by Eryn Scott
“Call Paul. Now.” Luke’s voice was as sharp as a brand new knife.
Heart rate spiking, Hadley slipped her phone out from her pocket and dialed her brother as she ran toward Luke.
“What am I telling him?” she asked, her words shaky with fear. Reaching Luke she noticed the tire tracks in the dirt at the edge of the cliff. Taking one shaky step forward, she followed Luke’s gaze down the hundreds of feet.
The back end of a car was just barely visible amid the brush and boulders at the bottom of the cliff. She wasn’t sure if the ringing was from the phone or her mind.
“Had, what’s up?” Paul’s voice rang through her ears.
“You need to get everyone you can over to The Ridge, right now. A car’s sitting at the bottom of the cliff.”
The minutes it took for the sheriff’s department to arrive seemed like years to Hadley. She and Luke paced along the edge, trying to get a better look.
“Should we try to drive down there?” Luke asked, stating—more than once—if they followed the main road down the hill, his truck could handle the off-road well enough to get them close to the wreck.
As curious as Hadley was to see what was in the car, her stomach curled up like a boxer’s fist each time she thought about who might be in that car.
“No. We need to wait until they get here,” she said.
The Cascade Ridge-based officers showed up first, and by the time Paul and Sheriff McKay arrived, they’d already decided on a plan to lower a winch down and pull the car out. A crew drove down to the bottom and would hike over to the site to make sure there weren’t any casualties before they pulled the car up.
“Tell us when you’re near,” McKay grumbled into a radio, the static before and after he spoke making Hadley’s nerves fray. He swiveled back to face Paul. “Tell me the car was not there when we did our sweeps. If you guys missed—”
“It wasn’t.” Paul’s voice was deep and sure. “I’ll vouch for it myself. I was out here yesterday and it wasn’t here.”
Hadley sidled closer to her brother, noticing him squinting at his tablet as he poked at the screen. He was enlarging a picture he’d taken of the license plate, just visible at the bottom of the cliff. He switched to a different application and typed in the plate number.
When the new application opened, Paul glanced over his shoulder in a gesture that told Hadley she needed to step back. She did, but both she and Luke craned their necks slightly to try to catch a glimpse.
Paul narrowed his eyes at his screen.
“Tell me what you’ve got, James,” McKay called out from where he was talking to another deputy.
“It’s registered to a Zack Pittman. A few parking violations and”—he poked at the screen—“a ticket for running a red light Thursday night, just before midnight.”
Hadley’s pulse quickened. That was right about the time Miranda went missing.
Paul poked at the screen while Hadley thought. There were only two red-light cameras in Cascade Ridge: one in the busy uptown district and one right outside the hospital. Hadley held her breath. She wished she could see what Paul was looking at.
“Sir, you’re going to want to see this.” Paul cleared his throat and stepped toward McKay, leaving Hadley and Luke behind.
But before Paul could reach the sheriff, a river of static poured from his radio again.
“We’re here.” The radio cut out, leaving more static.
Paul paused. Hadley’s breath caught in her throat. Now that Paul had moved, she could clearly see the screen to his tablet. The picture showed the same car sitting at the bottom of the cliff, turning right, into the hospital parking lot.
“Anyone in the vehicle?” McKay asked, a dreadful mix of eagerness and fear coating his question.
Everyone went silent, the horrible static the only sound.
“We have a body.”
Static.
Hadley wrapped her arms around her middle, sure she would throw up.
“White male, twenties, blunt-force trauma to the skull—the back of the head, not the front. There’s no blood in the vehicle. He was dead before he went off the cliff.”
The breath she’d been holding rushing out of her all at once. Hadley leaned forward and rested her hands on her knees, and tears spilled down her cheeks.
It wasn’t Miranda.
21
Hadley should’ve been relieved. Miranda’s body wasn’t in the car. There was still hope she was alive.
It should’ve been a comfort. Instead, Hadley paced through her kitchen the next morning, scattering worried cats each time she moved to a different part of the room.
The dead man had been driving in that same part of Cascade Ridge right around the time Miranda had gone missing. But if he was the one who’d taken her, why was he dead? If Miranda had somehow defended herself, hitting him over the head and pushing his car off the cliff, wouldn’t she have come back home?
Hadley chewed on her bottom lip. It was possible the teen was worried about what she’d done, afraid she would be punished for the man’s death even if it was self-defense.
Something still seemed off about that scenario, though.
In the red-light photo she’d caught a glimpse of yesterday, the car had been turning right, into the hospital, not going straight. If he’d somehow kidnapped her in the parking lot of the hospital, surely one of the cameras would’ve captured it, but Paul had said there’d been no trace of Miranda anywhere in the footage.
Hadley suppressed the urge to yell in frustration.
Now it was Tuesday, the fourth full day since Miranda had gone missing. She didn’t want to look at any stats about missing persons being found after so long. Even without checking, she knew they weren’t good.
She had the day free to go searching. When she’d taken Gran home from the jam kitchen upon returning to Stoneybrook yesterday, the woman had told Hadley she expected her to pick her up at nine tomorrow so Hadley could resume her efforts. The real problem was that Hadley wasn’t sure where else to search.
Closing her eyes for a second to focus her thoughts, Hadley reminded herself about what Gran had told her yesterday about not giving up. She hadn’t gone to see Brenda, after all. Maybe Miranda’s mom knew something she didn’t know could be important. It was worth a try at least.
Grabbing her keys, Hadley headed out the door to go pick up her grandmother.
Once Gran was all set in the kitchen a half hour later, Hadley got back into the Jam Van and began driving back up to Cascade Ridge. She didn’t think she’d driven up to the crowded city as many times in her whole life as she had this week.
As Hadley turned the van onto the old valley highway, her phone began ringing from her purse. She turned on her signal and pulled off onto the shoulder before fishing the phone out of her bag to answer it.
She recognized the number as Cassie’s.
“Hey, what’s up?” Hadley said, checking her watch. It was almost ten, right in the middle of Cassie’s school day.
“Jaxon just called me. He’s completely freaking out, says he needs your brother to put a security detail on him or something.” Cassie’s tone held her usual teenage disregard—at least, on the surface—but Hadley could hear a worry hiding just underneath.
“Why would Jaxon need a security detail?”
“Because he says he thinks someone’s going to come after him next. As of yesterday, he’s the only dealer still alive.”
“As of yesterday?” Hadley’s forehead pinched together until it relaxed in understanding. “The man we found at The Ridge was one of Jaxon’s fellow dealers?”
“Apparently.” Cassie sounded uninterested, but Hadley knew better. “He won’t leave his house, that’s how paranoid he’s being.”
“Okay, um … tell Jaxon I’m on my way up to Cascade Ridge right now, and I’ll stop by and talk with him.”
Cassie scoffed. “You’re not going to come get me?”
Hadley wanted to scoff right back, but suppressed
the gesture. “I can’t wait until you’re out of school, Cassie. I’m already on my way.”
“No fair.” Cassie groaned, but then added, “Good luck.”
Hadley said her thanks and hung up, hoping Cassie was at least on a passing period and not calling her in the middle of class.
After shoving her phone back into her purse, Hadley continued her trip up the hill, trying hard to remember the way to Jaxon’s house. Last time she’d been there with Cassie, it had been dark. Everything seemed so much more confusing in the light of day.
Finally, she found the same neighborhood. She texted Cassie, hoping she wasn’t disrupting the girl’s time in school too much.
Here. Can you text Jaxon and let him know to meet me in the park like last time?
Any hope Cassie was diligently listening to her teachers was crushed when the girl responded right away.
He doesn’t want to go outside. Go to his house. 3416. It’s blue with white trim, across from the merry-go-round in the park.
Go to his house? Alone? Hadley gulped at the thought, scanning the line of palatial houses across the street, she settled on a blue one with the numbers 3416 hung over an entryway that would’ve given a castle door a run for its money.
Luke’s words from yesterday, about how he thought she was wrong to write off Miranda’s boyfriend, snuck into her brain. What if Luke was right and Jaxon was the one who’d taken or hurt Miranda? She could possibly be walking into a trap.
Or she could get information from Jaxon that might just help her find Miranda.
The latter option was too tempting to pass up. Grabbing her purse, Hadley exited her van and walked across the street toward the blue-and-white house. Just in case, she reached into her bag and wrapped her fingers around a small bottle. It was a refreshing lavender body spray she used when she needed freshening up after a long day in the jam kitchen. It was the only thing she had on her, not having anything like mace in her possession. Surely the perfumed liquid would buy her a little time if she sprayed it in an attacker’s face. Or it would simply make them smell like a spa.
Either way, Hadley stuck it in her jacket pocket, pulled in a deep breath, and jogged up the porch steps. Her finger resting firmly on the tiny bottle’s spray top inside her pocket. She knocked on the door, willing her heart rate to slow.
Unfortunately, it didn’t do much to help her relax when Jaxon threw the door open and pulled her inside. The door lock clicked into place behind her and she tensed.
“Where’s your brother?” Jaxon’s eyes were wide and rimmed with white as they locked on to Hadley’s.
She held out her free hand in a calm down gesture. “I’m not going to call him until I hear the facts. He’s busy right now trying to find your girlfriend, if you’ve forgotten.” She didn’t even try to hide the edge to her voice.
Jaxon’s gaze darted from her to the front windows, and he ushered her farther into the house.
“Casey was hit in the back of the head and found in the park. And now Zack was hit on the back of the head and found in his car at the bottom of a ravine.” Jaxon’s hand moved up and down over the back of his scalp, mussing his dark hair as it did so. “I’m the only one left.”
The look he shot Hadley was so full of pleading worry, her tight shoulders relaxed slightly. This wasn’t a teenage mastermind. He was a scared boy who’d gotten involved in something bigger than he realized.
Hadley sat in the nearest chair, which happened to be one of the stools set around the giant granite kitchen island.
“Look, I think the person who’s hurting your dealer friends is the same person who has Miranda,” Hadley said. She didn’t know whether or not she thought that, but it also didn’t seem out of the question, and she hoped it might help her, so she went with it. “If you help me find Miranda, we can get this person behind bars so you’ll be safe.”
Jaxon swallowed, but his head dipped in agreement.
“Okay,” Hadley said, taking what she could get. “I need you to think of anything you left out the other night when you were talking to Cassie and me. Anything. We’re talking life and death here.”
Jaxon scanned the ceiling. She hoped beyond hope it was a sign he was thinking. He was silent for a long time, his lips moving as he seemed to be recounting what he’d told them already.
After a few moments, Hadley became impatient. “You said this Zack person was your friend.”
“Associate,” Jaxon corrected.
“Associate,” Hadley repeated. “So you were familiar with his car. Did you pass him on your way past the hospital, when you were driving away from Miranda?”
“No,” he said. “I know Zack’s car. Everyone does between the loud music he’s always playing and his huge rims. I would’ve known if I passed him.”
Frustration curled through Hadley’s chest again, making it hard to breathe evenly. There was no way he hadn’t driven by Zack’s car given the red-light photo she’d seen. It was possible he was angry enough that he didn’t notice. She decided to try a different line of questioning.
“Why would Zack have been at the hospital at that time of night, or the morning as it was, in the first place?”
Jaxon cleared his throat. “Well, that’s where we pick up customers a lot of the time. I mean, Zack. That’s where he picked up customers. I went to parties, so did Casey. But Zack ran the hospital.”
Hadley perked up. “And what does that mean? Running the hospital? Would he go inside and find people who were sick?”
Jaxon shook his head emphatically. “No, he’d wait out in the parking lot for our supplier to text him. The supplier always knew when someone was getting cut off of their prescriptions and might be willing to buy. Zack would approach them in the parking lot and”—Jaxon shrugged—“I’d say he made a sale about half the time. I'd get way better odds at parties, so I stuck with that, but …”
Mulling over the information, Hadley tried to think about what this meant for Miranda. “Supplier?” she asked. “Who’s that?”
“I don’t know,” Jaxon said. “None of us do. They always told us where the package would be once we left the money and that was that. We’ve never seen the person, none of us.” Jaxon grimaced. “Well, maybe some of us did, but they didn’t live much longer.”
Hadley’s heart picked up speed. So the mystery supplier could be the kidnapper and killer. And if they were aware of patients who had been cut off, they probably worked at the hospital. She closed her eyes for a moment. There were hundreds of people who worked for Grande County General, though.
Unable to find an answer to her question, she focused on something else. “But why would Zack have been there so late? I’m sure there weren’t many patients needing to be snatched up at that time of night.”
Jaxon puffed out his cheeks in an exhale. “Right. He was probably there grabbing supplies then.”
“And how did you guys do that?” Hadley leaned forward on her stool.
“Well, we’d text the number we had that we needed more. The supplier would text back how much it would be. We had to go leave the cash. A day later they would text us which locker our stuff would be in, then we’d go back to pick it up.” The teen shrugged as if it were as simple as starting up a car.
“Lockers? At the hospital? Isn’t that a little risky with the security cameras?”
“Not the new hospital, the old one, across the street.”
Hadley remembered back to when she and Gran had driven up last weekend for her hip, and how Gran had talked about the old hospital to the left and down the hill from the new one. It clicked into place at once, that was why Jaxon hadn’t passed Zack, because Zack hadn’t been turning right into the new hospital in the photo Hadley had seen. He’d been coming from the other direction, up the hill she and Luke had walked the other day, and he’d turned right down the hill to the old hospital.
And, if Jaxon was right about everyone knowing Zack’s car had his signature rims, Miranda would’ve seen it too as she saw him drive by
.
“Jaxon, do you think Miranda was desperate enough to try to buy from someone else since you refused to sell to her?” Hadley asked quickly.
Jaxon’s mouth hung open for a second, and Hadley was starting to get impatient when he nodded. “She might’ve. She was in a bad place and she had enough money.”
Letting go of the lavender spray in her pocket, Hadley stood and pulled her keys out of her purse.
“Wait, where are you going?” Jaxon stood with her.
“To figure out who your supplier is. Whoever they are, I think they’ve got Miranda.”
22
Hadley’s hands shook as she drove to Grande County General Hospital. Parking near the emergency room, she glanced across the street at the road leading down to the old hospital.
She knew Paul would kill her for rushing into a dilapidated old building off limits to the public, so that option was out for now. Still, she pulled out her phone and sent him a message.
Where are you? she texted. I need to talk. I think I might know something about Miranda.
When no answer came after a few seconds, Hadley shoved the phone back into her purse and headed inside the new hospital. There was one more person who might have the information she needed about this supplier.
“I’m here to see Brenda Walters,” she told the front desk clerk upon entering the brightly lit foyer of the hospital.
The attendant checked his computer screen as he typed in the name. “She’s in Room 366,” he told Hadley.
After thanking him, she found the elevators and then wound through the maze of hallways until she located the room. Disinfectant permeated the air, creating that smell only hospitals held. Just as she was about to step into the room, a voice stopped her.
“Excuse me. Can I help you?”
When Hadley turned back toward the nurse’s station, she saw a tired-looking woman around her age, glancing up from the chart in her hands.
Hadley gestured over her shoulder. “I’m here to visit Brenda. She’s—I’m from her town.”