Page 49 of The Souls of Lost Lake
Approaching it, Wren peered into the woods. The trail was overgrown and definitely not maintained by the park. This was the border to the national forest, which melded with the state forest. Miles upon miles of woodland and lakes stretched from here, and while some roads cut through it, or a small town was etched in here and there, overall it was forest from here until you ran into Lake Superior about one hundred miles as the crow flies.
“It’s more of a deer trail,” Wren stated, sensing Meghan’s anticipation beside her. “Not a trail for hiking. See? It’s narrow, likea walkway, and none of the branches are cleared away. A few are broken, but it’s not man-made.”
“So, Ava Coons came to my daughter on a deer path?”
Wren hesitated. She didn’t want to entertain an all-out delusion, but then it was easier to call the mystery woman Ava Coons rather than “that strange woman.”
“Maybe? If you’re sure this was where Jasmine met her.”
“I am.” Meghan nodded vehemently.
Okay, so a lady in overalls, who seemed in Meghan’s sketch to be a lot older than the Ava Coons of the campfire story, hadappearedto Jasmine here. It wasn’t a typical place for someone to emerge from the woods. Wren knew of a few hiking trails, and to her knowledge, none of them were in the near vicinity of the deer trail.
“Did the police search this area?” Wren asked, stepping into the woods, swatting at a mosquito that dodged her hand.
“No,” Meghan said from the grassy line at the trees.
Wren ducked under a branch, letting it scrape the top of her baseball cap. She noted the undergrowth was thick here, a few blackberry bushes with berries forming, and a blanket of leaves, dead sticks, and saplings. She squeezed through another embrace of tree branches as they intertwined with each other. One of them caught the brim of her hat and tipped it back on her forehead. Wren straightened it. She should call Troy. He might have an idea where this deer trail led to. With all the various bodies of water in the forest, the deer might have carved a trail from one of them to the park’s edge. If that were the case, maybe they’d find a camper or hiker who would fit the description. Maybe that person would be ... not Ava Coons but the abductor. Assuming Jasmine had been taken, not just wandered off.
It returned to her then, the recollection of Patty’s story. Her “sighting” of Ava Coons. The woman. In overalls. The park. If Patty had seen a woman here, fitting the same description, it was years earlier. That eliminated a vagrant passing through or a tourist. It was someone more native to the area—at least within the past few years.
Wren steadied herself with a palm against a tree trunk. The other little girl who’d gone missing in high school ... Trina was her name. Her father had kidnapped her? They’d never reported having found her—or him. What if whoever this was in the woods had taken Trina? What if the searchers had misread the situation—as they might be doing now—and it wasn’t a parental abduction? Just as Jasmine wasn’t a little girl gone lost?
She turned toward Meghan to voice her thoughts, but the expression on Meghan’s face stopped her. The woman was pale, her lips quivering with emotion. She stared into the abyss of trees and undergrowth and the darkening shadows of the wilderness stretching out before them. The idea of someone—anyone—lurking in these woods and being responsible for the disappearance of little girls...
Wren moved to head back toward the park, motioning for Meghan to follow. She had no intention of adding further credence to Meghan’s fears when it was still only a theory in Wren’s imagination.
20
“I’m telling you, this can’t be a coincidence.” Wren dropped the doll’s shoe on the table in front of Troy, the same shoe that had been left on the Markhams’ steps.
He drew back and looked up at Wren, who, admittedly, was overwrought at the moment. She’d stewed the entire way back to camp after leaving Meghan in the safe embrace of Meghan’s family, who had gathered at an out-of-the-way vacation rental to avoid the news reporters who’d begun to move into the area. Inquiries about the missing girl—it all made for a good news story. It wasn’t one that Meghan was up to telling. But the silence in the truck was enough for Wren to work herself into an emotional state. She’d returned to the Markham home to grab a quick lunch, only to find Redneck Harriet perched on the counter by the coffeemaker, where Eddie must have casually left her. Both shoes were on her feet now. Maybe he thought covering up her name with the errant shoe would help. It hadn’t. Wren had wrenched it from the doll’s foot and now stood in the middle of the camp’s dining hall.
The room was packed with campers and counselors, camp staff, and a few stragglers from the SAR who had missed out on receiving a bagged lunch that morning.
“It’s a shoe.” Troy fingered it where it had fallen by his plate of homemade pizza.
“It’s the doll’s shoe.” Wren plopped onto the empty chair next to her boyfriend, propping her elbow on the cream Formica-topped dining table.
“Oooooookay?” Troy raised a dark eyebrow.
His counterpart across the table, Damion, flicked an errant green pepper at him. Damion helped Troy with leading the wilderness trips, and he appeared ready to go on a new one, with his bandanna around his forehead and his pack on the floor next to him. “Dude. Don’t play stupid!” Damion warned, clutching at his chest. “Detrimental to relationships when a woman is rampaging.”
Wren glared at Damion. “Thedoll’s shoe.” She waited.
“Oh,thatdoll.” Troy winced in apology. “Sorry, Wren. I sort of forgot about it.”
“He doesn’t play with dolls anymore,” Damion teased.
“Damion,” Wren snapped, annoyed at Damion’s insertion when none of this was a joking matter. The dining hall was a din of voices, and it was hard enough to hear as it was.
“Hey, give us a moment, okay?” Troy asked his counterpart. He turned a shoulder to Damion, lifting the shoe. “So, why the panic?”
Of course. Wren bit back her anxious irritation. She had texted Troy about last night at the Markhams’, but they hadn’t had the chance to chat. Still, he should know it was upsetting, right? This wasn’t a small thing. It was...
“Wren.” Troy’s hand came down softly on hers.
She jerked it away.
