by Lisa Harris
Selfish though it was, he grieved the loss. “I understand better than you think.”
Silence greeted that statement. He didn’t explain. Didn’t have to. His family was gone. Sure, he had aunts and uncles and cousins, but they had their own lives. They’d be sad if he died, but they’d recover by dinnertime. Reid would care. Vince would care. Aside from that…
“I’m not trying to be morbid,” she said. “I just believe that what’s to come is better than what’s here. Life is hard, but God is good, and I’m not afraid to face Him. I’m looking forward to heaven, where there’ll be no more tears or pain or suffering.”
He’d often thought of the world to come. When they’d buried his sister, some of his grief had been tempered by the idea that she was in a better place. When his father died, then his mom, he’d considered the peace they had. The reunion in heaven. He was the only one left here on earth, left to deal with their deaths—and the rest of this hard world—all by himself.
After they’d walked a few minutes, only the forest sounds and their grumbling stomachs to keep them company, she said, “Do you mind…?”
When her words trailed, he glanced in her direction. “You need to rest?”
“No.”
He continued forward.
“I don’t want to make you angry, but I’d really like to know what happened back then. From your perspective.”
Memories he preferred not to conjure. “Why?”
“We can put together what I know and what you know and, I don’t know, learn something. And I’m curious, I guess, how everybody decided so fast that I was a kidnapper and murderer.”
“Not sure what I can add. You two disappeared on Tuesday night. Search parties went out, stayed out all day Wednesday.”
“Even in the snow?”
“It was raining most of the day. The rain changed to snow Wednesday night. They kept looking, but there were no tracks. They had nothing to go on except the fact that you didn’t have a car, so nobody figured you’d gone far. And Wilson Cage said he saw you on the trail.”
“He did? I didn’t see him.”
James took in that information but wasn’t sure what to make of it. Mr. Cage had told him he’d been in a hurry to get ready for his date. It made sense that, once he realized who it was and that they were fine, he’d ducked back onto the path and returned to the campground.
“I didn’t get a look at him or to hear his voice yesterday. He could be the kidnapper.”
“He had an alibi.”
“So? People lie. Whoever took us tied us up and left us in that cave for hours at a time. He came back with supplies, so he had to live nearby, close enough to walk.”
“The campground’s not exactly near where we are right now. It’s on the other side of the mountain. And anyway, it seems the kidnapper has a much faster way to get up here, an unmarked road or something. It’s taking us forever to find this place, but your kidnapper must have known the area well.”
“Even so, he had to have gone home. The things he brought were old. It wasn’t like… like he’d just picked them up in town.”
That made sense. They were on the far side of the mountain from town now. Not a lot of neighborhoods at the base on this side. Summer homes rimmed the lake, and a few cottages had been built onto the hillside, but most were empty in the wintertime. In fact, Hallie’s body had been found at one of the few houses on this side of Mt. Ayasha that was occupied year-round—a fact Cassidy would have known because it was lived in by the school principal. Vice principal back then. Everybody knew where he lived, which he’d lamented more than once when teens had TP’d the trees in his yard.
James would ask Vince who else wintered over here. His mother had lived on this side of Ayasha since before Vince was born.
“Anyway, Hallie’s body was found Thursday afternoon. At that point, authorities became convinced you’d taken her. They called off the mountain search and focused on highways and interstates and bus stations.” He wanted to ask her how she’d gotten away, but he couldn’t quite force the words out. He’d thought his grief from those days long buried, but it was all coming back. His prayers every night that Cassidy would be found, alive and well and with a good explanation for what happened. He’d believed her dead until Vince had assured him they knew she wasn’t. And then… He hadn’t known what to think.
“That’s it,” he said. “Because your body wasn’t found, because the police had a credible reason to believe you were still alive—your phone call, but only the cops knew that at the time—you became the prime suspect in—”
“Stop.”
“Sorry, but you asked.”
“No, I mean…”
He turned to see her staring up at the hill beside them.
“What?”
“This is it.” Her voice, now a whisper, quivered. “He wanted us to climb this, but Hallie was too little, and he couldn’t do it with her on his back.”
The slope was steep and littered with boulders as if a giant child had stacked them, one upon another. Green peeked between the rocks, but very little vegetation grew here. Who would ever think to climb this?
Cassidy, apparently. She scrambled up the first boulder.
“You’re gonna—”
“Shh!” She shot him a look and kept her voice low. “We can do this.”
“Let’s go the long way, the way you went that day with him.”
She kept climbing.
“Wait.” When she turned, he shrugged out of his backpack. “How much farther from here?”
“It’s just”—she waved toward the top of the hill—“up there.”
He looked around, found a large boulder below where they stood, and scrambled downward to it, motioning her to follow.
She did, and, after marking their location on the map and shoving his flashlight in his back pocket, he stowed his backpack and reached for hers. “It’ll be easier to climb without these.”
She shrugged hers off and handed it to him, then returned to the slope and started climbing toward the cave and, he hoped, Ella and a kidnapper and murderer.
Chapter Twenty
Don’t think about it.
Don’t remember.
All that mattered now was finding Ella. What happened back then…
Don’t think about it.
But the memories were as solid as the boulders that scraped against Cassidy’s hands.
She should have listened to James. To come up this way was only stubbornness. They could have found the other path. But it would’ve taken time, time they might not have.
Ella. She had to focus on Ella, on saving this girl’s life. Not on the one she failed to save.
She reached for a handhold and gripped. Ignoring the pain in her fingertips, her shoulder, her hip, she hoisted herself up, tried to settle her foot in the crag of the rock. Her boot slipped. Her knee jabbed into the stone. She tipped back, and her hand lost its hold.
Her arm flailed, found nothing to hang onto.
Memories flashed, all the things she never wanted to see again. Hallie’s terror, Hallie’s trust.
Hallie’s lifeless eyes.
A strong hand pushed Cassidy forward. James whispered, “I got you.”
She managed to get her foot on the crag, her hand in a hold. Pulled herself up.
Only a little part of her wished she’d fallen. Wished for this all to be over.
Lord… But there were no words. Because to live meant to face it. To die meant freedom.
Definitely not the kind of thoughts she should be harboring while she climbed this dangerous slope.
James came up beside her. The hill wasn’t that high—she guessed sixty feet—and the worst was below them.
He studied her face, and she worried her thoughts would be as obvious as the concern in his expression. He whispered, “You okay?”
“Just lost my grip. Thank you for that.”
“Glad I was there.”
She steeled her courage and continued.
James lifted a staying hand and went ahead of her.
He scrabbled up the remaining fifteen feet or so. When he reached the summit, he crouched down and held out his hand to help her up.
She followed, gripped his hand, and joined him on the hillside.
They rested a moment, breathing heavily. It was silent. Even the birdsong was muffled. Or maybe her fear was roaring too loudly for her to hear anything over it.
The hill gave way to a level area covered in vegetation. A natural path led to the right from where they’d climbed, but she pointed to the left, where the mountain rose steeply toward the summit.
Now that she was here, she remembered it vividly.
She took out her handgun and started to the left. The broad grassy area narrowed until the path was only about a foot wide. The mountain rose on one side, fell on the other. Bushes and short trees grew from the stony soil, blocking the sunshine. She made her way forward, feeling James behind her. But she couldn’t look.
They rounded a bend, and there it was.
A giant boulder, rounded by years of weather and covered with vegetation. It was flattish on the bottom and propped against a pile of other boulders, also covered with vegetation. Beneath the large boulder, a gap.
It would be impossible to see from any other direction, completely hidden from above. But here, the opening was obvious.
When she paused to listen, James gripped her upper arm and motioned that he wanted to go first.
She pressed her back against the steep hillside, and he slid past her and crept closer.
No noises came from within. Not a whimpering child or a threatening man. But Ella had to be here. She had to.
James stepped around the corner, crouched down, and moved into the opening, gun drawn.
She followed him into the darkened cave, her own gun pointed at the ground rather than at James’s back, which she nearly bumped into.
She moved to his side and let her eyes adjust to the darkness.
Empty. The scent of feces hovered in the air.
Though outside the sun shone, inside, the only light came from the narrow opening they’d just come through. James flicked on the flashlight and aimed the beam around the space.
It illuminated dirt floor, stone walls, boulder ceiling. No little girl huddled in the corner. No man prepared to defend himself.
James shined the flashlight along the walls, but Cassidy went straight to the back, got on her hands and knees, and looked at the only hiding place the cave offered.
Ella wasn’t here.
She made her way to a familiar spot against the wall and sat. With Hallie on her lap, Cassidy had spent hours upon hours here, praying for help. Waiting for a rescuer. No deliverer had come. Though she desperately wanted to be that deliverer for little Ella…
She’d failed.
Ella wasn’t here.
Oh, Father. Now what?
Was the kidnapper a copycat? Somebody who knew just enough about the event a decade earlier to make it look like the same person?
Or had the kidnapper found a better hideout?
What if Eugene had seen her and told his father, and Wilson had figured out who she was. It was possible Wilson had moved the child last night, knowing Cassidy was back in town.
Or had it been the kidnapper and murderer who’d followed Cassidy on the trails two days before. Had he moved Ella then?
Was that why their stalker hadn’t tried to kill them? Better to have Cassidy find the cave and be discredited when Ella wasn’t there.
She didn’t know. She only knew she was hungry and tired and in pain, and for what?
For nothing. All for nothing.
Lord, I can’t do this anymore. I can’t… care so much, not if she’s going to be lost too. Ella is in Your capable hands. You didn’t see fit to let me find her, so… please, rescue that little girl. Please, don’t let her suffer the same fate Addison did.
She didn’t want to see it, didn’t want to imagine what it had been like, but the images were too real. She’d been the recipient of beatings the first decade of her life. Her mother always stunk of the whiskey she drank with orange juice for breakfast, on the rocks at lunchtime, and straight by the time dinner rolled around. The scent of whiskey accompanied all of Cassidy’s early memories. Mom and whiskey and a fist. Mom and whiskey and an empty bottle-turned-weapon. Mom and whiskey and a cigarette butt and the scent of burning flesh.
It had been bad enough when Mom’s rage spent itself on Cassidy, but when Mom turned her rage on Cassidy’s little sister, Becca, it had been horrible. Little Becca, too small to take the beatings, would beg for help. Cassidy would fight back then, push her mother away and yell at Becca to run and hide.
Mom was usually too drunk to pursue.
If only Cassidy’d been home that day. When she was ten, the neighbors had invited her over to play, and Mom had been passed out on the couch. After Cassidy’d fixed Becca breakfast, she’d kissed her good-bye and gone next door. The neighbor had gotten a new Barbie Jeep, and they’d played with the dolls for hours.
Too long.
When she realized the time, a pain grew in the pit of her stomach that told her something was wrong. She didn’t know what, she didn’t know why. She only knew she had to check on Becca.
She walked in to find Mom kneeling over Becca, eyes glazed over and wide. Confused.
Becca hadn’t been breathing.
Cassidy called an ambulance, but it was too late.
Becca died.
Mom claimed Becca had fallen, but the injuries weren’t consistent with that story. And Cassidy had told the truth. For the first time, no matter the threatening scowl Mom gave her, Cassidy had looked the scary policeman in the eyes and told him the things her mother did. How she pushed her. Hit her. Burned her. Cassidy told the policeman how she’d tried for years to protect her sister. And she told him how she’d failed her sister that day because she’d been playing with a Barbie Jeep.
But even as she’d blamed herself, she’d known, deep down, it was Mom’s fault.
Mom went to prison. Cassidy ended up in foster care, swearing she’d never, ever be like her mother.
And then, after promising Hallie she’d protect her, promising she’d never leave her…
She’d stood over Hallie’s body.
No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t save her sister and she couldn’t save Hallie and she couldn’t save Ella.
Why was she here? Not here in this cave, surrounded by the most terrifying memories of her life. Not here in Coventry, the town that had never accepted her. Not here in New Hampshire, the state that had failed to protect Cassidy and Becca from an abusive, alcoholic mother.
Here, on the planet.
No family. No loved ones. No real home.
As she’d flown from the West Coast to the East, she’d convinced herself that this was why she’d survived a decade past. So that she could come back and save Ella.
That there was a purpose for all the pain. That God could use the worst parts of her existence to bring life to someone else.
She’d been wrong.
And all she’d done for the first twenty-eight years of her life was to prove, over and over, that she couldn’t save anybody.
And here was more evidence.
Why was she here?
Chapter Twenty-One
The cave existed. Standing in its center, James tried to push away all the questions and images—his sister and his girlfriend and a killer. Right in this spot.
What had happened to Hallie here? To Cassidy? James might never know all the facts, could never know all the fears, but he could feel, somehow, a sense of… darkness. The murderer might’ve abandoned this cave, but an aura of wickedness lingered like the scent of sulphur after an extinguished match.
James tried to shake it off, that oppressive evil that seemed to permeate his skin and fill his heart with despair. But the truth was the truth. Evil things had happened here.
His sear
ch of the cave, limited though it was with the narrow beam of his flashlight, gave further evidence that, at some point, somebody had been here. Earth disturbed by hands or bodies. Black marks on the otherwise gray walls that led up to the ceiling and out a narrow gap in the rocks. Somebody had lit a fire here. What that proved was that, though those who claimed to know this mountain better than anybody swore no caves existed, somebody knew about this place. Somebody besides Cassidy.
The kidnapper.
Where was he now?
If he’d seen Cassidy and James the night before and guessed their destination, he could have moved Ella. That was possible, but the guy was a killer. Why not just kill them?
Perhaps he only liked to kill little girls. Perhaps he had no stomach for murdering adults. Did that make sense?
Not really.
More likely, he figured two more missing people would raise suspicion, pull more people onto the mountain. But… he’d stolen their food, which also raised suspicion.
James didn’t understand, and the gnawing in his stomach wasn’t helping matters.
Cassidy was seated against the cave wall, arms around her bent legs, head on her knees. She was silent, but her heaving back told him enough.
He sat beside her and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “Hey, it’s okay.” He pulled her close, and she shifted, pressed her cheek against his chest.
Both arms around her, he said, “You were right about this place.”
“She’s not here, so it doesn’t matter.”
It mattered to him. Though back in high school, Cassidy had learned to love the outdoors as much as he, she’d been a city kid before foster care, never one for hiking or backpacking. She’d never have come this far from town on her own.
Somebody had brought her here. Of that, he was certain.
A monster. A killer.
A man who’d ruined his parents’ lives. James’s life.
Cassidy’s life.
All because some man, some nameless, faceless man, liked to steal little girls.
Hallie and Mom and Dad were gone now, but Cassidy was here. Alive and brokenhearted.
He rubbed his hand up and down her back. “It’s okay.”