Expired Cache - Lisa Phillips Page 0,17
Savannah.”
Seven
They’d driven as far as they could. Ellie’s sister now led the way up a mountain trail. Once in a while she saw a boot print in the dirt, one that caused a hitch in her breath that had nothing to do with how much her hip hurt.
Back in New York, she walked every day and took a stretch and tone class every once in a while. Ellie wasn’t out of shape. It was just from hitting the ground the way she did yesterday, diving out of the way of that car. She saw another print. They couldn’t be one of her grandfather’s boot prints. He hadn’t been up this way in months, right? He’d been sick a while.
“So I was looking into hit and runs,” Jess began.
Ellie glanced up from watching the ground in front of her—as everyone knows you are supposed to do while hiking—to her sister up ahead. Strawberry blonde hair worn loose, jeans that were frayed with slits in places high on her thighs that Ellie would never have the guts to reveal. But Jess didn’t care. She did what she wanted, living her life in a way her older sister didn’t always approve of. This was also something she didn’t care about.
It occurred to Ellie just then that maybe Jess did care about her opinion but didn’t want to let Ellie know that. Maybe it hurt her feelings that her big sister didn’t approve of her choices.
She huffed out another exhale, sounding like she was out of breath. This always happened when she hung out with her sister. Why did relationships have to be so complicated, anyway?
“Are you okay?”
“My hip hurts.” She held up her hands, too. Still bandaged from skidding on the asphalt.
“We can stop if you want.”
Ellie shook her head. “When we get there, I’ll sit down. How much farther is it anyway?”
Jess chuckled. “He liked his space, didn’t he?”
Ellie laughed as well. It sounded nice, but the stitch in her chest didn’t go anywhere. “Are we still on the safe side of the mountains?”
“I think so.” Jess said, “Why would he build a cabin where it’s practically inaccessible? That doesn’t seem practical.”
“I’ve just been thinking about it.” She tried to sound like she’d reached some intelligent conclusions already, which of course wasn’t true. “I was looking at the Founders’ Map in the coffee shop.”
“And thinking about hiking all over, through all those uncharted and inaccessible non-trails.”
“I’m not into extreme sports.”
Jess chuckled. “Yes. I do know that.”
“I was just curious.”
“This is a mystery you can leave alone.” Jess quieted a second before she said, “If there’s a reason the Founders didn’t want us over there, we should just trust them. The last person I heard who took a wrong turn hunting, wound up getting torn apart by mountain lions.”
“Huh.” Ellie swallowed. That was pretty gruesome.
Still. Surely someone had explored it. Or even flown a drone over there with a GoPro attached to it. Some people saw it as a challenge to skirt the no trespassing order that had been drilled into them since grade school.
“Do you want to hear about hit and runs?” Jess started up the trail, this time walking by Ellie’s side. “I forget that not everyone wants to hear about cop stuff.”
“It’s fine. But why would you look into hit-and-runs? Is there such a thing as a serial hit-and-runner…or something?”
“Not as such.” Jess grinned. “Though, it’s not unheard of. Just not like a serial killer, you know?”
Ellie swallowed. “Yes.”
Jess eyed her. “I checked all the reports from the last few years. To see if the details of any of those incidents matched the vehicle in your hit-and-run. Also, the why of it, you know?”
“Or the location.” Ellie pressed her lips together while she thought it through. “Could be there’s that one spot, and it’s just more prone to out-of-control cars. Or they’ve polled hit and run drivers for the best places to do some damage and get away with it.”
“Wow. You sound like the city council crime stat report.”
Ellie shrugged. “Just thinking it through.”
“People do crazy stuff that makes no sense for a whole lot of reasons. How can that be boiled down into a pie chart?”
“Quite easily actually.”
“Agree to disagree. Especially if the person doing those calculations has never walked a beat.”
Ellie let that go. Her grandfather had been a cop, now her sister. She knew how they felt about their brotherhood—which, by the way, had never made sense to her because Jess was a girl—and the code. She