by KT Strange
His eyes shadow, regret and pain there.
“Were you guys-” I wave my hands in the air, trying to guess at their relationship. He makes a disgusted face and shakes his head.
“She’s just a kid. No, it’s, that, well, I just don’t like when innocent people get hurt,” he says. “We trek these woods every week, and there’s secrets in them that would make your hair curl… things no human should see.” His words are icy cold, wrapping frozen fingers around the base of my spine and playing along my vertebrae.
“That’s not creepy at all,” I comment. “Why wouldn’t she just come back? If she’s here? She looked… like she’d been hurt.”
“I don’t know,” he replies with painful honesty. “And I hate that. I hate not knowing, and I hate that she just vanished.” He crosses the room back to the counter and starts cleaning up from our early morning breakfast. “You should head back to your place, take a nap, maybe. I’m going to see if I can reach Beau or Grady.”
I walk to the door and pause, frowning.
“I thought you guys didn’t have cellphones,” I say, because as far as I know, they’ve only got the one landline, and that’s solidly attached to the wall by the desk in the far corner. I look toward it, and catch him glancing too.
But he doesn’t reply to me, instead just turns on the sink, running the trash disposal. I get the hint.
“Okay then,” I reply, and slip out the front door. Immediately the coolness of a night that’s not quite done being chilly and frightening surrounds me.
I should’ve stayed inside. I don’t even take five steps into the darkness, toward my cabin when I hear it.
The slow, low lift a wolf howl, off in the distance. It threads through the trees, toward me, and I gasp as a breeze tugs at my shirt. I stop in my tracks and listen. The night is quiet around me, so still, not a single creature chirping or making any rustling noises.
The hair on the back of my neck starts to raise, and the skin on my arms starts to prickle.
The wolf cries again, longer, louder this time, and it’s joined by a second, mournful howl. Something in the wolf cries set me completely on edge and I bolt toward my cabin, across the clearing lit up by the slowly setting moon. My fingers brush the door and I’m inside, slamming it shut, and throwing the latch.
I can still hear it in here though, lifting, and falling, floating through the trees. Somewhere, out there, Lacey is hiding in the woods, roughed up and filthy. I hope the wolves don’t find her. I hope whoever she’s hiding from doesn’t find her.
I reach the side of my bed and stop, realizing just as I pull back the covers that the person she’s hiding from is Kyron.
She disappeared right before he arrived, and when he went looking, he couldn’t find her.
My stomach dips, and I sit on the edge of my bed.
Who are these men, that might be monsters?
And where are Grady and Beau?
The wolf cries, muffled by the walls of my cabin, but it still makes me shiver, and the bed is freezing cold as I roll under the covers to try to find sleep.
It’s as elusive as Lacey though, and all I can do is stare at the ceiling until the sun rises.
15
Cordelia
Three trucks are parked in the clearing when I wake up, hours later, closer to noon if I’m right on where the sun is in the sky. The guys must be back from the city, but I feel uneasy, and not sure I want to go talk to them.
I had weird dreams, fitful ones, where something just out of reach was promising comfort, and then kept snatching itself away at the last moment. I’m not stupid. My brain is trying to tell me that the affection I want from these guys, that I shouldn’t want but do want, is a bad idea. Message received.
Not stopping at the main cabin, I take Blueberry down the roads to the lakeshore, easing off on the speed as I get close to where the bonfire was last night. My breath catches when I see the wreckage. Someone lit a car on fire last night.
No wonder Kyron calls those people animals. They brawled over nothing, over drunkenness, over stupidity. If you’re going to pick a fight, let it have meaning. I try to keep my mouth from tugging down into a frown. There’s litter everywhere, broken beer bottles and smashed cans. I’m not even sure what I’m there looking for.
A hint of Lacey, maybe. I feel like my fate is tied to hers, which is stupid. I hope she’s not tied to my fate, since mine’s sealed, signed, delivered.
I lean Blueberry up against a tree, skirt the burnt-out wreckage of the car, and how did that happen without Kyron mentioning it to me?
Shaking my head, I step right up to the edges of the lakeshore, breathing in the crisp breeze that rolls off of it. It chases away the smell of burnt tires, and the clinging sent of old beer that would otherwise turn the air stale. I close my eyes.
If I were Lacey, where would I hide?
If I were Lacey, why would I be hiding?
As far as I know now, after asking a few questions around she wasn’t born here. She came here to Fallen Mountain looking to make a new life for herself, and she started that, helped around town, was getting odd-jobs, and that sort of thing… so it was all going okay for her. She was helping out at Raven Brothers, and setting them up to have someone work for them, except-
I frown and open my eyes.
If she needed work, why was she putting herself out of work by asking me to come stay? I’d have been taking her job from her. That didn’t make sense. At all.
The sun glanced off the water, an icy shine that makes me want to shiver. The depths are clear, and I can see almost ten feet out before it descends into shadow and murk. I toe off my shoes and hold my breath, lifting my foot in the air, hovering it over the cool liquid.
My toes press down, and the water gives, breaking for me. It’s so cold, and I splash forward, the shock to my system what I need right then.
I stand there, ankle deep in the waters, and breathe deep. The mountains unfurl in front of me, reaching toward the skies above. Somehow, someway, all of it clears my thoughts. It makes absolutely no sense that Lacey was trying to bring in outside competition. There’s not a lot of work in Fallen Mountain. She was scrambling to find anything, something, to keep her going.
The waters lap at my shins. The problem is I don’t know enough about Lacey to go further into this mystery. Why she was grabbing me, trying to pull me out of the brawl, when she should have been screaming for help herself… nothing makes sense. It’s not logical.
If I’ve learned one thing in my short life, it’s that people act in their best interests. Having me around wasn’t in Lacey’s. Unless she was trying to escape the guys. Unless they were… hurting her. A sense of doom falls over me. What if Kyron did find her last night? What if he lied to me? Bile crawls up the back of my throat. What if he… took care of things. Last night. What if he took care of her- then came back, and laid next to me, god, slept next to me, like everything was normal-
I turn and glance across the shore. I need to look for something, some hint, of her getting hurt. I leave the waters, grabbing my shoes as I go. The sand dries off my feet in ten steps, and I retrace my path to the edge of the forest where she’d appeared. The grass is scrubby, squeezed between the sand and the trees, patchy and sad. I scuff my toes over it to get rid of the clinging sand and pull my shoes on.
There’s nothing that looks out of the ordinary here, if you don’t look at the wreckage from the party. I step under the canopy of leaves, pushing past a pine tree.
Did you go this way, Lacey?
The woods are thick five feet in from the beach, and I wonder if she’d been able to make it this far without getting scratched up. Already she looked terrible, bruised and filthy. I rest my hand on the bark of a tree, leaning against its trunk. Already the forest presses in around me, crowding out the light of the day. I don’t even know what I’m looking for. A thread snagged on a branch? Some hair, glistening in a shaft of sunlight from above? Those are only things that happen in movies and book
s, where murder is painless and off screen, and life isn’t filled with the wild orgy of violence like last night was.
I tramp around in the brush, pushing it out of the way, and hoping spiders don’t drop down the back of my shirt, but there’s nothing but vegetation and rocks. Huffing in irritation, mostly at myself, I wheel back over what I do know.
She was from Twocities, just like me. I swallow hard. She is from Twocities. She’s alive. I have to believe that. So, she’s from the big city, and she came here, had a hard time making friends, which I don’t really blame her if the parties are like the one I went to. She got jobs with a few of the businesses in town, helping them get connected online so they could attract more tourist dollars into the town.
It seems innocent enough. In fact, she should have been welcomed with open arms. Someone with that kind of skillset doesn’t seem like they’d be commonplace in Fallen Mountain. I break back out of the woods, with more questions, and fewer answers.
Blueberry is still standing, and I go to her, running my fingers over the smooth, glossy painted surface of her handle-bars.
Then it hits me. It’s not an answer, but it’s maybe a pathway to finding some. I jump on Blueberry and huff home, her little engine carrying me faithfully.
***
“What’re you doing?” Beau sounds irritated to find me behind the tiny computer that’s tucked in the corner of the desk, dusty and barely used.
“You’re back,” I say. “Picking up where Lacey left off,” I answer him, not taking my eyes from the screen. I’d looked through most of the notes she’d left before disappearing, but nothing was there. I was hoping for… something, anything. A hint. But nothing.
And then I stumbled across some changes she’d wanted to make to the website, and I added that to my to do list, and opened it up. The website she created. I’m kind of surprised she didn’t put up a photo of the guys. They’d be popular with the women tourists of Twocities, at least, the ones who are brave enough to ‘rough it’ for a few days, and have the leisure time and finances to do so.
I glance up at Beau. He’s scowling at me.
Scratch that. There’s a good reason Lacey didn’t put a picture of his mug on the site. He looks like he’s about ready to skin me, and his expression would scare off all but the gruffest of tourists.
“Do you even check your emails?” I ask, loading up the inbox. It’s not empty. It’s not overflowing, but there’s a few requests in there for bookings. “Where’s the schedule book?” I glance across the desk. The dusty, cracked red-leather incased book is nowhere to be found.
Beau looks like he’s debating between finding it and throwing it at my head, or telling me to fuck off. I stare back at him, not intimidated. I’m dying. Really, nothing should scare me at this point. The worst is already to come, and I know exactly what that looks like.
He breaks first, growling under his breath like I’m inconveniencing him by padding his profits and booking his schedule out. He’s muttering as he walks away, but his words fall short of reaching me.
I hide my triumphant smirk when he returns, book in hand, and actually gives it to me in a manner that isn’t completely rude.
Progress.
“Thanks,” I say, flipping it open. “Okay, party of five… adult siblings, looks like, two young children-”
“No,” Beau says with a shake of his head. “We don’t do kid travel. It just…” He peers over my shoulder. “Who is it? Townies?”
“You don’t know that,” I say, girding my loins and reaching up. I press a flat hand against his chest, taking my life between my teeth, and push. “Personal space, please.”
He doesn’t snap at me, and I’m in shock when he pulls away, a fleeting, but present, apologetic look on his face. He doesn’t say he’s sorry, but I’ll take this, whatever this is.
“Don’t you have any programming for kids? Not all of your guests are adults without children. There have to have been families,” I glance at him as he frowns at my words, then sighs, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Alright,” he says, “but book Kyron to deal with the brats.”
“That’s not very nice of you,” I murmur, fingers flying over they keyboard to reply to the siblings about the ideal package for them.
“What, you don’t like that I call kids ‘brats’?” He’s challenging me, looking for a place I’m weak, and I smile right back at him as I hit the send button, and reach for a pen to schedule their visit in.
“No, I don’t think it’s nice to subject children to Kyron.”
“I can hear you,” Kyron groans, from somewhere in the room. I sit up, jerking a bit in my chair. Beau snorts at me, and points toward one of the couches that’s ranged by the unlit fireplace, the high back of the furniture hiding one very prone body. Or formerly prone.
Kyron sits up, his hair messy and he turns to squint at us.
“I was napping.”
“This is the common room,” Beau points out, and turns back to me, considering the matter settled. “Hey can you block out some time on our calendar next month, so people don’t try to book for it? There’s this stupid parade in town, and traffic gets murder, and we’d rather just hole up here. Is that something you can fix?” He asks, leaning over me again. He’s close enough that the scent of whatever soap he uses, something like leather and honey, clouds around me. Ignore that. I’m scrolling over the website, pursing my lips.
“I learned a bit of website coding in school,” I say, clicking around the computer and opening up the FTP program to download the site files. I’m not sure if Lacey did the actually designing on her own computer, but I’m not about to go hunting on this old creaky thing for where she might have hidden them.
I open up index.htm and my eyes scan the code.
And I freeze.
The world goes cold.
“What?” Beau senses the change in me immediately, nothing slipping by him. Kyron’s over the back of the couch in a second, over to us in a heartbeat.
Lacey did leave a trail. Breadcrumbs. Maybe. Somewhere so obvious, but hidden at the same time.
The header of the website is normal, the usual tags, but then below it…
“Lacey left… there’s this thing you can do with HTML,” I reply, not able to keep the shake out of my voice. “You can leave comments. For the next person who works on the file, or for yourself, for future reference… that kind of thing. Nobody can see it if they’re looking at the website, but if they look at the source- she left messages. For you. I guess?”
Beau leans in , and I’m not going to complain, at all. He needs to see this.
..can’t t.trust anyone but the guys..but can’t tell them either..she promised me everything and delivered a nothing..i’ll end up like them if I don’t..
“Shit,” he murmurs. Kyron’s warm hand lands on my shoulder.
“Want to fill me in, or do you want me snuggling up to you to get answers too?” He asks, and Beau growls at him.
“Shut up,” he says, before grumbling under his breath, “the fuck does this mean?” Kyron squints again, and his hand tightens on me.
“Does it mean anything to you?” I ask Beau, and he’s shaking his head in response, true confusion on his face.
“She trusted us but couldn’t tell us?” Kyron asks aloud, “tell us what? Who’s promising?”
“Where’s Grady?” I start to stand up, and both guys move away from me, giving me space. “Grady!”
A door opens from down the hall, and he comes out, clearly having just showered, his hair wet and his towel tight around his waist. I let out a breath and try not to think about… him naked.
There’s more serious things at hand then his, um, business.
“Can you make sense of this?” Beau asks, and for once he doesn’t sound bitchy or pouty, or dead-sexy-grumpy. I’m not asking my brain why it thinks his grumpy voice is also sexy. Questions for another day.
Grady walks past me, his gaze meeting mine with soft concern before he
steps behind the desk, bending over.
The towel threatens to slip for one perilous second, clinging to his jutting hip bone, but he fists his hand in the towel to stop it.
“What is it?”
“Secret messages. Nancy Drew shit,” Kyron says, “things that don’t make sense. You can’t see it, smell it, taste it, but there’s a mystery and the clue is right in front of you.”
Grady goes quiet as he reads it, and then probably reads it again. And then a third time, for good measure.
“We sure this isn’t some joke Lacey put into the code?” He asks, looking at the guys, then me. “Have you looked at any of the other websites she’s designed for the folks in town?” Oh. That would have been smart.
“Who else did she work for?” I ask, skirting back behind the desk. All three of them shift their weight to give me room as I sit down.
“Val and Lena. Kat. I think she did something for the record store too. The motel,” Grady lists off. Kyron makes a noise at the last one and when I catch his eye, he winks at me. As if that beachside brawl was funny. As if the idea of him regularly engaging in that kind of atmosphere is anything but frightening. If he’s trying to prove he’s a badass… well, he’s sorta succeeded. I am mildly impressed he holds his own in places like that.
“Pull them up,” Beau says, gruff as ever, and Kyron elbows him. “Please.”
“Of course.” I start with the Gato website, clicking open the source of the webpage.
There again. My stomach drops.
..if anything I’m not ok, kk?..but each day is a blessing and that’s all we can ask for..
It’s like bad poetry. But it makes me sick to my stomach. Her disappearance. Her reappearance. Her disappearance again. She could come back, she could be safe, but she’s choosing to stay out there, away from safety. And now these weird clues. It could be a joke, maybe she was just playing games, a girl out of place just like me, lonely, and probably a little depressed.
Unless here is not safe. But no, that first message she left says she can trust the guys, and I firmly believe she’s talking about the Raven brothers. Why else leave it attached to their website?