, it was Oscarworthy. Ellie glanced at Julia and saw the worry in her sister’s eyes. So Julia saw it, too. “Yeah,” Ellie finally said, tightening her hold on Julia. “We’re all afraid.”
Ellie woke at dawn and started the fire. In a heavy silence they ate breakfast and broke down camp. By first light they were on their way again, fighting through deeper, denser undergrowth, pushing through spiderwebs as taut as fishing wire. It was just past noon when Alice stopped suddenly.
In this shadowy world of towering, centuries-old trees and ever present mist, the little girl looked impossibly small and afraid. Looking at Julia, she pointed upriver. “No Alice go.”
Julia picked Alice up, held her tightly. “You’re a very brave little girl.” To Ellie, she said, “Make good notes and take pictures. I need to know everything. And be careful.”
Julia carried Alice over to the base of a behemoth cedar tree. They sat down on the soft carpet of moss at its feet. The wolf padded to their side and laid down.
Ellie looked ahead, into the green and black shadows that lay ahead. Cal, Earl, George, and his lawyer came up beside her, one by one. No one said a word. It took a surge of courage to move forward, to lead them all deeper into the woods, but she did it.
They followed the river around a bend and over a hill and found themselves in a man-made clearing. Stumps created a perimeter; fallen logs were the boundaries. Empty tin cans were everywhere, lying on the hard ground, their silvery sides furred by moss and mold. There were hundreds of them—years’ worth. Old magazines and books and other kinds of garbage lay in a heap beside the cave. Not far away, tucked back in a grove of red cedar trees, was a small, shake lean-to with no door.
To the left a dark cave yawned at them, its open mouth decorated with ferns that grew at impossible angles, their lacy fronds fluttering in the breeze. In front of it a shiny silver stake had been driven into the ground. A nylon rope lay coiled around it; one end was attached to the stake by a metal loop.
Ellie knelt by the stake. At the end of the ragged nylon rope was a leather cuff that had been chewed off. The cuff was small—just big enough to encircle a child’s ankle. Black blotches stained the leather. Blood. She closed her eyes for a split second and wished she hadn’t. In the darkness of her thoughts she saw little Alice, staked out here. It had been the girl’s small, bare feet that had worn the circular grove in the dirt. How long had she been out here, going round and round this stake?
Cal bent down beside her, touched her. She waited for him to say something, but he just squeezed her shoulder.
Slowly, Ellie pushed to her feet. “Gloves on, everyone.” Then she made the mistake of looking at George.
“Jesus,” he said, his face pale, his mouth trembling. “Someone tied her up like a damned dog? How—”
“Don’t—” Ellie could feel the tears streaking down her cheeks; it was unprofessional, but inevitable. “Let’s go,” she said to Cal.
In a silence so thick it was hard to walk through and harder to breathe in, Ellie conducted her first true crime scene search. They found a pile of woman’s clothes, a single red patent leather high heel, a blood-spattered knife, a box of half-finished dreamcatchers, and a small ratty baby blanket so dirty they couldn’t be certain what color it had once been. Appliqud daisies hung askew from the trim.
When George saw the blanket he made a strangled, desperate sound. “Oh my God …”
Ellie didn’t dare look at him. She was hanging on by a thread here. If the look on George’s face matched the sound of his voice, she’d lose it. “Catalogue everything, Earl,” she said.
Behind the lean-to was another stake with another leather ankle strap; this one was bigger; it too was caked with dried blood. Someone else had been staked out here. An adult.
Zo.
“She couldn’t even see her daughter,” Ellie whispered. Zo’s rope was longer; it allowed her to reach the mattress in the lean-to.
Cal touched her again. “Keep moving.”