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I shook my head. “State parks have their own extra law enforcement. I doubt they would miss critical clues when the whole area has been on alert for her since Friday.”

“So...we double back? Search a different part of the grid?” Riss pointed to the carefully drawn squares on the map. Three Xs in red sharpie marked off the path we walked the length of.

I nodded, stomach twisting into iron knots. “Sure. Let’s do that.”

Off the beaten path, the woods were a bit more perilous. Barely any light broke through the canopies of old growth woods, and there were gnarled roots all over the place, mostly hidden under suspiciously deep layers of detritus. The only one not stumbling was Maple as she dragged Ben along by the leash.

I shivered harder in the depths of the forest, surrounded by cold, dead trees and eyes that seemed to bore into the back of my head, only to vanish when I peered around.

“The temperature dropped a few degrees,” Riss said robotically, reading off her phone and probably another high-tech app she paid more than she should have for.

Angie stood beside her, rubbing her arms to circulate a little more warmth under her pink sherpa coat. “I feel it. It’s definitely colder here.”

“This is weird.” Several yards away, Ben kicked over leaves and shards of something milky white. Ice, maybe? Maple yipped and dug up the ground, attempting to unearth whatever it was quicker, but Ben yanked her back by the collar before she got into it.

The closer I got, the more notable the objects half buried in the litter became.

Bones.

I struggled to swallow a gulp past a pit in my throat. “Just a dead animal, right?”

“Yeah, but... I’ve seen animal carcasses in the woods before. They’re usually intact. Not scattered and missing half the skeleton. There’s no skull. Just a few ribs, maybe a part of the leg. And teeth.”

“Teeth?” Angie squeaked.

“Yeah. Sharp teeth. I have no clue what animal this came from.”

The wind picked up suddenly, whistling through the trees and scratching against dead branches in just the right way to sound like haunting whispers.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said on a fast exhale. “Come on. Those aren’t her bones, and they’re not clues. We need to keep moving since the sun will set soon.”

No one argued, and we marched on for a few more miles.

We were all hungry, tired, and browbeaten by failure when we returned to the venue parking lot. Trudging up to the Jeep, no one said a word. No one bothered trying to be encouraging. We had come with high hopes and expectations of finding something missed by the hordes of volunteers and professionals who had searched for her already, and we were disappointed to have not beaten the odds.

Angie opened the back car door, then froze, her eyes trained on something on the steps behind us.

I whirled around, eyes landing on a man I recognized from the chaos at the wedding just as Maple started growling at Ben’s feet.

Arthur Winter was a far cry from the charming, modelesque man on his website. He was a far cry even from the helpful yet concerned host I met over the weekend.

The man looking at us now was a pissed off grizzly bear with his flannel sleeves rolled up to his elbows and dirt on his hands and face. A wood cutter’s ax rested securely in his right hand.

“Can I help you?” he asked with no shortage of annoyance in his burly tone.

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t call ahead,” I said wearily, stepping up to the cabin stairs with my hands tucked snugly in my coat pockets. “I wanted to look around again. See if there was anything we missed from—”

“I don’t care what you were doing,” he snapped. “This is private property. You can’t just come and go as you please.”

I balked. Dread unfurled in my stomach along with the distinct sting of guilt like I was caught doing something wrong. “We were just looking for—”

“The police have been traipsing through our land day and night already. There’s nothing in there. So, if you wouldn’t mind, get the hell off my land and don’t come back to Winter’s Teeth without a warrant.”

“Lay off!” Riss yelled behind me.

Maple barked in unison, quickly shushed by Ben who scooped her up off the ground.

I gaped, staggering back when Arthur hefted his ax and started toward us. “We’re leaving!” I promised, hands up in surrender. “We’re going, I swear!”