Starzyk makes a turn onto a secondary road. “All right. Now you got to tell me where it is.”
“Just up ahead. It’s a dirt road. I’ll show you.”
My head is buzzing. It’s hard to ground myself, to really make sense of anything. What are we going to find halfway up this mountain? How can anything go back to normal after this? Can I find my way out, or is this the end of everything?
It all started with that fucking affair. Paul and his lover. It took forever for us to get over it. There was lots of shouting and crying and drinking — not the best chapter in my life.
To have an affair, you have to have some sort of duality in you. You have to be able to live a separate life. To keep those emotions completely walled off. It’s not an easy thing to do. If you’ve had trauma, certain things can get buried at the back of your mind. But it’s unintentional. When you’re sleeping around and hiding it, that kind of compartmentalization seems more sinister. And Paul was capable of that.
Maybe I’m a therapist who’s been living with troubled men her whole life. Maybe I’ve married my father without realizing it. Knowing psychology doesn’t protect you from making your own terrible mistakes. That’s the big joke. You can’t escape what life has in store for you.
“There it is.” I point to the dirt road up ahead.
Starzyk slows and makes the turn. He starts up the bumpy road. As he does, he reaches between his legs. He pulls out a gun.
“Oh God,” I say. “What is happening?”
I want to jump out and run. Just run. Back to a time and a place when things made sense.
A time of a blissfully forgotten past.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
“Aren’t you going to call some backup?” The closer we get, the higher my anxiety becomes.
“I want to know what this is first,” Starzyk says.
I can only hang on for the bumpy ride until it comes into view. Madison and Hunter’s pretty little off-grid property. Where no one can hear you scream.
Starzyk gives me one of his looks. “You all right?”
I realize I’m laughing.
“No, I’m not all right.” I think I’ve left sanity back at the hospital with my son.
The pickup is parked off to one side of the clearing. The rental car is still there, and so are the Escalade belonging to my daughter’s friends and Joni’s Subaru. Things are getting crowded.
Starzyk puts his truck in park. “Stay here.”
He gets out, gun in hand, and moves toward the yurt like the cops in TV shows. I see no one. The chickens are softly clucking. The wind rustles the tops of the trees. It’s getting later in the day; my phone says five thirty. The battery is down to fifteen percent. No signal.
Of all things, my stomach growls.
“Hello?” Starzyk is at the front of the yurt, standing to one side of the door. “Anyone home?”
He glances at me, then starts to circle the building. Once he’s out of sight, I exit the truck. Stay put? If I sit there another second, I’ll lose my mind.
“Michael?”
No response. I start for the yurt, picking my way past a stack of lumber, a battery-powered drill sitting on top. “Hello? Anyone?”
I’m sure Starzyk is cringing right now at the sound of my voice. But we never had the element of surprise — anyone here would’ve heard us drive up. I open the front door. Before I even step through, an odor hits me.
Sticky, coppery. A sickly sweet smell.
My breath catches in my throat. My hand doesn’t leave the door knob. I am frozen in the threshold, looking at the two bodies on the floor. Madison, Joni’s childhood friend. Her boyfriend, Hunter, someone I’ve never even met.
It looks like they’ve been beaten to death with a hammer.
*
The two dead people are sort of flopped over one another, arms and legs akimbo. Blood has splattered everywhere. A violent, messy death. The urge to vomit hits me. I turn from the scene and step down to the ground and puke into the dirt and weeds.
I’m vaguely aware of footsteps behind me, coming fast. “The fuck are you—?” Starzyk stops when he sees me, when he sees the open door. He takes the three wooden steps and looks in. “Ah, God. Ah, shit . . .”
I’m bent over, breathing, trying not to pass out. “That’s my . . . Those are . . .” I try to explain the people in the house, but before I can choke through the words, a scream rises from the woods.
I look up that direction, feeling frozen.
Starzyk tenses, aims his weapon. “Shit,” he says again.
It’s a woman’s scream.
*
Starzyk is trying to make a call. “Nothing. Christ. Nothing . . .” He mutters something about how if he had his official police vehicle he’d be able to communicate.
I’m still staring into the woods.
I’d know that scream anywhere.
It’s the sound of my daughter.
I start moving that direction.
“Hey,” Starzyk whispers harshly. “Hey — hey . . .”
“Do whatever you gotta do,” I tell him. “My baby is in trouble.”
I see a path in the woods. It might be the hiking trail Michael mentioned: the one that leads to the mountaintop. There have been no more screams. Just the one. I walk a ways and stop and listen. The forest is quiet; even the birds have fallen silent. The only sound is the faintest soughing of the wind. The subtle breeze stirs scents of pine and alders. Crisp, clear smells. Autumn around the corner.
I grew up with woods like this in my backyard. Places to explore. Places to hide.
“Joni!” I hadn’t even planned to call her name.
The response is more silence.
I press on. The trail is mostly discernible, though narrow with overgrowth in some places. It’s starting to become hilly, and I’m panting as I climb, pressing my palms against my knees to overcome the bigger obstacles.
Without some other sign, I can’t be sure this is the right direction.
“Jonieee!”
I stop to listen, but now the only sound is my labored breathing. I think about turning back. I have my bearings, at least — the sun is lowering into the trees to my right, so that’s west. Which means I’m headed north. I’m unsure what good the orientation does me. But it makes me feel like I have some scrap of control—
The gunshot from behind me is a thunderclap that rolls through the woods, reverberating in the trees, echoing off the distant mountain.
Starzyk.
Who is he shooting at?
I’m torn. If I press on, I’ll not necessarily get any closer to my daughter. The answers could be back where I came from. Maybe Starzyk fired a warning shot.
But if I continue up the path — Michael said there was reception once you gained enough elevation. I can finally summon help.
Of course, now that I’m ready to call the cops and let the chips fall where they may, my phone still shows No Service. And I have a mere eleven percent of my battery left.