You can even hear the gunshots at the end of the recording, but then most everything is muffled, the recorder on the ground. Everything static and foggy—even Liam White’s very labored breathing, until eventually that, too, fades to nothing.
“It actually makes perfect sense,” Dominic says. “We’ve both tried—we’ve been trying—for a long time. I can’t figure it out. Casey can’t figure it out, and she’s incredible.” Casey looks shocked by the compliment, but I believe it. “We can’t even come close enough to see what we’re up against. It’s impossible to hack. It was made to be impossible. June wasn’t a hacker. She thought different …” He scans me quickly. “And so do you.”
They’re insane if they think I’ll miraculously see how to break into a database, when I know nothing of programming or code. They’re insane if they think I’ll be able to decipher June’s life and find some hidden shadow-database that nobody else has managed to find. It won’t be in these woods. Not functioning in the middle of a forest for seventeen years. They’re wrong, and I’m terrified because I will not see what they need me to see. “I don’t know if you realize this,” I say, “but it didn’t end well for the people who hacked into it last.”
Dominic laughs. He really laughs, like I’m funny. But I was serious. “They were loud,” he says. “They were loud when they should’ve been quiet.”
Casey won’t look at me. I stare at her, hoping to catch her eye. “You want to be like June, Casey? You want to be the villain and have your soul suffer for it forever? You want to end up like me?” When she doesn’t answer I turn to Cameron. “And you would let her do this? So much for anything.” And he flinches.
“No,” Casey says, “I care about only one thing in there. A single thing.” I remember the news program. Her twin sister died. Of course. Basic human nature, refusing to let go.
“You want to find who Ava is in the next life?” I ask. “I’ll tell you: an infant. An infant who deserves its own life. She won’t be the same person,” I say, and for a second I think she’s going to hit me. Instead she just shakes her head at me, like I’m a fool.
“You know what would be great?” Cameron asks. “If we can get on with it already.”
We start moving, and Cameron falls into stride with me for a moment. “It’s not what you think,” he says. “I promise.”
But to take him at his word requires both belief and trust, and I am currently empty of both.
The GPS coordinates aren’t specific enough. Dominic says the coordinates cover an area one kilometer in each direction. The area in question all looks the same as the rest of the woods. No particular paths, no cabins, just brush and roots covering the soil, trees like every other tree in the forest. “Keep your eyes out,” Dominic says. He puts an orange stake into the ground and keeps walking, marking off the area as we follow.
“For what?” Cameron mumbles.
There’s nothing here. I know it as we trace the potential area together, and I feel them know it as their breathing comes in short, desperate pulls. As they walk faster, their bodies become tenser. We finish the loop, and all we’ve seen are trees and dirt.
“She could’ve buried it,” Casey says, and Dominic nods, but everything’s starting to take the tone of desperation.
“Right. Of course she did, otherwise it wouldn’t survive seventeen years. I’m just looking for some sort of marker, but again, it’s been years. It could be crushed, or eroded, or just … gone,” Dominic says.
“Check the trees,” I say, and they all look at me like I have some unexplainable insight into June’s psyche. I roll my eyes and say, “Bark doesn’t change as much over time. If she wanted a marker to last, she’d use that.” We all know June wasn’t stupid. She wasn’t going to stick a stake in the middle of the floor and expect it to last until the next generation.
I stop at a tree, running my fingers over the bark, imagining June’s pale hand doing the same. “Cameron,” Dominic says. “Stay with her. Casey, you’re with me.”
Why did she leave something? How did she know she would die? That she wouldn’t just be put in jail where she could leave letters for real people? That she wouldn’t just disappear forever? Dominic made it sound like this was June’s blackmail. A fail-safe. A reason for her not to be killed. So again, I wonder, How did she know she would die?
It’s like she didn’t trust the world. Didn’t trust the law, or humanity, any of it. Like she knew what would happen when she left the woods. God, June, why did you leave the woods?
“Do you really think there’s something?” Cameron asks. He’s close. I didn’t feel him coming closer, but he’s close enough that I can feel his breath on my shoulder as he tries to see what I am seeing.
“Yes,” I say, and it’s the truth.
“What about this one?” Cameron asks, running his fingers along the bark of a tree. There’s a diagonal scar across the trunk, and it’s impossible to tell if it was put there on purpose or if it’s just a naturally occurring scar.
I shrug. “Mark it,” I say, and Cameron ties an orange piece of tape around it. This is our fifth marker, and we’re not even one-third of the way through our section. It’s painstaking, checking each trunk, around and around, from base to branch level. Looking for discrepancies. At the rate we’re moving—or not moving—we won’t be going back to the cabin tonight, that’s for sure.
We back down a row, and Casey and Dominic are coming toward us from the other direction. Cameron calls over to them. “I guess it’s too much to hope that you found her initials carved in the side of a trunk inside a heart or something?”
“Ha,” Casey says. “So far, let’s see, we’ve found three random lines, three circles, or circularish marks, and one arch, like a horseshoe.”
I stop moving. Stop breathing. “Show me the arch,” I say, and they look at me like I’ve lost my mind, and maybe I have. But suddenly I can see June walking this same path, her hair swaying as the wind comes, her steps sure and determined. “The horseshoe. Show me.” Dominic shrugs and gestures for us to follow.
He leads us to a thick tree in the middle of a cluster, next to a small clearing. The ends of the orange tape they’ve tied around the bark flutter in the breeze. I move closer, until I can see the marking. It’s faint, and imperfect, but I run my fingertip through the indentation and close my eyes, and my breath leaves me in a rush. “She did this,” I say. I imagine June taking a knife in one hand, holding it steady with the other, and jerking the blade through the trunk, inch by inch, until this was complete.
“It’s just an arch,” Casey says.
“Or a horseshoe?” Dominic says, coming closer. “Why a horseshoe?”
I shake my head, but my smile grows. “Not a horseshoe. A bell.”
I am not the danger. I am not the threat. I am the bell, tolling out its warning.
I am delivering a message.
Chapter 12
We’re all staring at the trunk, and then suddenly we’re staring at the dirt under our feet. Dominic throws his pack to the ground and pulls out a shovel that’s been folded up. But that leaves three extra people to continue staring without purpose. I am the first one on my knees. Something stirs inside me, and my fingers claw at the dirt at the base of the trunk. The earth comes up in tiny chunks, after a generation of weather and water and wind have compressed the dirt into solid ground. There are two pairs of hands beside me, digging into the dirt encircling the trunk now, and Cameron is the first to feel something other than dry earth.