many campers flew in from all over the country that the camp ran a shuttle service to the airport. Most local kids, too, spent summers as resident campers. He and Jillian had been no exception, which was precisely why he was now an owner of the property.
A grudging owner, he amended.
Jillian and her causes—they’d be the death of him yet.
Shaking his head, Michael headed up the steps, hoping she’d left a note and some clue as to where he could find her. He was in enough hot water without wasting more time hunting her down. Then something caught his eye…
Her purse.
She’d left it sitting on the bench, and he flipped it open to find her car keys and cell phone inside, which explained why she hadn’t been answering her phone. He viewed the display. Sure enough, there was a log of her four missed messages.
All from him.
Damn it, but he should never have sat back at his desk tonight. He should have grabbed his wallet and headed out, as he’d told Charlotte he’d do. Or he should have accepted Jillian’s offer to wait for him to make the drive together.
Or maybe they should never have taken on this camp at all. They were just too busy to do right by the place.
The presence of the unfamiliar car drove home a sharp reminder that the interviewees were strangers. Michael’s only consolation was that she wasn’t entirely alone on the property. Camp Cavelier was more than a seasonal camp—these hallowed acres also played home to a small working farm. Year round, schools scheduled field trips, various organizations booked group tours and families hosted children’s birthday parties.
Ike Fleming had been running the farm since Michael and Jillian had taken their own school field trips. He was even older today than he’d seemed back then, which was saying something since he’d always looked seriously old and seriously big—a mountain of a man. But he was a warm body, at least, and a warm body that packed a loaded shotgun when patrolling the area at night.
Of course, Ike’s eyesight had to be failing by now….
An inspection of the office didn’t yield up any note from Jillian. Job applications scattered over a desk, assuring him that she’d stuck to her original plan. Helping himself to a flashlight, he locked her purse in his car then took off in the direction of Ike’s cottage on the south side of Lake Lily.
The dark night didn’t bring back memories of summers spent boating, horseback-riding or working the farm, although he had many. As a young camper, he’d not only communed with nature and wildlife in a place where technology wasn’t allowed, but had formed friendships that had weathered the passage of time.
Including a love affair with his wife.
But tonight Michael wasn’t remembering when he and Jillian had ducked out of a trail ride to make out in the hayloft, or the time they’d stolen out of the cabins late at night to skinny-dip in the lake.
No, tonight these well-worn trails only yielded grisly images of what could happen to a woman alone in the dark. By the time Michael saw the dull glow of Ike’s porch light, his heart was pounding unnaturally hard.
“Ike,” he called, knocking on the door. “It’s Michael. You in there?”
No response.
Michael waited on the doorstep, growing more agitated with each passing second.
“Ike!” He pounded harder this time. Looked like Ike’s hearing was going, too.
Nothing.
Impatiently, Michael tried the handle to find the door unlocked. He pushed inside, calling out loudly as he did, but it didn’t take long to realize that no one was home.
Yet Ike had obviously left in a hurry because a full coffee cup—now stone-cold—sat on the table beside an open newspaper.
The shotgun rack above the sofa was empty.
Michael was getting a bad feeling. He couldn’t be sure whether guilt or the darkness fueled his imagination, but his head raced with every horror story he’d ever seen in the news.
Had Jillian gotten into trouble? Had Ike taken the shotgun out to rescue her?
Had the old guy succeeded?
Racking his brain to remember what Jillian had told him about her interviewees, Michael found himself cursing that he hadn’t paid closer attention. But Camp Cavelier was Jillian’s pet project and he’d apparently only listened with one ear.
Guilt, definitely.
Heading back outside, he pulled the door shut behind him. Sounds from the stabled horses and forest wildlife filtered through the darkness, and he made his way to the trail. He’d circle around to the cabins. It was the only thing to do. There were cars, which meant Jillian was somewhere.
He’d damn sure find her.
Something crashed in the underbrush, startling the night quiet and drawing Michael to a sharp stop. With his heartbeat spiking hard, he waited for something—Ike, wildlife or a murderer?—to appear on the path ahead.
As the seconds ticked past, stillness settled over the night again.
He came upon the boys’ cabins first, and the rustic structures that had once seemed so offhandedly inviting now loomed eerily empty in the moonlight. There were no windows in these cabins, only screens to keep out the snakes and spiders. No air-conditioning, either, which made the bunks inside a stifling ride during the sultry summer.
He mentally rattled off the cabin’s names by rote: Company Thirteen. Pirates. Lightning Bolt. Dreadnought. Wave Runners. Hackers.
“Jillian,” he called out then waited to hear a reply, or any sound to indicate she was in trouble and needed help.
Nothing.
Making his way toward the girls’ cabins, he stumbled over what he belatedly realized was the ring of stones surrounding the bonfire pit. He almost landed face first inside a crater filled with winter-rotted leaves and ash.
He caught his balance at the last possible second, but dropped the flashlight.
“Oh, man.” He sank his fingers into the decomposing debris to retrieve the flashlight, which had managed to bury itself deeply enough to cut off the light.
An owl hooted sharply.
“I don’t need this grief,” he informed the wildlife. “I knew this camp was going to be trouble the instant Jillian came home with the idea.”
Not only had the investment run their credit dry, but the workload was creating conflict in their otherwise perfect lives.
Scowling into the darkness, Michael heard another sound, so faint at first that he might have imagined it.
Laughter?
He didn’t think it was a cry for help.
Rooted to the spot, he tried to make out the sound, but the night had fallen silent. Then he heard it again.
Laughter,
