Page 38 of So Dark

She looked out of her window at the pristine Alaskan forest and wondered which part of her life would collapse next.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“It looks like Lisa might have whitewashed some of the details surrounding the group’s split,” Michael said.

Faith finished the last of her sandwich and replied. “Yeah? What did you find?”

“A group chat. Wyatt came through with the group’s cell phone records. It took a little while to piece everything together since the members have different cell phone providers, but I managed to get things organized.”

The two of them were in their hotel room. After napping for a few hours, they had launched right into the case again. Turk had finished his lunch and now sat in between the agents, listening intently as they discussed the case. Faith had tried once more to contact the group members and once more had no luck. Meanwhile, Michael had enlisted Wyatt’s help obtaining phone records to see if there was conflict between the group that Lisa had failed to mention.

“Talk to me,” Faith said.

“Well, as Lisa and Robert said, communication was never fantastic between the group members, but it suffered a serious breakdown starting about five months before the split.”

Faith scooted her chair closer so she could see the texts. She caught a whiff of something pleasant and asked, “Is that a new cologne?”

“Yeah. Ellie got it for me.”

Faith felt a pang of jealousy. That wasn’t good. What the hell was going on with her lately? “It’s nice.”

“Thanks.” He looked at her sideways. “You okay?”

“Fine. What’s going on with the texts?”

He shrugged. “Well, to start, Lisa was definitely the most active member of the group. She was also easily the most controlling.”

“That’s not surprising. Did she rub people the wrong way?”

“Hard to tell. There’s nothing specifically directed at her, but a lot of the members started making their own plans without her.”

“That’s a pretty clear message.”

“It is. Lisa’s not the biggest target here, though. It looks like a lot of the conflict was centered on Jake Thornton and Kelly Connor.”

Faith raised an eyebrow. Lisa had said the two of them appeared close. “Really? They didn’t get along?”

“They did for a long time. They would take camping trips alone at least once a month. Fast forward to five months before the group is dissolved, and that ends abruptly.”

“Any reason?”

“None discussed here. They just stop talking to each other. Jake stops talking to the group at all. When Kelly interacts with others, she gets curt one-word replies or veiled insults. Jake leaves a month after that, and Kelly leaves two weeks later.”

“Interesting. And no reason given?”

“None.”

“Anything centered around our victims?”

“Other than the possibility that people were chafing under Lisa’s leadership, no. Nothing jumps out.”

“Hmm. That’s odd.”

“It is. Here’s another odd thing. Over three years of the group’s existence, there are a total of nine texts from Graham Nash, and every single one is either a confirmation that he’s attending an event or him declining to attend. Other than that, he doesn’t talk to anyone.”

“That’sveryodd.”

“Well, we knew he was an odd guy.”

---