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As if sensing the tension radiating from her body, Trout woke, wriggled his body closer to hers, and gave a heavy sigh. She patted his back. “Sorry, buddy. I’m keeping you up, I guess.”
She lay awake for another hour before finally picking up her phone. There were no text updates, not that she’d expected any. She thought about messaging Gretchen, Noah, or the Chief, but she knew they’d all tell her the same thing: get some rest. Instead, she downloaded StoryJot and opened an account.
She found Ajax2733’s profile and scrolled through some of his stories. There weren’t many, less than a dozen. All were boring, rambling, filled with verbose and florid language and about nothing; just characters sitting around, navel-gazing. One story featured a male character in a café, contemplating an orange. Another, more interesting story told the tale of an older male mentoring his much younger lover on the subject of literary criticism. The others very nearly put Josie to sleep. She made a mental note to come back to them in the future as sleep aids. Then she found Kayleigh’s profile. She had uploaded almost one hundred stories, though some of them were considered flash fiction—only a paragraph or two. They went back two years. Each story was ranked by how many views it had, together with ratings. All of her stories had four- or five-star ratings. Josie wondered if it ever bothered Asher that his girlfriend, still in high school, had higher ratings and far more readers than his own stories.
Josie read through some of the stories, sorting them from oldest to newest instead of how they were ranked. Kayleigh’s early stuff was fairly juvenile and focused solely on sex. It was clear on reading them that she had never actuallyhadsex. Some of them were comical, as if she was trying to emulate the erotica books Josie had found in her room. Later, she dabbled in fantasy, writing tales of faraway kingdoms in magical, made-up lands filled with knights, princesses, and dragons. Many were violent, featuring sword fights that led to characters being dismembered and slain in battle. The descriptions were overly graphic, but again, knowing what Josie knew about the human body and how it could be injured and killed, not particularly realistic. She wondered if those were the stories that Felicia had referred to as “sick.” There was certainly an element of shock value in them, and she was sure that Shelly and Dave Patchett would be horrified, but there wasn’t anything more gruesome than any teenager might find on television. Her fantasy stories also had sex scenes which became more realistic as time went on. Josie could trace the realism in Kayleigh’s erotic writing from her first meeting with Asher, per their messages. It was after she began her relationship with him that she began to write more stories based in real life. “Bumper Cars,” the story that Asher had praised so highly in his messages to her, showed a vast leap in both maturity and style. Reading across Kayleigh’s work, Josie could see how she’d improved; how hard she must have worked on her craft.
How devastating it must have been to have her work stolen and then have no one believe her. Not even her parents.
Trout stirred beside her, kicking his legs out toward the empty side of the bed, and squirming until he was pressed against her hip. Josie stroked his side with one hand as she found the story that Felicia Evans had passed off as her own. Kayleigh had titled it “Reign.” It was another fantasy tale, set in a magical kingdom ruled by a king and queen who were grooming their twin daughters to take over their rule one day—taking on the mantle together so that the king and queen would never have to choose between them. In order to prepare them for their reign, the daughters were tasked with various challenges—casting a banishment spell, learning to play an instrument, finding a rare, mystical flower called aSaintpaulia ionanthathat would protect the kingdom from marauders for one hundred years, taming a dragon, and then battling a mythical creature that had the ability to shapeshift into any animal. Each challenge became harder than the last until the sisters came together to insist that their parents teach them the practical aspects of ruling a kingdom instead of sending them on harrowing and exhausting quests.
Josie could see some parallels between the story and the Patchett girls. She wondered if the quests were a metaphor for sports. It would certainly make sense given Kayleigh’s aversion to continuing to play softball when she had no interest in it. Regardless, the writing was advanced and engaging. The theme of the sisters leaning on one another and coming together was admirable. Josie could see why it had won Felicia Evans an award.
And now none of it mattered because Felicia was dead, and Kayleigh was most likely dead as well.
Kayleigh. Felicia. The story. The Woodsman. Henry Thomas. Asher Jackson Jenks. The kids in Montour and Lenore Counties. The traps.
The carousel went round and round in Josie’s mind. She kept waiting for something to click into place. Sometimes that happened. Sometimes there was a pattern or a clue that had been there all along but without the right context, it seemed meaningless.
Sometimes, you just had to go with the cold, hard, factual evidence.
Josie lay back, resting her head on the pillow. As the thoughts circled again, a drowsiness threatened to overtake her, if only she would let it. It was like a bird fluttering nearby, afraid to land. Would she give it a place to perch? Some errant thought about the cases flitted through her mind, jolting her awake, scaring the bluebird of sleepiness away entirely. But when she tried to catch it, to remember it, she couldn’t.
It was gone.
She let out a stream of expletives.
Trout rustled again. This time, his head popped up, ears pointed. A low growl emanated from his throat. “What is it, boy?” Josie whispered. She closed out of the StoryJot app and checked the security system app on her phone to see Noah at the front door, putting his key in the lock. “Daddy’s home,” she told Trout.
He jumped out of the bed. Seconds later, she heard his nails clicking along the steps. She listened as he and Noah went through the ritual they’d developed for whenever Noah arrived home from work—or anywhere. She heard Noah in the kitchen and then in the yard, letting Trout out and bringing him back inside, then opening and closing the fridge. Finally, he came up the steps. As he walked into the bedroom, he said, “Why are you still up?”
Josie looked at the clock beside her bed. She’d lost track of time. It was after three in the morning. “Couldn’t sleep. Why are you home?”
“Chief sent me home. We’re kind of at an impasse. We’ve questioned everyone and their mother, collected a shit-ton of evidence and now we’re just waiting for something to break. He said I needed rest. Like you.”
Trout hopped up onto the bed and curled up at Josie’s feet. Noah started pulling off his clothes and dropping them into the hamper until he was wearing nothing but his boxers. Exhausted though she was, Josie couldn’t help but admire him as he climbed into bed next to her, positioned on his side. “Josie,” he said. “You can’t keep going like this. Did you talk to Dr. Rosetti?”
“Of course I did,” she said, eyes drawn to the puckered flesh at his right shoulder. She’d given him the scar when she shot him. It had been during the case that led them all to what the Denton teens now called “Murder Mountain.” At the time, Josie hadn’t known who to trust, and she’d been focused on saving a very damaged girl. She’d shot him and he’d covered for her, lied for her, proved himself to be on the side of justice no matter what it cost him. She’d almost forgiven herself for shooting him. He’d forgiven her the instant it happened.
“What did she say?” Noah asked.
“That I’ve got trauma on top of trauma on top of more trauma and that I’d barely begun to start processing my childhood stuff, let alone Ray’s death and my grandmother’s murder, when Mettner died holding my hand. She thinks I would”— here she used air quotes— “‘benefit’ from a retreat.”
“What kind of a retreat?”
Josie threw her hands in the air and let them fall back to her thighs, causing Trout’s head to shoot up. Once he figured out there was nothing to be alarmed about, he rested it back on the bed with an admonishing huff. “I don’t know,” Josie said. “A retreat with some uber-famous psychologist or life coach or some shit like that. Like the kind where you go into the mountains with no electronics and chant, I guess. I didn’t ask because I’m not going.”
He reached across the bed and took her wrist in his hand. Instantly, she felt a warm wave of something pulse through her body. She was never quite sure what it was exactly—relief, comfort, relaxation, but his touch was a natural tension-reliever. “Why not?” he asked, pulling her toward him.
She moved into him, stretching out onto her side so they were facing one another. “Because the idea is stupid, don’t you think? I’ve been seeing Dr. Rosetti for three years and we haven’t scratched the surface of my trauma. A week in the woods is supposed to solve all my problems?”
Noah laughed softly. “I’m sure that’s not what Dr. Rosetti was trying to sell you. If a week in the woods worked that well, we wouldn’t need psychologists.”
“Noah, please,” Josie said.
He pushed a strand of her hair off her cheek. “Josie, all I’m saying is, why don’t you find out more information before you reject this out of hand? Find out what it’s about and why she recommends it in the first place. Then decide. She’s gotten you this far, hasn’t she?”
Josie touched his scar, gently trailing her fingernails over it. “What does that mean?”
