Lila Grant stood in the center, bathed in her own setup like she’d rented the mountain. Someone in a Vanished hoodie already had VALLEY GHOST stamped across the back, like the ridge needed a brand.
Sara swept the crowd.
No one bleeding.
No one on the ground.
No sign of a struggle.
No movement in the trees.
Nothing that matched the panic in those calls.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
Lila turned, smile perfectly calibrated.
“We’re documenting public interest in the case.”
Sara’s gaze cut briefly to Micah.
He stared a little too hard at his boots.
“So who screamed?” Sara asked.
Lila’s expression shifted—not guilty.
Innocent.
“Someone screamed?” she asked.
A few tourists nodded, talking over each other.
“Heard it in the trees?—”
“Sounded like a woman?—”
“Thought she was hurt?—”
Sara stepped past Lila toward the tree line.
Boot prints everywhere. Trampled brush.
As she moved, her beam cut through the oaks. It passed over a man standing twenty yards back, half-dissolved into the hemlocks. Worn canvas coat. No phone. No hoodie. He wasn't watching the drone or the camera light; he was watching the cross. By the time she swung her light back to confirm, he was gone—just a shadow sliding deeper into the ridge.
It was the same ground from the photographs. The ridge where Sinclair had left Lauren Pierce like a message to the whole county.
I have Sara. Here’s what’s left of Lauren.
Her badge beneath the bones.
For one sharp, dizzy second, Sara could see the evidence photos too clearly—the white tape in the leaves, the curve of Lauren’s skull, the flash of her own badge pulled from the dirt.
She shoved the memory down and turned back.
“This isn’t a haunted house,” she said. “It’s a recovery site.”
A few tourists shifted, phones dipping an inch.
