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“I feel a little weird myself.” Ophelia’s eyes gravitate to the spot where Micah’s crouching next to the unearthed bones, delicately sweeping the dirt away with gloved fingers. “Who do you think that is, Grant?”
I don’t answer.
The question hangs deathly heavy between us.
I think we’re both wondering the same thing, even if the possibility’s mighty slim.
So many people have disappeared in Redhaven over the years.
Residents.
Random hikers.
Punk-ass kids who took their mischief too far and wound up in real trouble.
Sometimes, we find folks in the woods looking kind of like that suicide forest she talked about. People get lost, wander off the paths, disappear into some little niche where nobody can find them.
It’s dense as hell out here beyond town. You could walk three feet and not even notice them there, frozen to death or torn up by coyotes or cougars. The odds that it’s Ethan are slim.
Even so, I still get thatfeeling.
“Hey,” I say. “You wanna run what happened by me again? A little more detail this time.”
“I kind of stumbled over that when I was screaming into the phone, huh?” Ophelia smiles painfully. “There’s not that much more to say, honestly. I was in the back storage room at the shop, tidying up, when I heard the bell over the door. I went out and he was just standing there, pale and reeling, bleeding from the mouth. He didn’t say anything. He just turned and ran, taking off between the buildings. Crazy stamina for a man with internal bleeding, but...” She stops. When she speaks again, her voice is hushed, her eyes lidding over. “I guess I felt like he was leading me somewhere. Into the woods, then here. I bet he’s the one who dug up those bones. I don’t know, maybe he wanted it this way. Maybe he wanted me to—”
“He wanted you to see them,” I finish softly.
“Yeah.”
“Only question is why?”
“No clue.” Ophelia shakes her head. “But I think you’re asking the same questions I am, right now.”
Damn right.
Like how long that man’s been working up at the manor and who he is. It’s definitely easy to find out when the Arrendell house runs parallel to Redhaven like its own little insular world.
Folks can spend years working up there without anyone in town catching hide nor hair of them.
We don’t know if he was around ten, fifteen years ago.
Or whether or not he knows shit about people who disappeared back then.
What secrets has he been sitting on?
Did he know about Ulysses and the hillfolk?
About what the rest of that vicious clan get up to?
And who would stage a suicide—hell, maybetwosuicides—to keep those secrets quiet?
I don’t like it.
I like it even less that Ophelia seems to be at the center of it. All because this man’s fixated on her for some bizarre reason—and I doubt that’s coincidence.
Redhaven is a place where coincidence goes to die.
Just have to hope like hell he wakes up and starts talking soon.
