Justice For You (Sunset Ridge #3)

Prologue

“Rory, we’re going to dinner. Keep an eye on your sister.”

Rory turned his head from where he was looking at his phone. “What?”

At seventeen he was more concerned with what his friends were doing back home in Allentown, Pennsylvania, than the small village of Lake George.

The four-hour trip three days ago felt more like four days. Oh no, that was how many days he had left on this boring vacation that he wasn’t allowed to bring a friend on.

“Dad and I are going to dinner alone,” his mother said. “Remember? We picked up subs for you and Rene. Eat when you want, but keep an eye on her while we’re gone.”

“Why can’t we go with you?”

The last thing he wanted to do was be stuck alone at this cabin they’d rented, staring at the water.

Was it pretty and kind of magical in a way when the sun rose? Sure, he’d admit that. But not out loud. Rene would only bust his ass for using the word “magical.”

“Because your mother deserves an adult dinner without the two of you bickering the whole time.”

He put his phone down and smirked. “We’re just having fun.”

Something he and Rene always did. Half the time they argued just as a game to see which one of their parents snapped at them first.

“Then have fun here,” his mother said. “We’ll be back in two hours or less.”

“I’m going to fish then,” he said.

“I don’t care what you do, but make sure you know where your sister is,” his mother said.

Rene had a bad habit of just wandering off. Drove him nuts, but his sister always said she liked to get lost in her thoughts and walk around.

“Will do,” he said, saluting them. “Where is she now?”

“You’re already failing at the one task we’ve given you,” his father said, laughing. “She’s in her room.”

Rory pushed up from the couch he was on in the enclosed porch, made his way through the kitchen, where his parents left out the back door, then he went up the stairs to the room next to his.

He opened the door and saw her sitting on the bed with a sketchbook in her hand.

“I’m going to eat now.”

“Go ahead,” she said. “I’m not hungry.”

He moved closer, peered over her shoulder and looked at the drawing in front of him. A rundown old cabin set back from the road with trees around it. “Where is that?”

“Not far from here,” she said. “I saw it on my walk yesterday.”

“You left the road to look at it?” he asked, his eyes taking in the details that she always managed to capture.

“I saw it from the road, but then went down the driveway a few feet to get a better look. There wasn’t anyone around, don’t worry. I only wanted a few pictures.”

“Don’t make a nuisance of yourself,” he said, giving her shoulder a brotherly shove. She pretended to fall over and laughed.

“Never,” she said, swinging her legs off the bed.

He saw the blue strings on her ankle and pointed. “What’s that?”

“I made an ankle bracelet. See.”

She held her leg up almost over her head for him to get a better view. What he saw was a bunch of strings of something tied around her ankle. “Looks amateur to me. Don’t give up the drawing anytime soon.”

“Jerk,” she said, her foot dropping and giving him a push away from her. “I’m going for a walk.”

“Take your phone and stay close,” he said. “Be back in thirty minutes tops. If I have to come get you, you’re getting your butt beat.”

“You wish,” Rene said, dancing out of the way but putting her fists up as if she wanted to box with him.

He squinted at her and took a few steps back.

She slid her phone into her pocket, flicked the light switch off, up again and then off.

Her way of clapping her hands for him to move out of the room.

Then she put her athletic slides on her feet and bounded down the stairs ahead of him, into the kitchen, then out the back door.

He grabbed his sub from the fridge and headed to the docks where the fishing poles from earlier still leaned. One hook still held a worm shriveled and motionless. He didn’t know if that mattered, nor did he care enough.

It was about killing time at this place.

He tossed the line in, set it down, then pulled the white paper away from his sub.

Before he was done with the last bite, Rene texted she was on her way back and returning to her room to draw.

“Where is your sister?”

He turned from where he was reeling the line back in from the water to see his parents standing before the dock he was sitting on with his feet dangling.

How had so much time passed?

“In her room.”

“No,” his mother said. “She’s not. I just checked.”

“She told me she was going to her room.” He picked his phone up. “Ninety minutes ago. She went for a walk, then texted she was on the way back, then to her room.”

“So you don’t know if she actually returned?” his father asked.

Fuck!

He jumped up. “No. I just thought she did.”

“Rory!” his mother yelled and turned to rush toward the house.

“Relax,” he said. “I’m sure she’s just sitting outside. Did you text her?”

It’s what he was doing right now. How the hell could he just have forgotten she should have come back? Or not even gone to check on her.

His mother was calling Rene. “She’s not answering. I don’t even hear her phone.”

Rene always had her phone on loud and annoying so that you knew when she got a text or a call. Never really a call.

“Start looking around,” his father said.

“She went for a walk,” he said. “She wasn’t even gone ten minutes before she said she was on the way back. It couldn’t have been far.”

“I can’t believe you let her leave alone,” his mother said. Her eyes were wide in a panic, her hands shaking while she gripped her phone.

“She’s been doing it for days,” he argued.

Why were they blaming this on him when they’d been allowing it?

But the pounding of his heart, the sweat slicking his palms, the prickling at the back of his neck, and the urge to run harder than he ever had charging down a football field for the winning touchdown, told him something was very wrong.

The three of them were in the front of their rented cabin standing in the road and yelling his sister’s name.

“I’m going to walk down this way,” his mother said.

“I’m going with you,” his father said.

“I’ll go in the other direction.” He took off running and calling, “Rene! Rene! Come on, stop playing.”

She had to be pulling one over on them. Something she’d done before.

She was famous for hiding in the house and waiting to be found.

Maybe she’d done it again and was going to have a good laugh over it all. Something to get him in trouble.

After racing to the end of the street, turning another, and then calling with no reply, he ran back to the rented cabin.

He’d search in there for her. He’d be the one to find her and give her hell for scaring them all. They’d laugh about it later. Like a month from now when he was over being grounded.

That had to be it. A way for him to get in trouble for not doing what was asked of him.

“You had one job,” she often said to him, imitating their parents, then she’d burst out laughing.

But she was nowhere in the cabin. He checked every nook, every cubby, and every cabinet she could sneak into. Not even under the screened-in porch where some water toys were stored.

The back door opened, his parents returning, their faces showing exhaustion, shock, and more than a touch of fear.

“I’m calling the police,” his father said. “And if she’s pulling one of her little stunts with us, there will be hell to pay. For both of you.”

“I’m sure she is,” he said. “I just checked around here but didn’t find her.”

Two hours later, she’d been found, her lifeless body dumped in some bushes five minutes away from their cabin.

On her way back to him, but she never made it.