Chapter Twenty-Eight
Somehow, he’d assumed it would be easy to find the spot again.
But last spring, things looked different up here in the mountains. Some of the trees were still just bare branches or merely budding, so the trail markers were easier to spot from the car. Now everything is overgrown.
He drives slowly, higher and higher into the wilderness, scanning the sides of the narrow road.
He chose the spot the first time because he remembered that it was blessedly remote.
There used to be a small campsite with a couple of cabins up here, years ago—that’s how he knows it—but they’ve long since burned down.
Now there’s nothing but wilderness and a few trails that are not for the faint of heart.
Nor is this road. One wrong move and he’ll wind up stuck in a ditch, or worse.
Rounding a steep uphill curve, he spies an oncoming headlamp.
Seized by panic, he hits the brakes hard.
The tires go into a skid. He clutches the wheel, regaining control, bringing the car to a stop.
Heart racing, gasping air into his lungs, he braces himself for whoever is going to approach and rap on the window.
Nobody does.
Looking up, he sees that it wasn’t a headlamp after all. Just the moon, big and round, beaming through the trees up ahead.
But what if it had been a hiker?
Or a forest ranger?
What if they’d come up to the car? What would he have done?
Run them down? Driven on past? Stopped and talked to them as if nothing was amiss?
He’s wearing the gloves and coveralls now. Would that tip them off that he’s up to something?
He has no idea, and he doesn’t want to find out. He’s beginning to think this was a big mistake.
Logically, at this hour of the night, no one is out hiking. There’s no real reason for rangers to patrol this lonely stretch, is there?
Maybe.
Maybe he should choose another place.
But where?
He remembers the girl in the river.
She was the first.
She was unconscious when he heaved her over the bridge rail into the murky water far below. He figured the gators would devour her.
They did not.
He heard the news on the radio a few days later.
“Authorities believe that the remains of a young woman pulled from the Savannah River yesterday may be college student Sienna Harmon, reported missing last week and believed to have taken her own life.”
He’d been careless. Lucky for him, he wasn’t caught.
He’s learned a lot since then.
Today, he was careless once more. He hadn’t meant for it to happen.
Not to her.
She was simply the wrong girl in the wrong place at the wrong time; the girl who came along just after he read the last-minute email from the other girl, the one who was running late and had to cancel.
It’s a shame, but things happen. All he can do is get rid of her up here, where no one will ever find her. Or at least, not for a long, long time.
After all, they still haven’t found Junia Stanton.