but I need you to tell me where that cabin is.”
Her dad blinked. “Cabin?”
“The one with the elderly couple. The one you stumbled on yesterday.” She trailed off, allowing the lilt of her voice to fill the silence.
Her father’s frown deepened. “I told you, that wasn’t anything. Just a nice couple living off the grid. They said they’d left the city a few years ago.”
“Yeah, I think they were bullshitting you. I think it was a story they made up just to get your sympathy. Where are they?”
Her dad stared at her. For a moment, she wasn’t sure what was passing between them, but his eyes were like flint. His jaw set much in the way John’s did when he was about to hit someone. Of course, she knew her father would never strike her. And yet he seemed in a posture of aggression, though she wasn’t sure exactly what she’d said to spark it.
In a clipped, quiet tone, he said, “You think I’m wrong?”
“I don’t think you’re wrong. I think there might be something going on that wasn’t obvious at first.”
His jaw was still clenched. Her words did nothing to settle him. “You think I’m wrong,” he muttered. “You think I don’t know what I’m doing. You really think that little of me?”
“Joseph,” said the other man, in a calming voice, “where was this cabin?”
But the Sergeant ignored his friend. He stared at Adele. “I’m telling you,” he said, stubbornly, “there is nothing going on there. If they were up to anything, I would have seen it. I would have.” He said the second part with severity, but this time, his anger seemed to be directed somewhere else. His eyes flicked off to the trees, peering into the darkness, then back to Adele. For a moment, the only sound came from John still gathering his breath and finally finding some energy to utter a choice string of French curse words.
“Look, Dad, I’m sure you would have. But it was late; maybe the best clues are only out during the day.”
“It’s still late,” he growled. “I can’t believe,” his voice began to rise in volume, “you’d come out here, hunt me down like I’m some sort of—”
“Dad,” she cut him off before he got a head of steam. “I just need you to tell me where that cabin is, please.”
The Sergeant flicked his gaze toward the trees. Again, as if looking for a ghost, or something that no one else could see. His eyes were sunken, and Adele realized he hadn’t slept in two days. His hands were at his side, and one of them was curled, but slowly opened.
“Dad, we found a body this morning. There are going to be more bodies. I need to follow every lead. I’m desperate. You found that cabin. No one else. You did. I’m asking for your help. I’m running out of time; there are other people on the line.”
The silence reigned again, and even John stopped cursing to listen.
“I don’t know exactly where it was,” he muttered—his cheeks had reddened. And though the words he spoke seemed even, his tone seemed on the verge of explosion. “It was late and dark. But I know which quadrant I was searching. And I know which direction I was headed.” He jutted his chin out as if challenging her.
“That’s fine,” Adele said in relief. “Please, just tell me.”
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
Night allowed little room for error. And yet the two agents wandering though the labyrinth of vegetation found their going difficult.
Adele felt the cold press in, the wind whistling and buzzing past her ears. The trees all looked the same. The cold ground all seemed identical. She’d lost the desire to speak, her lips having numbed. But if she had wanted to, she would have asked John, Have we been here before? It felt like they were going in circles, one clumsy step at a time. A flashlight beam carving through the darkness like a sickle through wheat.
Another step, and another. More darkness, more cold. Exhaustion pressed in.
Adele shivered and paused, leaning back, her head tilted, her eyes glimpsing moonlight through the canopy. Then she felt a nudge. She glanced over and spotted John’s flashlight had veered off. His hand was tapping her shoulder and pointing.
Through the trees.
Something.
A clearing? No… Something else…
The darkness witnessed John and Adele—after a roundabout journey moving through the forest, following her father’s instructions—arrive at a small, dirt driveway, leading up a trail with saplings lining the road, heading toward a wooden