Darcy avoids the real reason they’re here, but the truth sits in the corner like a corpse gathering flies. The stalker. She prays she’s wrong, that Laurie’s stalker is a shy guy who can’t bring himself to ask for her phone number, and the painting on the house is an elaborate prank by someone who reads too many Internet news sites and craves attention. Not likely.
After they finish eating, Jennifer drops a dollar in the tip jar and eyes the picture of the missing girl again. Orange and yellow leaves drop from the trees and bury lawns as they drive through the town’s residential area. The houses become stunted and ramshackle, and soon the population thins and the pine forest leans over the road from both sides like giants massing for war.
Laurie’s house sits five miles outside of town in a grassy meadow, flanked by forest for as far as the eye can see. Humpbacked, tree-smothered hills tower toward a gray, low hanging sky that threatens rain. Despite the calendar, the eastern United States is under the grip of an early winter. A blizzard cripples New England, and Virginia has a three-inch coating of snow and ice. Clutching her jacket shut against the chill, it isn’t difficult for Darcy to imagine flurries on the horizon. But what most unsettles Darcy is the isolation. There’s a difference between Genoa Cove and the outskirts of Scarlet River. Back home, people heard if you screamed.
Inside the vale, a perpetual wind sets the tall grass in motion. To Darcy, the meadow appears to laugh at her as she stops the car in the dirt driveway and opens the trunk. The fresh coat of white against the back of the house seems out-of-place amid the faded, chipping paint. Darcy can’t decide if the smiley face is bleeding through the new paint or her subconscious fills in the details.
Laurie, thirty and carrying a few extra pounds on her hips from when Darcy last saw her, shields her face from the wind and pulls blonde curls behind her ear. Darcy’s cousin is an unsolvable puzzle. Though high cheekbones and curves in all the right places made her popular during high school, she’s a loner, a recluse, the product of her parents’ messy divorce. That unwelcome surprise blew up in Laurie’s face when she was twelve and forever altered the trajectory of her life.
Laurie works for a small accounting firm in Scarlet River, a creative use of her theater arts degree, but she lives where the closest neighbor is a half-mile up the road. One look at the little house in the meadow and Darcy might assume Laurie is a survivalist living off the land, waiting for the apocalypse to hit. But she’s the furthest thing from a survivalist. Instead of chopping wood from the acres of forest, she has a man deliver firewood for the stove every November, and a jumbled cord of unstacked pieces grows out of the earth. Mother Nature rained on the wood the last two weeks, and if Darcy doesn’t help Laurie stack the wood soon, the elements will dump a few inches of snow on the pile by New Year’s.
“I have food in the house, you know?” Laurie says, gazing at the bags.
“Not enough to feed two teenagers.”
The bag of canned goods rips on the stairs, and Darcy sets the groceries on the kitchen table a second before the paper shreds.
The familiar scents of ash and coals waft off the walls, ingrained in the furniture and rugs. A small fire in the stove blankets the chill as the rained-on fuel pops and snarls.
A car horn announces Agent Hensel and Hunter. Darcy’s relationship with her former FBI partner is complex and tangled. While he’s intent on protecting Darcy and her kids, he’s hypercritical of Darcy’s dependency on the anti-anxiety medication. Having Hensel under the same roof will feel like living with an overbearing parent, an experience the forty-one-year-old Darcy doesn’t wish to revisit, but having a law enforcement agent watching their backs is a luxury she appreciates.
Darcy peeks out the door window and watches Hunter carry two shopping bags while Hensel wields a pair of hunting rifles over his shoulder. Darcy doesn’t like to see Hunter near a weapon, but circumstances require the kids learn to handle guns.
The wind rattles the panes and whistles over the roof. Scarlet River celebrated an elongated summer until Thanksgiving, but the chill of winter’s approach has followed the Gellar family from North Carolina.
Hunter shivers and blows on his hands inside the kitchen. Though he turned eighteen a week before Halloween, the wiry, blonde teen wears a child’s face as though he’s regressing. Unlike Jennifer, Hunter has no qualms over leaving North Carolina. He never fit with the elite, entitled students of Genoa Cove High School, though he left his girlfriend, Bethany, behind. He misses Bethany, and Darcy suspects Hunter calls and texts her. Long-distance relationships rarely work, especially among teenagers, and Darcy fears it’s a matter of time before Bethany meets someone new and breaks Hunter’s heart.
“How was the store?” Darcy asks Hunter as he sets the bags down.
“Wicked cool. They had stuff you’d never see in Genoa Cove. Agent Hensel says maybe we can go camping next summer.”
Hensel suppresses a grin when Darcy looks at him from the corner of her eye. Hunter hasn’t had a father figure in his life since Tyler’s fatal aneurysm, but as much as a camping trip would please her, they won’t be taking any trips as long as Michael Rivers is alive. When Darcy doesn’t voice her approval, Hunter shares a look with Jennifer and drops his shoulders. Both kids’ consternations grow each day Darcy forbids them to use social media. Too many people watch Darcy’s every move, and some of those people have bad intentions. She follows a website dedicated to serial killers, and though the admins delete the threads, new posts update site visitors with the locations of Darcy and her children. Some are wrong and the result of hearsay and conjecture. Others are frighteningly accurate.
Jennifer isn’t happy when Hensel ushers the kids outside. Surrounded by open land, Hensel can teach Hunter and Jennifer to fire a rifle without leaving Laurie’s property. As Darcy stocks the cupboards, she watches through the window. She winces when Jennifer, under Hensel’s watchful eye, bumbles the rifle in shaking hands and aims the muzzle at the sky.
“Take the kids back to North Carolina,” Laurie says, standing on tiptoes to shove the pasta onto the top shelf of the pantry.
“Genoa Cove isn’t our home anymore. I already put the house on the market.”
“That was fast.”
Darcy shrugs.
“There’s nothing for us in Genoa Cove except bad memories.”
“What about school?”
“The kids won’t fall behind in their studies. I’m homeschooling them until we find another town.”
Laurie sets the tomato paste down and levels her eyes with Darcy’s.
“Don’t kid yourself. How long do you plan to stay once you find a new town? Weeks, months? I don’t understand why you keep running. The killer is dead, Darcy.”
Darcy tilts her head at the new coat of paint outside the dining-room window.
“It’s a practical joke,” Laurie says, rolling her eyes. “Some idiot figured out I’m related to you and drew a stupid face on my house. The sheriff isn’t worried.”
“Your sheriff wasn’t in North Carolina to investigate the Darkwater Cove murders, so his opinion means squat. And anyway, Sheriff Tipton won’t take my calls.”
Stubborn, the women work in silence until the first gunshot explodes in the backyard. Darcy sets her work aside and expects Hunter to be the one holding the rifle. But it’s Jennifer. The girl’s mouth gapes open in an oh-my-God-did-I-do-that expression. She grins, shocked but a little proud. Then when reality sets in, her face twists in abject terror, and she holds the rifle at arm’s length as though the muzzle grew teeth.