Chapter 6
Hannah
For a few moments, I stay right where I am. The old refrigerator hums in the kitchen. Somewhere outside, an insect drones lazily in the heat. Leaves whisper against one another.
Eventually, I lock the door and lean my forehead against the wood.
Torin’s gone.
Which is fine.
I wonder how long it’ll take him to deal with the truck.
I push away from the door.
The cabin is already warming up. Sunlight pours through the windows, turning the wooden floorboards honey-gold.
I cross to the nearest window and wrestle it open.
Hot air rolls inside. Not exactly the refreshing mountain breeze I was hoping for.
I open another anyway, then another. By the time I’ve worked my way around the cabin, a faint current of air is moving through at last, carrying the scent of pine and sunbaked earth. Better.
I wander back into the kitchen. Torin’s mug is still sitting beside the sink. I stare at it for a second, then pick it up. The plate goes into the dishwasher. The mug follows. I wipe down the counter. When the kitchen is spotless, I run out of excuses.
I collect the folder from my backpack and set it on the dining table.
Months of work. Stolen moments in Dad’s office, locked doors and screenshots taken when nobody was looking.
My father would have a heart attack if he could see it sitting here.
I smile at the thought and pull out my laptop.
While it boots, I open the folder and flip through the photographs, incident reports and witness statements. Missing women. Dead women. Women who supposedly wandered into bear territory alone.
I know every face by now.
The first photograph shows a smiling brunette standing beside a canoe. Twenty-three years old. Missing for four years.
According to the official report, she ignored warnings and hiked into bear territory alone.
Except she’d texted a friend an hour before she disappeared. She was going to meet someone.
The friend’s statement never made it into the final file.
I turn the page and find another woman, another death, another file with pieces missing.
My father always said there was nothing suspicious about any of it. A freak accident here, an animal attack there. Women who happened to disappear in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Enough coincidences to fill an entire folder.
I look at their faces for another moment, then turn to my laptop.
No Wi-Fi.
I click the network icon again.
No networks appear.
“Great.”
I find the router on a bookshelf in the living room. One of the lights is dark. I unplug it, wait a few seconds, then plug it back in and watch the lights blink through their sequence.
The same one stays dark.
I try my laptop again.
Still no connection.
My phone isn’t any better. I hold it up, walk toward one of the open windows and watch the top corner of the screen.
No signal.
Torin’s number is in there now.
Not that I can do anything with it.
I set the phone beside the laptop and look at the folder again.
The router isn’t coming back to life, which means I’m stuck here without internet until Professor Bennett gets home in two weeks.
That was always the plan. Get to the cabin, stay out of sight until he comes back, then show him everything and let him help me figure out where to take it.
There has to be someone my father can’t get to—a journalist, an editor, state investigators. Someone who can look at what I found and make sure it doesn’t disappear. I just don’t know who that person is, and Bennett will.
I knew when I came here that I’d have to wait for him. Last night, two weeks sounded manageable.
Today, with all these women staring up at me from the table, it feels like forever.
I pick up my phone again, but I still don’t have a signal.
I wonder how Torin’s getting on with the truck, whether he’s found somewhere to put it—and whether he’s still coming back.
I catch myself.
Of course he is.
I put the phone down.
Then, a few seconds later, glance at it again anyway.
I turn back to the laptop.
Fine. No internet doesn’t mean I can’t work.
I open the document I’ve been using to keep track of the cases and spend the next hour going through everything again. I add dates to the timeline, clean up some of my notes and cross-reference the paper files against the copies on my computer.
It’s useful work, technically, but after a couple of hours, I’m sick of looking at it. I close the laptop and push my chair back.
Outside, the sun is high over the clearing. I step onto the porch, hoping it might be cooler out there, but the heat has settled over everything. Even the shade beneath the pines looks hot.
I sit on the top step anyway.
For a while, I watch a squirrel race across the clearing and disappear into the undergrowth. Dragonflies hover above a patch of wildflowers, and somewhere deeper in the trees a woodpecker is hammering away with impressive determination.
The forest doesn’t care that I’m impatient. I’ve spent months sneaking around, collecting evidence whenever I could, always feeling like I was running out of time. Then yesterday everything exploded, and I actually ran.
Now I’ve made it somewhere safe and apparently my next heroic move is to sit on a porch for thirteen days.
I tip my head back against the railing.
There has to be something I can do in the meantime.
Nothing useful comes to mind.
Eventually the heat drives me back inside.
I wander around for a minute before stopping in front of one of Bennett’s bookshelves.
There are hundreds of books.
Of course there are.
History. Politics. Biography. Several shelves devoted to journalism, because apparently the man doesn’t get enough of it at work.
Then I find the novels.
I smile.
Bennett was forever trying to get me to read more fiction.
If all you read is journalism, you’ll end up thinking journalism is the most important thing in the world.
I’d pointed out that he taught journalism.
Exactly. It’s a profession, Hannah. Not a personality.
I can practically hear him saying it now.
I can’t remember the last time I did anything that wasn’t connected to Dad, Cade or the investigation. Even before Dad found out what I was working on, every spare hour went into another records request, another interview, another name I needed to chase down.
Maybe Bennett had a point.
God help me.
I pull a novel from the shelf and carry it to the couch.
The windows are open now, and a warm breeze moves through the room, stirring the curtains. I stretch out, careful of my ribs, and open the book.
For the first few pages, my mind keeps wandering back to the folder on the table.
Then, gradually, I stop thinking about it.
I read another page, then another.
The book slides off my chest and hits the floor.
I jerk awake.
For a moment I lie there blinking at the ceiling, trying to remember when I fell asleep. Then an engine rumbles somewhere outside.
I’m on my feet before I’m fully awake.
Shit. The evidence.
It’s still spread across the dining table in plain sight.
I grab the nearest stack as tires crunch into the clearing. There’s no time to get everything back into the folder and put it away.
I hurry to the window and peer out. A truck has pulled up outside. Then the driver’s door opens and Torin climbs out.
My shoulders drop. He came back.
I stay there for a moment, watching as he reaches into the cab for something. His T-shirt is dark with sweat across the chest and shoulders, and there’s a streak of grease along one forearm. His hair has partly escaped whatever was holding it back, leaving a few strands hanging around his face.
He looks hot and tired and unfeasibly good.
And I’m ridiculously pleased to see him.
Torin glances toward the cabin.
I duck back instinctively.
Then immediately feel like an idiot. He knows I’m here.
By the time I open the door, Torin is almost at the porch.
He breaks into a smile when he sees me.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
His gaze moves over my face, taking in the bruises before coming back to my eyes.
“How’re you feeling?”
“Better than this morning.”
“You look it.”
There’s something about the simple approval in his voice that makes me absurdly pleased.
I step onto the porch. “How did it go?”
“With the truck?”
“No, your afternoon at the spa.”
He grins, rubbing at his beard. “Pretty good. Facial was disappointing.”
I laugh. “Only pretty good?”
“Massage saved it.”
“And somewhere in between all that, you dealt with my truck?”
“It’s handled.”
He turns and heads back toward his own truck.
I follow him down the steps. “Handled how?”
“A friend of mine owns a repair shop. We got it off the tree and towed it over there. It’s inside, out of sight from the road.”
Relief loosens something in my chest. “And your friend?”
“Knows the owner wants the truck kept quiet. That’s it.”
“You didn’t tell him about me?”
“Nope.”
I let out a breath. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
Then he reaches into the bed of his truck and pulls out my license plates.
“Almost forgot these.”
I take them from him. “Where am I supposed to put them?”
“Somewhere your father won’t find them.”
I look around at several thousand acres of forest. “I think I can manage that.”
Torin follows me back inside and glances around the cabin. “So, what’ve you been doing all afternoon?”
“Trying to work, mostly. The internet’s down and my phone still has no signal, so that didn’t go particularly well.”
He glances toward the router on the bookshelf. “Any idea what’s wrong with it?”
“No. I unplugged it and plugged it back in. That exhausted my technical expertise.”
He wanders over to the bookshelf and crouches in front of it. After checking the cables, he pulls one out, pushes it firmly back into place and watches the lights for a few seconds.
“Do you actually know how to fix it?” I ask.
“Not really.”
I laugh. “Glad I asked.”
He fiddles with it for another minute anyway, but the missing light never comes on. Eventually he straightens up. “Could be the service rather than the router. I can ask around.”
“Thanks. It’s not urgent. Bennett will be back in thirteen days, and I knew I might have to wait for him anyway.”
Torin nods. “So, what did you do when you gave up on work?”
“I sat outside for a while, then found one of Bennett’s novels and read for a bit.”
Torin glances at the couch. “And took a nap.”
I eye him. “How do you know that?”
He gestures toward his cheek. “You’ve got a cushion mark on your face.”
My hand flies to my cheek.
“You could’ve mentioned that earlier.”
“I could’ve.”
“And you chose not to?”
Torin grins. “I was enjoying the view.”
I roll my eyes, but I can feel myself smiling.
“Anyway,” I say, “apparently this is my life for the next thirteen days. Reading, sleeping and occasionally checking whether the internet has miraculously fixed itself.”
Torin looks out through the open windows. “You want to go for a swim?”
“A swim?”
“There’s a lake near the lodge. Nice spot, and the water will be warm.”
I glance at the folder on the table.
“Actually, yeah. I’d love to.”
Torin smiles.
Then I remember. “I don’t have a swimsuit.”
“Alexandria will have one you can borrow. You’re about the same size.”
“Who’s Alexandria?”
“My brother’s mate.”
I look at him doubtfully. “And we’re the same size?”
“Pretty much. She’s a tiny human like you.”
I look at him.
“Your brother’s mate is human?”