Page 18 of The Last to Vanish
“It’s hers,” he said, and I nodded once. I imagined her surrounded by trees, tipping the camera upward—
Trey clicked forward again, and this time, my mouth started to form a word—Wait, what—as the landscape slowly gained context. A snowy trail, seemingly untouched, and I heard the crunch of ice and snow beneath my boots. The next photo: a curve of a rock wall, icicles hanging from the grooves, and I felt the cold texture of the stone ledge under my fingers. Next: a set of ice-slicked rock steps stretching down, and suddenly I knew exactly where we were.
“I know that place,” I said. My heart was racing. It was an identifiable location. Would be memorable to anyone who had done the hike. “It’s on the way to the falls.” It was the last stretch before the end of the trail, when the sound of the cascading water carried around the curve but still remained out of sight. The air cooled by the mist of water and the shade of the rock as the trail veered suddenly downward—a place of expectation.
Trey clicked forward again, but we had reached the end of the photos, the icy steps frozen on the screen.
I closed my eyes, just as a noise escaped my throat. After all this time, I had given up on answers. I’d given up on the idea that anything had been left behind at all.
Until now, there had been no evidence that Farrah Jordan had made it any farther than the trailhead by our property, but seeing these, I knew she’d gone on to the falls, at least. Maybe farther. And she’d documented it all before she’d disappeared.
I should’ve felt relief: It was the mountain, the weather,exposure, as we made sure to warn the visitors. It was not something intrinsically, disturbingly dangerous at the heart of the town itself.
Except. Someone had recovered this camera, and kept it hidden.
Somehow these photos had ended up on a flash drive in Landon West’s possession. A tip, sent to a journalist.A new angle into Cutter’s Pass.
Farrah Jordan’s stay in Cutter’s Pass had been short and succinct, her movements cataloged up to her last sighting at the trailhead. It was Celeste who was the last to officially see her, later that morning. We’d closed the inn that week for the renovations we put off throughout the past year, and she’d been checking the outside for signs of weather damage.
“What time,” I said. “What time were these taken.”
Trey clicked over to the file properties again, leaning closer to read the fine print. “January sixteenth,” he repeated. “At 3:06 p.m.”
I swallowed nothing. Dry air. Fear.
Celeste remembered her because Farrah Jordan didn’t seem dressed for a hike in the snow-covered woods. She wore a brown hat, or maybe it was gray. A red scarf. There was no backpack, just a small case, to protect her equipment; just that red scarf slung around her neck, dangling over her shoulder, and a camera in front of her face, angled toward the mountain.
Celeste figured she didn’t plan to go very far. Anyone would know better.Wecertainly knew better.
But of course, that was after. We didn’t know for several days that she was missing, that this was the last moment anyone would see her. By the time the sheriff called for her abandoned car to be towed, any footprints that marked her route had long since been buried under the fresh layer of snow that blanketed the ground the evening of her arrival and had continued to fall for days after.
I imagined her now, taking a step forward onto the trail, watching the view through the lens of the camera. Another step, crunching the snow, a track she had left for others to follow. A blanket of white sweeping in behind her, erasing it; any trace of her, vanishing.
Trey closed the folder, and my tentative grasp on Farrah went with it. He clicked on the unmarked Word document.
The first thing I noticed was the heading:A Notorious History
The document was just a few paragraphs long, and it seemed to be the introduction to whatever piece Landon West was planning to write. I leaned close to Trey, my eyes burning, as I skimmed the words. He listed the statistics of our town, from our geography to our population, capping it off with thesix visitorswho had gone missing. I did not miss the thinly veiled accusations within: the fact that the people in Cutter’s Pass wanted you to believe it was just coincidence.
But whichever person you are, believer or disbeliever, Cutter’s Pass welcomes you equally.
The truth is—
And then, midline, the document just stopped.
“What the hell?” Trey said, moving the cursor down, as if more of his brother’s thoughts would magically appear. A thought frustratingly unfinished, forever lost to us. “What was he starting to write? The truth iswhat?”
I read it again, searching for more. Trey must’ve been doing the same, because just as I finished, he muttered, “Goddammit, Landon. Of course he would just leave it unfinished.” As if this were all Landon’s fault, some selfishness that managed to carry over even now, never thinking of the people who might be searching for him.
I imagined Landon sitting at the small wooden desk in Cabin Four, a noise outside the window distracting him. I imagined a sudden knock on his door and Landon calling back,One moment, as he frantically removed the drive, hiding it away in the one place he thought no one would go looking. I imagined the precursors to danger, something that had gone horribly wrong.
Trey stepped back from the computer, took out his cell, and held it in front of him. “I can’t get any signal,” he said, crossing the lobby, holding his phone closer to the windows facing the mountain—which was the very wrong direction to try.
I quickly copied the contents of the flash drive onto the lobby computer, before Trey took it all back, out of reach. Things had a way of disappearing here, after all.
“Who are you calling?” I asked, my mind running through the sequence of events about to be unleashed once more: a thorough search of the cabin and maybe more, a series of interviews asking us to confirm and reconfirm each other’s statements—our memories harder to be sure of now, suspicion taking root in the gaps.
“I don’t…” He turned slowly to face me, corners of his mouth tipped down, like he hadn’t quite considered that point. “Hehidthis, Abby. He knew he was in danger.”
