them look more like a wavy line in the sky than sharp spikes. She turned back. What if . . . She held up the map. The graves—the two markers—were behind her now, but what if the wavy lines indicated the mountains instead of any number of various water sources in the opposite direction?
The same problem remained though. The mountains were far off in the distance—miles—the third marker could be anywhere between the graves and the base.
Unless . . . Her eyes moved from the exact wave of the lines to the mostly cloud-obscured peaks. They matched in a very simplistic way. Because it was the most simplistically drawn map possible. So, with that in mind, what if the square drawn underneath the mountain simply indicated a visual sense of where the mountains touched the earth from exactly where she was standing?
Agent Gallagher was still talking with the other men, so she walked around Driscoll’s house, heading toward the copse of trees in front of her, focused on that dark area. A good hiding spot for . . . anything really. But what? If the two red markers had indicated the bodies of dead children, what other horrors might be lurking out there? She paused, deciding to turn back. She’d wait for Agent Gallagher.
Just as she began to turn, the sun hit the side of the forest and she spotted a large grouping of rocks beyond a couple of sparse trees. She walked toward it, entering the trees, her eyes adjusting to the dim light. She’d seen other areas like this, other . . . yes. It was an old mine shaft, a door inset in the side of the rock. Her heart started hammering. Was this what Isaac Driscoll had marked? And why?
She pulled on the door, expecting it to be locked, but with a rusty squeak, it opened, light flooding the space. She leaned inside, the air colder in there, the smell metallic and dank. Her heart rate increasing, she turned on her phone’s flashlight and shone it into the room.
She sucked in a breath. The small room, an entrance to a deeper portion of the mine at the far side blocked off, had a table and a monitor and pictures tacked up to every portion of the walls.
Jak.
In all of them.
Oh God.
What is this?
Harper swallowed, cold dread seeping through her.
Several kerosene lanterns hung from rafters and she stepped slowly toward the closest one, switching it on, brightening the space. She felt like she was in a dream, a nightmare, as she looked from one photo to another, her throat closing.
One was of Jak—for it had to be him, all of them seemed to be—as a small child, tears streaked down his dirty face, sitting on the snowy riverbank, his arms wrapped around his skinny legs. He was shivering. She could tell just by looking at it and her heart cried out. She couldn’t save him. He’d already saved himself. Had no choice even though a man had sat photographing his misery, not lifting a hand. The evil nearly brought her to her knees. What sort of person could do this? How?
There were other photos, hundreds, pictures of Jak biting into a bloody, fur-covered rabbit, his face gaunt, no more than ten. She cringed, looking away. How hungry, how desperate, had he been to bite into a fur-covered animal?
On the back wall were a series of pictures and she stopped in front of them. Hot tears were streaking down her cheeks. Her heart leapt with horror when she saw that Jak wasn’t alone in this series of photos. He was fighting a blond boy, who was skinny and obviously starving, sickly, and . . . deranged looking. There was a dead deer in the middle of them and she wondered if that’s why they had battled. Each photo was worse than the one before it, each scene like a movie she wanted to look away from but could not. And the end . . . she sobbed when she looked upon the photo of Jak, a wolf—was it his beloved Pup?—over his shoulder, the deer being dragged behind him, the dead boy lying in a pool of blood in the snow. The expression on Jak’s face . . . utter devastation.
Oh God. It was too awful to bear. Had Jak killed the two children in those graves? Another sob came up her throat and now she was outright crying.
She turned away, in a fog, spotting a bow and