raced. Allie wouldn’t have realized how remote it was until she’d gotten here. The Pine Barrens were a million acres of pine and cedar forest, covering about twenty percent of New Jersey, most of it federally or state protected. Building wasn’t permitted, but the houses, ranches, and cabins built by generations past were permitted to stay. The woods included bodies of water, open-pit gravel quarries, and the old Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station. Few people outside the area realized how vast it was, or that patches were completely desolate.
Larry shuddered. He knew Allie must have had no idea because he’d made it sound like an enchanted forest, telling his stories about being the fat kid on the hike. About finding a tick on his balls, which his mother had tweezed out. Allie had laughed. He’d loved to make her laugh.
“Whoa!” Larry startled as a deer appeared at the side of the road. He swerved, then skidded on the sandy grit of the shoulder, just missing the animal. He braked reflexively. He breathed hard, his heart hammering.
He steered back onto the road, accelerating. He had to catch up. His battery level dropped to one percent, the icon glowing a warning red in the dark interior of the Acura.
Allie was still traveling up 539 North. There was nothing there but trees and dirt roads, most of those unmarked and unnamed. There were some houses, but they were buried in the woods. Larry knew because he had ridden ATVs there with his friends in high school.
Larry accelerated, watching Allie. In the next moment, she took a right onto one of the unmarked roads, into the woods.
“Allie?” Larry heard himself say, his heart in his throat. She was heading deeper into the Pine Barrens.
Suddenly his phone screen went black. His battery had run out.
Larry floored the gas pedal.
CHAPTER 83
Allie Garvey
Allie took a right onto an uneven dirt road with thick pine trees on either side. There were no houses in sight. She slowed, and her tires rumbled over bumpy patches in sand. Puddles were here and there. The road was narrow enough for only one car. It didn’t have a street sign.
She drove ahead, looking left and right, but still couldn’t see any lights among the trees because they were so thick. There didn’t appear to be a single house on the street. Julian’s had to be set far off the road, and she remembered he said he had a long driveway. She checked her phone. No service.
She lowered her window. The woods were full of sounds, only a few of which she could identify. Crickets, cicadas, and a high-pitched wail that was broken up—an owl, she guessed, but it didn’t sound like a hoot. It sounded like ooh-oooh-oooh, like a ghost. Allie wasn’t a nature girl, and she didn’t like the dark. It was pitch black except for her high beams.
She felt a tingle of fear but told herself to relax. Julian had said what to expect, and there was no reason to be nervous. Larry had been to the Pine Barrens plenty of times when he was little and he’d told her the stories. She felt a twinge, thinking about him. She hoped she got the chance to tell him the funny story about how scared she’d been in the Pine Barrens. She figured he would laugh. She remembered him telling her that his childhood trips were hiking, hiking, and more hiking. He’d hated the exercise, but he’d said it was beautiful, and she supposed it would be, in the daytime.
The road wound to the right, then to the left, still bordered on both sides by pine trees. Allie kept feeding the car gas. She heard the noise of running water and looked to the left, surprised to see a stream moving along beside the road. Moonlight glinted off the water’s surface, making it look like a giant python. Otherwise she couldn’t see anything. Up ahead she saw the white light of a flashlight, waving up and down.
“Thank God,” Allie said aloud. It had to be Julian, and she looked to the left to see the lights of his house, but she couldn’t see any. Maybe the woods were too dense or his house was very far back. Or maybe he’d just gotten home and hadn’t turned the lights on yet. Then again, he said he had salmon. You wouldn’t want to leave fish in a car in summer.
She kept going toward the flashlight, which was a big one, and Julian shone