The Hidden

Carefully avoiding the killer’s trail, Diego half walked and half slid down the slope to the road. On the way he startled an elk. The animal stared at him for a moment, then bounded off.

“Fuller have anything useful yet?” Brett asked Diego as he caught up with Matt and Brett by the road.

“Fuller thinks the gun used was another antique,” Diego answered. “He’s pretty confident, but he’s not a hundred percent sure yet.”

“And the guy is a fucking gazelle,” Matt said. “That’s tough terrain.”

“A coordinated, history-loving, antique-gun buff. You’d think he would be easy to find,” Brett said.

“At least we’ve got something to look for,” Diego said. He hesitated, frowning. “I think we’ve got something else, too.”

He moved over to a piece of brush by the flattened path, where something white was just visible.

He moved the leaves aside, then pulled gloves and an evidence bag from his pocket before he carefully reached for the once-white woman’s sneaker.

Now it was white and red.

White.

And bloodstained.

*

“‘Brian Gleason, Jeff Bay and Billie Merton made their way here last week,’” Scarlet said, reading to Meg. “‘I’d expected them, because I’d received a letter not long after I bought this land. They were always on the run, of course, though, to my knowledge, no one knows that Jeff shot that man in cold blood during the robbery. In fact, on account of the masks we wore, it would be hard for anyone to swear that they’d seen us do any of the robbing or the killing. To be honest, I’d hoped never to set eyes on the three of them again, though they’ll always be part of my heart and soul. You don’t survive the kind of bloodshed we did without becoming kindred in some terrible way. Jeff is still bitter. Always says he should have been killed, not his wife and the son he never saw or held. Brian told me he keeps moving just ’cuz he has nowhere to go. His house burned down, and some Yankee carpetbagger is building a new place on the property. Billie says to fuck the North, the war and his family, even though they told him he could go home. Says he’d always be the enemy in their eyes, and, worse than that, a loser. I figured they’d just come by to talk some and then move on, but Billie had a fever. My Jillian, she’s such an amazing woman. She had no concern with the war whatever, being in the West with her father for those terrible years. But she said a friend was a friend, and she was going to nurse Billie back to health. I don’t think even my precious wife can help him, though. That fever just keeps on getting worse and worse. I think we’re going to be planting Billie up on the mountaintop. Hope he’ll find peace there at last.’” Scarlet stopped reading and looked at Meg.

“You think Billie is up there?” Meg asked her.

“I guess I have to keep reading,” Scarlet said. She shivered slightly. The temperature in the room hadn’t changed; it must have been the diary. “I’m going to run up and grab a sweater. Are you okay? Do you want me to get you anything?”

“I’m fine. I just feel like I’m being ripped up a bit. Reading this... Nathan cared about people, even those he didn’t know. He’s talking about a wounded Yankee he stumbled across. He was so struck by the fact that the soldier was so young that he dragged him back behind Confederate lines, then hoped the surgeons wouldn’t inadvertently kill him. He writes that the Yankee medics were better equipped and better trained, and that if he was wounded, he hoped he was taken by the enemy.”

“I know, it’s such sad stuff,” Scarlet said. “I’ll be right back. I need to find out if Billie did die while he was here.”

She hurried up the stairs to her bedroom. It was while she was rummaging in her drawer for a sweater that she suddenly felt as if ice crystals were racing up her back.

And she knew, even before she turned, that she would see him.

Her stalker.

The ghost.

Even as she turned, a warning was flashing through her head.

Scream. Run.