Page 39 of The Last to Vanish
She shifted her jaw back and forth. “Do you think someone took it?”
The only thing of value inside were the credit card copies; someone would’ve had to know what they were looking for. I blinked at her slowly. “Is anything else missing?”
Her eyes widened, and my stomach plummeted. I knew we had the same worry: the keys; the safe. I opened the cabinets and my shoulders relaxed—the safe was locked and secure.
“Looks like everything’s still here,” I said. Luckily, Georgia and I each had a copy of the key to the safe, and it seemed I’d left that one secure, at least.
“I probably just misplaced it,” I said. Though I couldn’t imagine where it could be.
“Or someone thought it was an extra guidebook,” Georgia offered, biting the side of her thumbnail.
I nodded, wanting it to be true.
But I couldn’t shake the feeling of someone watching me in the night. Who had noticed when I’d left the lobby unsecured. Who had rifled through things while I’d been falling apart downstairs.
I thought, once more, of Trey West. Maybe he was more similar to his brother than even he knew. Digging and digging, in need of answers, by any means necessary.
“Sorry to wake you this morning,” Georgia said.
“I was up. Just have some personal errands to run today.”
I left it at that, heading back for the apartment, where I did a cursory search of the surfaces, even though I knew the binder wouldn’t be there. I’d barely made it past the front closet last night.
Then I hooked Alice’s bag onto my back, grabbed my keys, and headed for my car.
I slipped the bag into the back seat of the sedan, the inside stale and stifling. I felt too hot, like I was hungover, even though I’d only had the one glass of wine.
I turned the key in the ignition, but all that happened was a faint, low-pitched buzzing. I leaned my head back against the headrest, squeezed my eyes shut. I tried the ignition again but got the same result. The engine, as long predicted, was dead.
“Son of a bitch,” I said, slamming the front door behind me, pacing back and forth beside the car.
Georgia’s midsize SUV was parked beside mine. I’d never driven it before, but I didn’t think she’d mind. I strode up the incline to the front entrance, where Georgia was currently helping a guest check out.
I slipped in beside her at the registration desk, caught her eye, reached my hand into her purse, and pulled out her keys.I need to borrow your car, I mouthed.
Her face remained frozen, like she couldn’t process what was happening. “Oh,” she said, one hand in my direction.
“Be right back,” I said, and she smiled, running her fingers through her short hair, turning back to the guests.
Her key had an automated lock, and the car beeped in the drive. I moved Alice’s bag from the back of my car to Georgia’s.
I had to see Cory, and on a Saturday morning at this hour, I’d place money on him still being asleep. He ran his tours late, stayed at the tavern until closing. Avoided downtown during the weekly farmers’ market. I didn’t call first. It was best if I caught him unprepared.
CHAPTER 12
THE DOWNTOWN OF CUTTER’SPass on a summer weekend morning looked like a page out of a storybook. Streets carved out of a dip in the landscape, mountains rising up in the distance, trees filling in from all sides. There was an amber glow to the storefronts, still closed at this hour. And the town green was transformed for the weekly farmers’ market, tables and booths set up in a mazelike grid, foot traffic spilling over into the surrounding streets, children playing tag on the sidewalks.
I navigated through the downtown with my foot over the brake, until crossing the bridge at the far end of the grid, just past the welcome center, on the way out of town. Some of that water, I knew, came from Shallow Falls. All of it came from the mountain.
Beyond the campgrounds and the stables, the roads were wooded and residential, rising up in parallel tracks along the hillside, mostly with second homes, small but expensive rental properties that could be booked by the week, and a few locally owned plots that had been held on to from earlier generations. Some of the owners continued to hold on to them by renting out the upper or lower floors to visitors.
But most of the permanent residents lived just beyond this area, where the road meandered into the woods, set back in their own enclave of trees.
Cory lived about a mile outside of the downtown, on one such plot of land, with a driveway that crossed over a narrow stream, wood beams spanning the gap. I was never quite sure they were built to hold a vehicle, but everything about Cory was a leap of faith.
His place was an old ranch that he’d purchased from the Langshore family after Nora Langshore had passed, and the younger generations had all left Cutter’s Pass, not that anyone was surprised by that. There were people you knew would stay, and people you knew would leave. And there were others who left and returned, like Celeste—as if she had found no match for this place and brought back the things she loved from the outside with her.
Cory was always going to stay, I had no doubt. He lived with his two dogs, Billie and Tuck, both part retriever, and I could hear the dogs already barking as I turned off the engine of Georgia’s car. Billie had just been a puppy when we’d met, but Cory often brought them both into town. Whenever he was on shift, those dogs had a permanent spot at the back corner of the outdoor patio, water bowls left out, eager for a head rub from a customer.
