Page 19 of The Last to Vanish
“Just—” I held my hands out, trying to get him to calm down, think things through. There were other possibilities; it didn’t have to be true.
I imagined, instead, Landon West cleaning up before he went hiking for the day. Protective of his work. Worried, more, about someone snooping through his things, uncovering what he was working on.
“You said he was secretive about his work,” I said. “Right?”
Trey tilted his head. “There’s a difference between not telling your colleagues what you’re working on and hiding a flash drive inside a piece of furniture in a shitty cabin in the middle of nowhere.” A pause. “No offense.” His words were starting to slur, and I remembered the empty bottles of wine, the state of his room, the threat of danger lingering just under the surface of him.
“Look, everyone knew he was working on a new angle into Cutter’s Pass. And here it is.” I gestured at the computer screen with the unfinished document currently front and center. “There’s nothing here, really. Nothing he would need to be worried about. This isn’t new information.” Other than the folder marked with Farrah’s name—a tip. A way in.
“Or,” he said, “someone could’ve gone through his room, taken his journal and phone, and this was the only thing they missed.”
There were only so many of us who had access to that cabin. He seemed to be forgetting that he was accusing me, just as much as anyone else. If this was what he believed, if this was what he told someone, I knew exactly how the investigation would go: Celeste, Georgia, me. Those were the options. There would be no escaping it.
He started pacing again, staring at the screen of his cell. “It’s like we’re in a fucking dead zone,” he mumbled.
“You can use the lobby phone,” I said, picking up the receiver from its spot at the reception desk. But, once more, it wasn’t connecting. I replaced it in the cradle, knew I’d have to call Harris in the morning to check the lines for damage. I took out my cell instead. “I can usually get service in the office. The sheriff’s office is closed, but I can probably reach him, if that’s who you want.” I’d have to go through Rochelle, or Cory, but I could do it. A reminder—to him, to myself—that I was a part of this place. That there was a web binding us all together.
But Trey just frowned. “I don’t know…” The purpose seemed to be draining from him, like he had only just realized the hour. Maybe he was thinking of calling his parents, a girlfriend, a friend—?“The FBI has jurisdiction on the Appalachian Trail, right?”
I cleared my throat, remembering the waves of investigators who had been involved in the disappearances in the past, the way their presence had altered everything, changing your perspective, your behavior. “That,” I said, gesturing toward the computer, the photos that we’d just seen, “isn’t the Appalachian.” Maybe Farrah had made it that far, but there was no evidence of it. No, this was still just a trail in Cutter’s Pass, a town famous for disappearing people.
“Give me a minute to think,” he said, shaking his head, stumbling into a bench beside the fireplace.
A noise from upstairs jolted us both. My gaze went to the second-story balcony, a shadow stretching and disappearing down the hall, which served as a reminder that this place was full of guests, and it was nearing midnight, and Trey was on the cusp of making a scene.
Trey stood, stared out the windows, into the dark. “That place, in the photo. That’s where you’re taking me in the morning, right?”
Were we really still doing this? How had this discovery notaltered his plans? But maybe the images only tightened his resolve. Confirming the belief that his brother had set out on that trail, and now Farrah Jordan was leading us to the same spot. A connection; apossibility. It was the one certain path he could continue to follow.
“Yes,” I said, after a pause, knowing there wouldn’t be anything there after all this time. Nothing solid for him to bring to his family, or the police, or the press, or wherever he was planning to go. Visitors never seemed to notice that the mountain range was a living thing all on its own. The landscape was constantly shifting, purging itself of what had existed before, showing you onlythismoment and what it wanted you to see. A season later might as well have been a year. A year might as well have been a decade. Time moved faster up there.
Trey circled back to the reception desk, where he removed the flash drive, storing it in the pocket of his pants. “I just feel like…” He trailed off. “Look, the police had their shot four months ago, and did absolutely nothing.”
He wasn’t here. Of course it wasn’tnothing—they combed over this place, over all the steps that had brought Landon West to the Passage Inn, searching his apartment, his car, that cabin. But the sheriff probably hadn’t made the best first impression on Trey at happy hour, showing up unannounced, catching him off guard. I could understand why Trey distrusted his intentions.
“If you want to go, it has to be early,” I said. A pointed remark, that he should go back to his cabin.
“Okay,” he said, growing more confident. “Tomorrow, we go to the falls. If Farrah took these pictures, and my brother had them, then he must’ve gone out there, too, don’t you think? He must’ve wanted to see it for himself.”
We had all searched these places, back when it counted. But it couldn’t hurt to go again. The sheriff would be sleeping anyway,and this would not count as an emergency. Contacting him at this hour would, however, spread news faster than I could stop it.
“Six a.m., then,” I said. “You should get some sleep.”
“Okay, yeah.” Even though I knew he wouldn’t. Neither of us would.
“He was looking for them,” he said. “Six missing visitors,” he mumbled, hand in his pocket, where I imagined it clenched around the flash drive, his brother’s words. Trying to chase his thoughts, follow them to the right path. Tell us what he was trying to say. To warn.
I didn’t bother correcting him. That his brother made seven.
I waited until the front door fell shut behind him, and his footsteps faded into the distance, before saving the copied images in a password-protected folder with my name.
The truth is—
The truth is, I felt a pull, too. Farrah, gesturing for me to follow, from the other side of the dark window, red scarf blowing in the night wind. Who knew where she might lead? All these strangers who had come so close. All these people who could’ve been us.
CHAPTER 7
AFTER TWO A.M., MYsenses were on high alert. Unnerved, even, by the bugs that flew into the bedroom windows at night, imagining, instead, someone gently tapping. I kept my eyes trained to the dark, the stars hidden behind the clouds tonight. And then: a light flickering in the distance, on the other side of the rocky outcrop just outside my window. I bolted upright in bed. A flashlight? More likely, I decided, a path light, slowly dying, on the other side of the rocks.
