She taps her thumb over the contact list on her phone, deciding whether the time is right to call Hunter. Laurie took him back to the hotel before Darcy returned from the farmer’s field. She wants to tell him the incredible news, that there’s a strong chance Jennifer is still alive. But that’s only because the FBI discovered another family’s daughter murdered.
Instead, she lifts the dinner plate, intent on hurling it against the wall. She stops herself at the last second and sets the plate aside.
Emily Vogt. She repeats the girl’s name as a mantra. She hates herself for being relieved the dead girl was anyone but her daughter. When Vescio’s contacts inside the prison beat Rivers within an inch of his life, she hopes he suffers worse than Emily did.
After taking a deep breath, she dials Hunter. He answers with a groggy voice.
“You doing okay now, Hunter?”
He sniffs and tells Laurie that Darcy is on the phone.
“Better than before.”
“I didn’t know about Bethany. It was wrong of me to keep you from talking to her.”
She pictures Hunter rubbing the sleep from his eye.
“I talked to Bethany a few times, so it’s not like I lost contact, but that was before I learned about Aaron and Sam.”
The admission doesn’t surprise her. Darcy had only wanted to prevent their enemies from tracking Hunter and Jennifer, but she’d pushed too hard.
“God, I can’t imagine what she’s going through. I knew Aaron Torres was a sociopath, but I never believed he was capable of this. How is she doing?”
“She’s seeing someone,” Hunter says with a yawn.
“A counselor?”
“Yeah, I guess that’s supposed to help. Her parents won’t accept Aaron did this, but that’s expected. They’re no better than Aaron.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“No?”
Darcy digs her nails into her palm.
“Hunter, leave Aaron and Sam to the courts. They’re going to jail for a long time. You can’t be there for Bethany if the police arrest you.”
Hunter pauses.
“Jennifer told you.”
“No, she didn’t need to. Besides, you shouted your intent in front of the FBI and County Sheriff today.”
“I wouldn’t have gone through with it.”
“You’re upset. So am I. But you need to be careful what you say around people.” He mumbles an apology Darcy barely comprehends. “I’ll make this right, Hunter. I’ll find Jennifer, and Michael Rivers will pay for what he put us through. Sorry I woke you up. Go back to sleep. It will be all right.”
Daylight wanes when Darcy leaves the sheriff’s department. She doesn’t tell Hensel and Tipton she’s leaving. They’ll only try to stop her. She tucks a dogeared Georgia road atlas under her arm and tosses it on the passenger seat with the pages open to the Millport-Scarlet River area. She studies her scribbled notes about the killer and copies key locations to the car’s GPS. Laurie’s house, Cass Park where Sandy Young disappeared and a stalker followed Laurie, the last scent the dogs caught of Jennifer near the falls, Maury’s Diner. One point sticks out from all the others: the discovery of Emily Vogt’s body. The farmer’s field lies five miles outside the clustered points. As if the killer dumped Vogt outside the town limits to throw them off. Or maybe she disgusted him, and he wanted her as far away from his comfort zone as he could deposit her without abandoning Sandy and Jennifer.
Checking her mirrors, Darcy confirms nobody saw her leave. She turns out of the parking lot and allows the GPS to direct her to Cass Park. It isn’t until she’s outside the bustle of Millport that Darcy notices how dark the road has become. She flips on the high beams, the headlights like flaming swords cutting into an endless abyss of dark. Farms pass to either side of the car, but she can’t see them, only the flare of a faraway light through a window. Silo shadows tower over the flat countryside. Nightfall over the great unknown reanimates her fear of the dark, and she reaches inside her bag and searches for the bottle of anti-anxiety medication, fingers prodding and searching. Before she leans on the crutch, she yanks her hand back and forces her fingers to curl over the steering wheel.
Darcy takes a deep breath, checks the mirrors again, and keeps inhaling and exhaling until the tremors subside. Lights at the outskirts of Scarlet River cannot settle her nerves. The town appears alien to her, secretive and dangerous. Even with the GPS as a guide, she turns herself around and gets herself lost after she passes the supermarket. Two blocks later, she finds Cass Park and pulls the Prius into the empty lot. A sign hanging off the fence warns visitors the park closes after dark, the new rule in effect since Sandy Young’s abduction. One point of contention eats at Darcy. The kidnapper abducted Sandy Young in broad daylight inside a busy park. Yet nobody heard a scream or noticed a man dragging a struggling girl into the parking lot. Somebody would have noticed a stranger stuffing a teenage girl into a vehicle. What if he didn’t drive to the park?
Before she shuts the car off, she zooms in on the GPS until the map pulls the trail into detail. The path meanders through a copse for a mile and loops around a pond, circling back to the playground equipment on the opposite side of the woods. But it’s the creek at the end of the copse that catches her attention, for the stream originates at a larger body of water. Dragging the map to the left, she follows the twisting creek for a few miles until it wraps around a ridge and merges with a river. The falls. A short walk from Laurie’s house.
She glances out at the night-shrouded park and back at the map, getting her bearings. Killing the engine, Darcy steps outside and edges the door shut.
Inside the park, Darcy passes the swings and jungle gym as the cool night bites at her ears. She shrugs her head into the hood of her sweatshirt and zips her coat, one hand buried in her pocket while the other holds the doused flashlight. The Glock rests on her hip. When she’s beyond view of the parking lot, Darcy switches the light on and sweeps the beam over the grass until she locates the trail.
As she walks, she pictures her surroundings from the killer’s perspective, a trick from her nascent days as a profiler. The trail seems too close to the park, too populated during daylight hours. A kidnapper wouldn’t feel comfortable here. A half-mile down the path, Darcy works the chill out of her bones. The medication calls her, promises to take away her fear, but she left the temptation inside the car. The trail narrows. Moonlight reflects off the pond’s surface.
When she hears the gurgling creek, she stops, concerned she walked too far. Shining the light through the trees, she searches until she spots water glinting fifty yards off the trail.
But there’s no safe path to reach the creek. Covered with deadly bramble and deep pockets of mud, the land drops off like a miniature cliff. Darcy stops at the edge of the trail and focuses the light on the thorns, which snake together undisturbed. The killer didn’t come this way.
An owl hoots. Darcy jumps and looks back the way she came. Night conceals the path, cuts her off from civilization. Paralleling the stream, Darcy follows the trail until the border thins and the land beside the path levels. Parting a wild shrub, she locates a grass and weed clearing that slopes down to the creek. Using her imagination, she almost convinces herself a thin line of grass lies matted down as if someone passed through the field recently.