Cameron
The woman’s open eyes were so blood-drenched, Cam couldn’t even see what color they were.
She stood directly beneath the body, a little surprised something viscous hadn’t splattered on her yet. The corpse dangled motionless from the branch, petrified like a bug trapped in amber.
Thirty-four years old, and this was the first dead body she’d ever seen. Search and Rescue was supposed to have prepared her for this.
“You’re freaking me out.”
Cam dropped her eyes to Emmett, who stood at the edge of the clearing, watching her like a chaperone during a violent game of kickball. She was freaking him out? Her instinct was to laugh at him and tell him to go annoy someone else, but she didn’t have it in her.
She’d been here since the middle of the night, since she stumbled blindly through the woods after the rest of her team. The last one to see the body, and also the only one who hadn’t left the scene yet. Had she even spoken a word since she entered the clearing? She couldn’t remember.
Cam peeled her tongue from the roof of her mouth and ran it over her dry bottom lip. “Where’s Isaac?”
“I don’t know.”
“You should find him. I don’t think he’s taking this well.”
There was no one taking this worse than her, but Emmett didn’t need to know that.
“What about Siena?” asked Emmett. “Aren’t you worried?”
God, how had Siena been with this guy for half her adult life? He still didn’t know how she operated. “Siena isn’t fragile. She can handle herself. Go find Isaac.”
Cam knew he wanted to argue. She could feel his brewing rebuttal vibrating through the entire clearing, and was genuinely surprised when he eventually left her alone.
But she wasn’t alone, was she?
Cam glanced up, meeting bloody, shock-filled eyes. The woman’s dull hair hung past her face in curtains. The longer Cam studied her, the more delusional she felt.
“Not possible,” she said aloud to the body. “Stop trying to trick me.”
Cam finally tore herself away from the dead woman and headed back to the ridge. Emmett had yet to return with Isaac, and Siena was alone, perched on the boulder she’d sat on last night while viewing Mount Agnes. Agnes was still there. It looked even sharper in the day-blue sky, like a thousand broken blades tilted together to form a point.
Siena ignored the mountain, her eyes pinched shut as she spoke into the phone.
“This is Dr. Siena Dupont. I’m about thirty-two miles north of Glass Lake Trailhead in the Deadswitch Wilderness area with Dr. Cameron Yarrow and researchers Emmett Ghosh and Isaac Perez. We are on an expedition and have come across... a body. Two days old at most, and no sign of what she died from. Please call me back as soon as you can. We have enough supplies on us to wait here for law enforcement... if it remains safe for us to stay.”
Siena jammed her finger down on the END button, dropped the phone in her lap, and buried her face in her hands.
“You got through?” asked Cam.
“Sheriff’s office. Had to leave a message on the voicemail. Unbelievable.”
“At least you left a message.”
Siena let her hands fall and stared at Cam. She looked as bad as Cam felt—dark bags beneath her blue eyes, her hair having freed itself from her braid to create a halo of chaos. “Maybe I did, but who knows? The signal could have died in the middle of the message, and I wouldn’t have known.”
“Any luck calling home?”
Siena wilted even more and shook her head. “I’ll try 911 again.”
Cam stooped to enter her bivy. “I need to lie down.”
“You okay?” Siena asked softly.
“Why?” Cam winced at her own defensive tone.
“You’ve been... I don’t know.” Siena shrugged. “Quiet.”
Cam pushed her hair back. “Just caught off guard. I’ll be okay.” She tried to smile and grimaced instead before ducking into her bivy.
Cam zipped up both the screen and the privacy shade, and felt around in her sleeping bag. Her fingers skimmed the worn copy of the book she carried with her on every backcountry trip she’d taken in the last five years. She tugged it free from the nylon folds.
A crease split the cover, an artsy shot of Janet Warren and Avery Mathis. The design focused on the point between them—the woods. Without a Trace by John Lawson. The title was so lame. Hell, the whole book was lame—over-the-top sensational and dramatic. And yet Cam had pored through it countless times as a punishment. She had been on the Search and Rescue team. She had failed to find them.
Cam opened the paperback to the ten glossy flyleaves filled with photos. One of the pages had a picture of all five of the women with their packs on the ground in front of them. It was the only photo Janet had taken of them before leaving her phone in the car at the trailhead.
From left to right: Tasha Gonzalez, Paige Reeves, Janet Warren, Avery Mathis, Naomi Vo.
Cam brushed her thumb across Naomi Vo—a tall athletic young woman with a smile full of white teeth. She wore her dark hair in braids, bright pink Wayfarer sunglasses perched on top. An effortlessly cool girl. A smart girl, just a term away from wrapping up her undergrad at Stanford. A girl Cam was supposed to find all those years ago.
She’d seen dozens of photos of Naomi during the search and rescue response. Naomi in a purple bikini on the California coast, holding a Corona. Naomi and Avery in front of a snow-white background before the two summited Mount Hood.
She’d seen Naomi enough times. Studied Naomi. Imagined stumbling upon Naomi dead at the bottom of a cliff, a probable fate for a missing hiker.
Cam slammed her eyes shut and swore, dropping the book and pulling at her hair with her fist. But it didn’t help. Burned into the back of her eyelids was Naomi, bloody-eyed and blue-lipped, hanging from a tree. Naomi, who looked like she had died yesterday but had disappeared seven years ago. Naomi, who hadn’t aged at all.
“It’s not Naomi,” Cam muttered to herself. “Because that would be impossible.”
This conspiracy needed to die while it was only a spark in her brain. She’d make a sick joke of it, casually letting Siena know she thought the woman looked like Naomi Vo. Siena would groan and tell her to go to therapy already, and Cam would shoot some smartass comment back. Then they’d walk back to the clearing together, and Cam would see the dead woman clearly—clearly—wasn’t Naomi.
When Cam emerged from her bivy, Siena was staring stone-faced at the woods. The blood had drained from her face. “What are we gonna do, Cam? What if someone killed her and they’re still out there? What if no one gets the message and we can’t get through again? We can’t just leave her here. And we can’t get ahold of anyone.”
“I...” Goddammit. She hid the book behind her back and tugged at her hair with her free hand. There was no point in overwhelming Siena more.
“We’ll have to head down the mountain,” Cam said. “Cut our losses and replan the expedition.” To her own surprise, relief flooded Cam’s chest. They’d tripped right out the gate; Feyrer wasn’t here, Siena wasn’t lead PI, and Cam... Deadswitch still haunted Cam.
“Is it bad that I’m angry at the dead woman?” Siena gave a sad laugh and wiped her nose with her shirt. “We can’t delay this much longer or we’re going to lose our funding. Cam...” Siena shook her head. “You know this is all I want.”
Guilt doused the rest of Cam’s relief. She’d let fear cloud her judgment. Circumstances would never be perfect. So what if Feyrer wasn’t here and Siena wasn’t lead PI? They’d found a body, not a ghost. Time to follow protocol and move on.
Cam stepped forward and grabbed the phone from Siena’s lap. “We won’t stop trying, okay? We’ll get through, eventually. Get some rest, and I’ll try calling out for a bit.”
Siena nodded, left her boulder, and retreated to her bivy.
As Cam left camp, she ran her thumb over the Post-It note taped to the phone’s battery case. Call 911, Dingus, it read. Listed beneath were three numbers: Deadswitch Ranger Station, the local sheriff’s office, and the main line for CalTech.
Cam tried the sheriff’s number, halting in the woods when it rang.
She’d gotten through on the first try.
“This is Sheriff Ainsley’s Office. No one can come to the phone right now...”
She knew Sheriff Ainsley. Had known. Robert Ainsley had been the county sheriff of the nearby town when Cam was volunteering seven years ago, and had been assigned to the case of the missing hikers. He died of cancer two years back. There was a new sheriff. It seemed more than strange that they wouldn’t have changed the voicemail on his phone by now.
“Hi, this is Dr. Cameron Yarrow. My colleague tried calling a few minutes ago. Listen, we aren’t able to get through to anyone, but we’ve found a body in Deadswitch Wilderness, and we need an emergency team up here immediately. We’re starting our research project, and we need to continue... You know what, never mind. A woman is dead, call me back.” She rattled off the number for the satellite phone and hung up. Then she dialed the university and didn’t get through.
Siena was right. They really were screwed.
She tried the ranger station for the hell of it.
It rang once before someone picked up. “Yello!”
Cam’s heart leapt into her throat. “Is this the ranger station for the Deadswitch Wilderness area?”
“This is the southern Ansel Adams Wilderness station, sweetheart.”
Ansel Adams was close to Deadswitch. “We found a dead hiker, and I need—”
“Now hold on. You say someone’s dead?”
Oh, for fuck’s sakes.“Yes! I need an emergency team in Deadswitch Wilderness immediately. We’re about thirty-two miles from the Glass Lake Trailhead.”
“I think you’re confused, sweetheart.”
She bit back her growl, prepped to verbally tear this guy a new asshole if he called her sweetheart one more time.
“Perhaps you got the number for a different state. There’s no Deadswitch Wilderness in California.”
“I am in California!” Cam pinched the bridge of her nose. “Listen, it doesn’t matter. We’re in the vicinity of Ansel Adams Wilderness, so I know you’ll be able to help. I’m calling you from a satellite phone. You’ll be able to track its location and get a team to us. There’s a dead woman... looks like she died yesterday. We’re going to stay with her until... Hello?”
Dial tone.
“Fucker!” she screamed at the phone. The connection hadn’t dropped. The twat of a ranger had hung up on her.
Oh, she couldn’t wait to get down the mountain and sic law enforcement on his ass. How dare he not take her seriously?
She realized she hadn’t gotten his name.
Cam tried calling back and got a dead line. She took a deep breath and attempted to reorganize her brain to pinpoint the things she could control. Naomi. She still had the book in her hand. The photo would prove the woman in the tree wasn’t her. She just had to compare them.
Cam retraced her steps to the clearing. She looked up and frowned. Then she looked down at the footprints all over the dirt—her own, Isaac’s big ones, Siena’s small ones... She looked up again.
Where the hell—
Cam was in the right place. She’d suffered through committing the damn clearing to memory when she’d been here early this morning. The body had been hanging from the tree with the roots that spidered out above the ground. From the bough right above Cam’s head. Cam had stared into her bloody eyes for hours.
She was gone. Naomi... Naomi was gone.