Leo rolled to her side in pleased, lazy slumber, his arm draped around her waist. She leaned over to the shoe and slipped the note out of it. In her heart, she knew it was probably safer in her own hands.
Because she didn’t know who she could trust anymore.
*******
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Dream #3
The cave absorbs her deep inside of it, the stalagmites and stalactites biting at her as she twirls towards the blackness. She expects death to descend on her at any moment, but it makes her wait for it.
When she lands, she is totally inside the darkness. She looks around her. She is alone, under a spotlight of moonlight cascading down from a hole at the top of the cave that pierces yellow through darkness.
Only a single object is beside her. A birdcage. She crawls over to it and looks inside. It’s wiry, bronze, and tarnished, the shape of it bent and crooked from exactly four years of neglect. Inside there is no bird. There is only a white origami bird made from lined school paper. It is perched on the swing, swinging back and forth. Mia can hear the lilts of songbirds singing far away out the hole of the cave, but only sadness and silence comes from the paper.
“Brendan?” she says to the paper bird. It turns its papery head toward her, crinkling its own neck in doing so. It does not reply, but gestures with a nod of its beak to the lock on the door.
Understanding what it wants from her, she reaches over to unlock the cage. Her fingers touch the metal lock and she flinches back in agony. The metal is hot and scorches her fingertips. The pain swells and turns black and spreads down her fingers, down her wrists, down her arm, charging toward her heart where she knows it will kill her.
“What have you done?” she asks the bird. “You tricked me.”
The bird shakes its head no. It unfolds itself and floats down to the bottom of the cage. Lying flat as the piece of paper from which it was born. She can see there is writing scrawled across what once was its wings. She reaches into the cage to grab the paper, to see what it says and the metal stings her again.
She pulls her fingers back, but then tries again. She doesn’t care. She must read what it says. She won’t give up until she gets that note.
Because the answer to everything is written on it.
*******
Sunday, September 17: 7:04 a.m.
A drape of comfort that he hadn’t felt in a long time drifted over Leo. He pulled Mia tighter into his arms as she slept beside him. He sighed into her hair. The floral fragrance of her twirled up at him and played with him, threatening to ignite his desire again. He smiled and breathed her in again, but this time the smell was not flowers. It was something much more sinister.
His eyes opened. He knew that smell anywhere.
Smoke.
He sat up, protectively careful to not wake Mia.
A curl of amber light flickering licked at the bottom of the tent wall.
He jumped from the ground and took a shoe to smash out the flames. But it was futile. As if invigorated by the shoe waving oxygen at it, the fire bloomed angrily across the thin fabric wall. Engulfing both Mia and Leo in its wrath. The heat stabbed at his face.
He wove his arm under sleeping Mia’s neck and another under her knees. He thrust her up into his arms.
“Mmm… what’s going on?” She lightly struggled against his hold on her. “Why is it so smoky?”
Wordlessly, he carried her to the doorway, while the tent heaved and surrendered. It danced to one side and threatened to collapse. Flakes of blazing fabric rained and swirled around them.
“Oh my god, the tent is on fire!” Mia struggled free from his grip.
Leo clutched the tent zipper. His fingertips stung from the hot metal. Ignoring the pain, he yanked until the door was open and then pushed out Mia ahead of him.
They ran across the campsite. The tent exhaled and deflated into a pile of fire behind them. Because the tent was pitched on sand, the fire ran out of fuel and gradually died. Leo cursed as he realized everything he’d brought with him, including his shoes, were now just smoldering ash.
Leo saw Nate standing in the shadows of the forest that curved around the camp. “Nate!” he yelled at him.
“I see you’ve had a bit of an accident.” Nate’s eyes locked on theirs. “That tent cost three hundred dollars. Who is going to pay for this damage?”
“I think money is hardly the concern right now,” Leo said. “We just about died in there.”
Nate nodded, obviously disinterested. He began assorting sticks to feed a new campfire. “I’m making hot dogs for breakfast does anyone want one?”
Mia ran to the women’s tent, calling out for Glenda.
“Nate,” Leo said. “Do you have any idea who may have set this fire?”
“Maybe it was an act of God.” He shrugged. Oddly, he had his own bags at his feet, they had not burned in the fire with all of Leo’s belongings. “Maybe the universe was trying to send you a message.”
“What are you talking about?”
Nate poked some hotdogs onto a stick and whistled as he assembled them in a lineup.
“Mia received a handwritten note last night,” Leo said. “Do you know anything about that?”
“Handwritten notes are always nice to receive,” Nate smiled at him. “Nobody ever takes the time to write people notes anymore.”
“Where is Constable Barter? What did you do to her?”
Nate’s smile snapped off his face and he jerked his eyes up to meet Leo’s. “I told you already, I saw her in the lake. Swimming.”
Leo noticed he never answered the part about what did he do to her.
“That was yesterday. Where is she now?” Leo said.
“Goodness jellybeans, how should I know? Maybe she felt dirty in her soul and wanted to wash up in there,” Nate hummed a happy song as he poked another hot dog on a stick. “I didn’t want to disturb her…cleansing.”
Leo looked at Nate, studying the movement of his body language. The tilt of his shoulders, the clenching of his knees, the overly relaxed positioning of his eyebrows. Nate reciprocated Leo’s inquisitive stare with a bland smirk. When their eyes connected, Leo’s gut churned with dread.
Mia ran to them from the women’s tent. “Glenda’s not in our tent. She’s missing.”
Leo glared at Nate, who simply smiled back at him. Leo wanted to ask him what he had done. But there was no proof that anything specifically bad had happened, and the last thing he wanted to do was provoke an already highly sensitive patient into a nervous breakdown in the middle of the forest over something that could be easily explained.
“We need to go find her, Leo,” Mia pleaded. “She could be in danger right now.”
“Let’s go.” Leo first approached the tent and kicked aside the flaming ashes to where his pillow had been.
“What are you doing?” Mia begged.
He reached down and grabbed the dagger from under what had been his pillow and shot a glance at Nate. It was probably better if he kept this with him. He gestured to the trail and joined Mia in a jog down the wooded path toward the lake.
Leo took Mia’s hand as they descended the hill to the lake where it got particularly steep. He heard a snap in the bush and turned back, fully expecting Nate to be following them. But he wasn’t there. Still, he could feel the creepy sensation of something watching them from the forest. A rancid, earthy smell pulsed at his nostrils.
“What is that?” Mia asked.
Leo looked back at the forest. Something moved in the shadows of the trees. When his eyes adjusted, he saw the curve of the large, round brown beast swaying in the shadows of the tree. Its black nostrils snorted as its gold eyes watched him. Slowly, it backed away from them into the trees, melting into the darkness.
Shit.
“What is it, Leo?” Mia repeated. “Is that a bear?”
“I don’t know,” Leo lied.
Although the bear had retreated now, it was still out there. It could come back at any point.
Maybe even when they were sleeping and totally defenseless. But what defense, exactly, did they even have? The measly knife in his pocket would be nothing against a creature that size. Their best bet was to just get the hell out of this bear’s territory, move onto the next campsite, and call it a day.
“Let’s just find Glenda,” Leo said, keeping a firm eye on the forest as they continued descending to the lake.
He gripped her hand tighter and they picked up their pace on the stone path. Boughs of thick green branches swatted at their faces as they pushed forward. High above, a bird circled and moaned eerie songs at them.
Mia pointed to two spots of red that dotted the bushes alongside the clearing. “Wait…What is that?” Barely visible in the low light of early dawn. Leo swatted into the bushes and retrieved two red running shoes. Their laces dangled below, drenched in blood.
“Glenda,” Mia took the shoes. “These are hers.”
“She must be near,” Leo said.
“Please say she wasn’t attacked by that grizzly.”
The same panicky thought ripped through Leo’s mind. He let go of Mia’s hand and aggressively tore a path through the bushes to get to her.
“Here…” They heard a tiny voice creep from deep inside the green. “I’m here.”
Mia thrust back a bush to reveal her frail roommate in a shallow hole under the bush, hugging her knees. Her hair tangled with sticks. Shoeless and shivering.
“Glenda!” Mia scrambled to get to her. Leo was right behind her, helping dig her free from the tangle of bush fingers that clasped at her. “What happened to you?”
“I-I-I’m fine…” Glenda coughed as Leo lifted her to the safety of the path.
“Who attacked you?” Leo said.
“Was it a bear?” Mia swept the girl’s hair from her face and examined her for injury.
“No,” Glenda said. “It was a person.”
“Then who?” Leo demanded
“I don’t know,” Glenda gasped weakly, “I can’t remember anymore…”
*******
Mia stared at the girl as she drank her hot chocolate back at camp. Something felt off about this whole thing. But she couldn’t quite nail down what it was. Her eyes spotted a bag in the corner of the tent that had not been there before, Barter’s red sleeping bag was draped over it, as though to hide it. It was the bag Nate had been carrying yesterday. Somehow it had avoided getting burned in the fire.
“Honestly, you guys. You’re making too much of a big deal about this,” Glenda cupped the mug between her two palms and drew it to her lips as she cuddled under the gray blanket next to the fire. Her eyes scanned to the pile of ash where the guys’ tent had been. “Was there a fire here?”
Mia wrapped another three sleeping bags around Glenda’s shoulders, everything she could find in the ladies’ tent. Leo scooped more hot chocolate into her mug with a metal ladle. Nate had barely acknowledged her presence since she’d returned to camp and only watched her silently from the other side of the fire.
“Anyway, I don’t remember what happened. I was just walking and then something must have hit me and I somehow ended up in the bushes,” Glenda continued. “Is someone gonna tell me what happened to that tent? It’s, like, burned down. Why is everyone acting so secretive about it?”
“Your shoes were placed on the trail,” Leo ignored her question and pressed on. “Shoes don’t just fly off like that when you fall.”
“Sure they do,” Glenda said, “if the impact of the fall is high enough.”
“Not running shoes tied up with laces,” he said. “And not neatly placed side by side.”
“She said she’s fine,” Nate snapped at him. “Why do you have to keep pestering her about it?”
Leo and Mia turned to face him. Both equally speechless.
Glenda hung her head, as though something disturbed her. As if she’d seen things she didn’t want to talk about. She reluctantly lifted her eyes to meet Nate’s and then looked away.
“Come on, you’ve had a hard day,” Mia soothed her. “Let’s take you to the tent to regroup.”
Mia cupped Glenda’s arm and guided her. As they made their way to the entrance, from the corner of her eye, Mia saw it again. Movement in the forest. A slither of enormous darkness upon darkness. The vague sensation of being watched. She slowly turned her eyes to meet the gaze of whatever was watching. But only empty black forest stared back at her.
“What is it?” Glenda asked.
“I don’t know…” Mia confessed. And she didn’t. She wished she could reassure Glenda that everything was fine. But in heart, she wasn’t certain that it was. Especially not after Glenda had been attacked and the tent burned down without explanation.
Things like this didn’t happen when everything was fine.
*******
As Mia and Glenda shuffled into their tent and murmured, grateful to have found each other again, Leo, feeling less enthusiastic, sternly regarded Nate.
“I am only going to ask you this once,” Leo said to him. “Did you have anything to do with this?”
Nate shrugged. “Who knows?”
“I’m not interested in games anymore, Nate.”
“Who’s playing games?”
“What did you do to Glenda and what have you done to Constable Barter?”
“I think you know that already.” Nate poked his beloved hiking stick at the fire. “Sweet Penelope is dancing where the river flows inside out and the raindrops curl back up into the clouds.” He smiled at. “Wasn’t that a blissful image?”
“Don’t talk to me in riddles.” Leo took the stick from Nate’s hand and chucked it into the fire, where it exploded into a sparking blaze.
“Th-th-that was my hiking stick,” he sputtered. “You now owe me three hundred and fourteen dollars.”
“Cut the shit, Nate. Where is she?”
“She’s in the tent with Mia,” Nate answered with a sickeningly sweet smile. “Didn’t you see she came back? She said she took a tumble in the forest. A beautiful tumble. Isn’t she a lovely creature, Doc? Don’t you think she’s just so intense…and so lovely?”
“I’m not talking about Glenda. Where is Penelope Barter? What did you do to her?”
“Oh…” he said darkly. He didn’t answer the question, and simply rubbed his hands up and down his pant legs, and rocked back and forth on the log. “Where are we going to sleep tonight without a tent, Doc? We can’t sleep with the women in their tent, it’s not chivalrous. We have to be gentlemen here.”
“You’re going to sleep in hell if you don’t give me a straight answer.”
“You’re awfully hostile for a therapist, aren’t you?”
“I’m about to get a shitload more hostile.” His face burned with frustration. His fists gripped into rocks at his side.
“Why do you even care about Penelope?” Nate said. “She was a very rude person.”
“Because she is part of our team and she’s missing. So we have a duty to try and find her.”
“But you told Mia you would ruin her life to get revenge. Clearly, you did not like her much either.”
“That’s not what I said,” Leo said. But it was true. He had said it, but he had only been joking . But the fact that Nate was repeating it now only meant one thing. That he’d eavesdropped on their conversation, would have listened to them having sex. What else had Nate been sneaking around doing? Rage gripped Leo. “Was it you who lit the tent on fire?”
Nate stared at his burning hiking stick and didn’t answer the question.
“Have you hurt Constable Barter or not?”
Nate sighed before answering, “I think the real question here is has Penelope, in her rudeness and refusal to stop using cuss words, brought onto herself a situation that has caused her own untimely death?”
Leo lunged at Nate.
*******
CHAPTER TWELVE
“I am so grateful that you’re back at camp.” Mia tenderly drew a comb through Glenda’s long cr
imson hair as they tucked away in the last remaining tent. Weaving the hair into a single shimmering braid, she smiled at the girl and placed a loving warm hand on her shoulder.
Glenda had only been gone for a few hours, but the experience triggered the same panic Mia had felt when she lost her son. Her body still shook helplessly from fear. Trembles rolled down her arm to where she touched Glenda’s shoulder.
“Did you pack any vodka for this trip?” Mia joked. “I could really use a drink after the scare of almost losing you.”
“Really, Mia, I’m fine.” Glenda pushed Mia’s hand off her shoulder. She popped open her bottle of vitamins and slipped a few in her mouth, swallowing without water. “I don’t understand why everyone is getting all dramatic about this. We’re out in the wild forest here, for eff’s sake. Falls in the wild have been known to happen from time to time.”
“You could have been attacked by a grizzly bear.” Mia put her hand in her pocket and touched the threatening note she had received earlier. She began to draw it out, to show it to Glenda, but then decided against it.
She rolled her eyes epically hard. “Seriously? Bears are the least of my worries right now.”
“What do you mean by that?” Mia stuffed the note as deep in her pocket as it would go. “That bears are not your worst problem? Is there another problem?” She crossed the tent to the supplies in the bag and began removing contents to make sandwiches to pack for the trip. Bread, smoked salmon slices, soggy brown lettuce.
“No,” Glenda snapped. A little too quickly. “Are you going to tell me why the other tent burned down?”
“Oh…” Mia had almost forgotten all about that. She assembled the ingredients and made twenty sandwiches, which she plunked in a tight Tupperware container. She looked at the pinecones she had packed earlier, hesitating if she should take them out to make room for so many sandwiches.
Kiss Her Goodbye: Thriller/Romance with a shocking twist Page 12