Page 16 of The Last to Vanish
I waited for him to look first, in case he didn’t think of it.
He quickly circled the bed, reached his fingers inside the wood cavity, his fingers coming out coated in dust and black glue. It was empty. But now we knew: these posts weren’t firmly secured. A new possibility suddenly revealed itself.
Trey went around to the second post and pulled off the oval top with little effort—empty—and then the third, while I stood there, frozen and useless.
His hand stilled inside the third cavity. He stood on his toes, his breathing coming too fast as he peered inside before revealing something small and black inside the palm of his fist.
There was a moment I thought: bug, cockroach, something gross but safer, in the long run. He held his arm in my direction, slowly unfurling his fist: a small, black, rectangular square. It was a flash drive.
We stared at each other, and I knew we both believed that this had once belonged to Landon West.
IT TOOK FIVE MINUTESfor Trey to realize he had nothing to read it with. His laptop, which he’d dug out of his bag, didn’t have a port to read this flash drive directly, and he didn’t have the right attachment. He leaned over the desk, cursing at the screen, while I hovered behind him, picking the side of my nail, wondering what to do, what to say.
“It might not be his,” I said.
But all he did was shoot an incredulous look over his shoulder. I imagined him leaving. Going back home. Taking whatever that rectangular drive contained with him—any answers, out of reach.
“I think the computer at reception might have a port,” I said, breaking the silence.
Trey straightened, staring back at me, like he was deciding something. Then he nodded quickly, the idea gathering momentum. “Okay, yes, let’s go.”
Outside the cabin, he led the way down the lit path, and I could suddenly see a thousand possibilities branching out in front of me. A thousand directions this could go.
Inside, the lobby was empty, the steady flame in the gas fireplace the only movement. I brought the computer to life, then waited while it prompted me for a password.
Trey took the hint and stepped back, so I signed in and held out my hand for the flash drive.
My hand shook as I slid it in, and I was half-surprised when a drive popped up on the screen in front of me. For the briefest second, I considered wiping it clean. Maybe the answers we searched for were not the ones we wanted.
But then Trey leaned in close, and I clicked it open. A passwordbox appeared, and Trey sighed just next to my ear. “Try 9-8-7-6. It was his password for everything growing up, and I swear he never changed it. He’s always been a creature of habit.”
I entered the code, and the box disappeared, displaying the contents of the drive. “Holy shit,” he said. Any question whether this belonged to Landon West was gone.
Inside, there was a single Word document, unnamed. And a folder, labeled with one word, in all caps.
FARRAH.
I sucked in a breath. Farrah Jordan. The woman with the dark hair and haunted expression, whose icy gaze had stared back at me from every frost-coated storefront window in town, three years earlier.
I closed my eyes, the room spinning, time splintering.
Most people who went digging through the history of Cutter’s Pass started at the beginning, with the flashiest story. The Fraternity Four. As if that case could solve all the rest, in simple succession.
But new cases brought new information, and Landon West must’ve understood the trick. You had to start at the most recent, the freshest trail—and work back.
“Oh my god,” Trey said, his face so close to mine.
I watched as something settled onto his features: A sobering. A sharpening.
I knew that look—it was foolish and reckless and too far gone. I’d seen that look reflected in each person who came here with a new theory, a new spark. There was no going back now. I saw it in his eyes.
He believed he could find him.
He believed he could find them all.
PART 2
Farrah Jordan
