A quarter of the way into the woods, a branch breaks somewhere in the distance. Birds squawk and several thrushes take to the air, flapping wildly.
Ten yards ahead of me, a branch swings upward. I’m not sure if I’ve just seen a shadow pass by or if it’s the sway of a tree.
Suddenly fearful of having left Jillian, I run to the edge of the peninsula and see her making her way around the turn.
She stares up at me and raises her eyebrows, silently questioning me. I shrug.
As I start to turn back, I notice a patch of dry ground just under a low overhang of branches.
There’s a clear footprint of a boot. I touch it to measure the moisture. It’s recent. Not even an hour old.
I take my phone out to grab a photo. When I place a dollar bill next to it for size comparison, I realize how large the shoe that left it is. It’s at least a size fourteen or fifteen. The depression indicates that whoever filled it is quite heavy.
“Well?” asks Jillian after I skid down the hill to join her.
“I saw a big boot print. Probably a hunter.”
“Hunter? There’s no hunting here.”
“Right. Maybe a hiker. I know I sometimes try to avoid people.”
“Yeah . . . I’ve noticed. Sure it wasn’t our stalker?”
“This person was tall and heavy. Not exactly ninja material.”
She seems satisfied with my answer and continues on.
As I think about it, I realize something: a few minutes ago I was analyzing how quickly she ignored her own instincts, and here I am telling her that there’s nothing to worry about because the print I found doesn’t match my expectation.
I survey the ridge ahead of us and feel my stomach tighten back up.
CHAPTER SIXTY
SCENERY
The sun is setting against a blood-red sky by the time we make it back to my Explorer. Jillian and I climb inside and exchange glances, expressing our relief at making it down before it got dark.
“So what happens now?” she asks as we pull onto the highway.
“You mean about the body? I send an anonymous e-mail to the police with the photo and the location.”
“Do you think that’s going to fool anyone?”
“No. I’ve just had too many frustrating experiences with the law enforcement around here.” My side still hurts from the beating Gunther gave me.
“So what are you going to do next?”
“Find more bodies, I guess. There’s not a lot I can do. They have a lot of forensic tools they can use. Maybe if they get the FBI involved. At some point they’re going to have to give up on their stupid wild animal theory.”
“More bodies,” she says, looking out the window at the darkening sky. There’s only one other car on the road, and it’s a quarter mile behind us.
“Actually, I want to see if I can find older victims.”
“Like the ones here?”
“Yes. And maybe other places. The problem is he’s too clever now. He knows how to avoid the police. His kills are free of his DNA, as far as I can tell. The metal fragment in the rib cage? I doubt he’d let that happen now. He’s evolved his methods with modern forensics.”
“But his older murders . . .”
“He might not have been so clever. The hot spring probably wiped away any trace of him, so it was smart in that regard, but it didn’t hide the fact that there was a killer out there. Now he’s invisible. Maybe there are more clues to be found looking into his past.”
“So you’re going to look up old murders?”
“Missing-persons reports. Odd knife attacks. Anything else that might fit over the last few decades.”
I realize I missed my exit and do a U-turn.
“I wonder what he’s like? Would we recognize him if we met him?”
“I’ve been thinking about that. I don’t think so. He’s intelligent and probably not socially awkward.”
Jillian watches the clouds in the fading light. “Where does somebody like that come from?”
“Two percent of the population is sociopathic. They just don’t feel the way you or I do about others. If you come in contact with fifty people in a day, one of them is a sociopath.”
“But not a murderer.”
“No. Yet if they had a magic button they could press that would kill someone and they’d gain from it, risk-free, they wouldn’t hesitate.”
“Would you know if you’re a sociopath?”
“I read a lot about it when I was a teenager.”
“Self-diagnosing?”
“Perhaps a little. From what I can tell, if you’re intelligent, you’d probably suspect it. If you weren’t, you’d just assume that’s how everybody else felt.”
“And what did young Dr. Cray deduce about himself?”
“Socially inept. Terminally.”
There’s a flash of light in my rearview mirror. I don’t think much of it at first, then realize that we’ve been on a straight road with no other turnoffs for miles.
Jillian catches me looking in the mirror. “What is it?”
“Nothing.”
“Theo,” she says with an admonishing tone.
“I think someone just did a U-turn, like we did.”
“Are they following us?”
“Good question. Take out your phone.”
I stop on the shoulder and turn on the interior light.
“Are we pretending we’re lost?”
I look away from the road and stare at her phone. “Yep. When the car passes, let me know how many people are inside.”
“What if they stop behind us?”
“They won’t. Unless they want to make it obvious that we’re being followed.”
I see the car approach and pass out of the corner of my eye.
“The windows were tinted. It was a dark-green Yukon.”
“Did you catch the plates, by any chance?”
“Montana. Not the number.”
“Interesting. Probably nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.” She seems more amused than alarmed.
I turn the dome light off. Jillian is still looking at me, the glow of the dashboard illuminating her face. There’s a curl of a smile on her lips.
The lingering gaze, I know what that means.
I think.
For her this is still an adventure. I don’t think she gets it.
Or maybe I don’t.
Impulsively—maybe it’s the adrenaline—I lean into her personal space, and her lips part slightly. I give her a kiss. Intense, but quick.
She’s smiling when I pull back. “What?” I ask.
“This is probably the most morbid first date anyone has ever been on.”
“You asked for it.”
“I did. I did.”
She puts her hand on the back of my neck, signaling that we’re not done kissing.
“You realize that may have been the killer who just passed us?”
“You realize what a turn-on this kind of rush is?”
There’s something about her I can’t resist in the moment. I grab her by the back of the head and press her lips against mine again, this time more forcefully. My tongue finds hers, and they play back and forth.
I slide a hand under her shirt and feel the breasts I’ve been obsessing over all day—actually, since I met her.
At some point her hand touches my thigh and travels upward until she’s cupping my bulge.
She whispers into my ear, “Are we going to do something about that?”
I pull away and lean against my door. “I’m sorry. I . . .”
“What? Is it me?”
“No! It’s me. These are dark things. Dark places. I shouldn’t have taken you there.”
“If I hadn’t gone, then I wouldn’t be here.”
“An hour ago we were looking at a dead body.”
“That had been dead for thirty years.”
“And the killer is still out there.”
“Yes, Theo. He is. And the insurgent asshole that killed my husband is still out there, too. I’ll never get closure on that.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t say that. Are you sorry you kissed me?”
“No.”
“You have to be able to compartmentalize all that. Your problem is you only have one compartment.”
“It’s how I focus.”
“Have you considered the fact that it might keep you running in circles?”
She’s on to something. MAAT didn’t tell me about the hot spring. That came from a random comment. I’ve been doing the same thing over and over again.
I stare at her. She crosses her arms and watches me with her little smug smile on the corner of her lips. “Now what?”
I shut off the professor part of my brain and say the first thing that comes to mind.
“Climb in the back seat and find out.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE