Chapter 39
Kori kept her voice low as she started. “Mackenzie gets a message from an unknown number. Come alone and come now. Then she goes hiking, telling her neighbor she’s going on a five-day backpacking trip starting on Lost Hollow Trail. She went willingly. At least at first.”
“We don’t know what the message means or who it was from.”
“No, we don’t. Was the sender planning to meet her? What did the trail have to do with this?”
“The sender could have been someone she trusted and not necessarily someone threatening her.”
She thought about the text. The urgency of it. Everything depends on it. “You’re right. It could have been.”
Wyatt nodded slowly.
“Then her apartment was broken into,” Kori continued. “It wasn’t necessarily a robbery. The man inside seemed to be looking for something specific. The second laptop, most likely—the one with the trail camera footage. Or the journals, which appear to be missing.”
“Why did she even have that footage on her laptop? Did you hear back from her work? Did they say anything?”
“I’m glad you asked,” Kori said. “I actually did get an email from her boss. He said he doesn’t know anything about the trail cameras, that she was working mostly for some companies out of New York and Chicago.
He did mention that she requested a week off work for this hike. She used vacation time.”
Wyatt leaned forward now, his elbows on the table. “What about the symbol? The one on the necklace in her backpack?”
“It’s connected. We just don’t know how.”
Just then, Wyatt’s phone rang. “It’s that anthropology professor I emailed earlier.”
“Please, answer.”
He nodded and put the phone to his ear. She couldn’t wait to hear what this woman was telling him.
As soon as Wyatt ended the call, Kori said, “Well?”
“That was a very interesting conversation. She said the symbol is consistent with imagery used in certain anti-government survivalist movements.”
“That fits,” Kori murmured.
“It does. The burning tree represents what some people might call a purification—the old system destroyed so something new can grow in its place. The circle means self-sufficiency. Separation from the corrupt world outside.”
“Everything is starting to make sense. Thomas Paine. The right of ordinary people to reject a government they consider tyrannical.” Kori shook her head. “Whoever is running this operation built an ideology around it.”
Kori sat with that a moment. She thought about Mackenzie—grieving, unmoored, looking for meaning after their parents died and Kori had cut her off. She thought about what Daisy had said: She was tired of working. Her life needed more meaning.
She needed to talk all of this through.
“So let’s say there is a group out in the forest,” she started. “Maybe Thomas Paine is their hero. Maybe that symbol represents their mantra of being separate from the government. Maybe Mackenzie was monitoring these trail cams when she recognized someone.”
“Then maybe she started investigating on her own,” Wyatt continued. “And by the time she realized who she was dealing with, it was too late. They grabbed her.”
“But why that text message?”
He frowned and shook his head. “I don’t know.”
A server passed nearby, and both of them went quiet until the footsteps faded.
Kori continued. “Pete must have been selling these people supplies. They’d need them to live off grid in the mountains. But in the process, maybe he saw something he shouldn’t have.”
“You’re probably right,” Wyatt said. “But there’s also the man we found dead out there. We still don’t know for sure that he’s connected.”
“You’ve got to assume he is, right? But you didn’t get any hits back in the system from his prints? There are no missing person reports?”
Wyatt shook his head. “No, there’s nothing.”
“That’s unfortunate.”
“Then there’s the woman from the trail.”
“She escaped from the compound. She’d been out there long enough to be near death.” Kori stopped and looked at Wyatt. “She confirmed Mackenzie is inside.”
“And that she’s alive,” Wyatt said.
“Alive.” The word felt like an anchor Kori needed to hold onto.
Kori looked at her hands on the table. The restaurant had thinned out around them while they’d been talking. Only a few tables remained occupied, and the server was refilling condiment holders at the far end of the room.
She was about to say something else when Wyatt’s phone buzzed against the table.
He glanced at the screen, and something shifted in his posture. It wasn’t exactly alarm, but there was something there—an alertness.
“It’s Micah.” He answered. “What do you have?”
Kori watched his face.
She saw the moment it changed.
His jaw set. His eyes lifted to hers. Something quick and unreadable moved through his expression before it settled into focus.
“When?” he said.
A pause.
“How many units?”
Another pause.
“Kori and I are forty minutes out. We’ll head back now.” He ended the call and put the phone into his pocket.
Kori didn’t wait. “What happened?”
“State police moved up the timeline.” He was already standing up and reaching for his jacket. “They didn’t want to give this group any more time. They’re raiding the compound. Right now.”
The word now landed in her chest like something physical.
Kori was on her feet before she’d made a conscious decision to stand. “Mackenzie’s in there.”
“We don’t know that for certain. They may have moved people.” His voice stayed even, but his eyes were on hers. “Kori.”
She looked at him.
“We can’t go in,” he said carefully. “This is a law enforcement operation. There are armed individuals on federal land. They have a protocol to follow.”
“I know,” she said. “But we should be close by in case they find her.”
Wyatt held her gaze a moment longer, a private calculation moving behind his eyes.
Then he pulled out his wallet, left some cash on the table, and looked at her. “Let’s go.”
Thunder was already at his side.
They walked out into the cold together, and Kori looked up at the dark sky above the mountains—the same mountains where her sister had been for eight days now.
She didn’t pray for a particular outcome. She didn’t trust herself to know what to ask for.
She simply pleaded with God the whole way to the truck.