Page 39 of Wild Moon

“Yeah.” He smiles.

“Did your dad bring you out here?”

He nods. “Yeah. He met this lady who seems really nice, and they wanted to stay the weekend. Dad used to hate coming here after mom died. But he doesn’t now. I think the lady made him happy.”

I shift my jaw side to side, thinking. Could my entire opinion about Carson be wrong? Gotta say, circumstantially, everything that’s gone on around Gemma’s disappearancelooksshady as heck. What are the odds this guy bumps into a woman who bears a passing resemblance to his dead wife, has a ‘screw it’ moment and asks her out, and they hit it off so well in fifteen minutes she agrees to go on a weekend trip with him? Some serial killers did have families, wives and kids, who remained clueless about the killings. But, that doesn’t feel right here.

Well, like I said before, anything—even the pair running off to become rodeo clowns—is technically possible.

Now, if Carson is just an ordinary guy who tragically lost his wife and is hoping for a new shot at love with Gemma (and not a psychopath) that means something did definitely happen to both of them. I could be searching fortwobodies. Ugh. This poor kid.

“When was the last time you saw your dad?” I ask.

“We had dinner. I ’member playing the game. Dad went outside with the lady. They were talking.” He scrunches his nose. “Then I don’t kinda remember.”

“Your dad and the lady, did they sound happy?”

Shane grins, nodding. “Yeah. They laughed a lot.”

“How’d you end up outside?” I brush a hand over his shaggy hair, pausing to check his eyes again. Pupil dilation is starting to look normal again. Whatever someone gave him appears mostly to have run its course.

“Don’t know. I just woke up on the ground. Almost got lost, but I found the cabin by followin’ the water.” Shane pulls his right leg up to set his foot on the sofa cushion, then starts tying his sneaker laces.

Other than being a little groggy and inexplicably alone in the woods, Shane appears to be healthy and unhurt. He’s not acting at all like he’s been assaulted. Still doesn’t explain why it looks like someone else hastily dressed him. The hospital smell… could someone have found him out there in the woods drugged, mistaken him for dead, and brought him to the morgue? Nah. A facility like that wouldn’t have been close enough to walk back to the cabin, and I sincerely doubt a perfectly alive, unconscious kid would end up in a morgue.

So bizarre.

While the boy ties his shoes, I stealthily pinch a stray bit of his shirt and try to get a read psychically. If anything traumatic happened to him, I should feel it. But… nope. Nothing. Whatever anyone might possibly have done to him would’ve happened when he was unconscious. I have trouble believing a kid could sleep for nine days on the forest floor and be this clean. There are some stories floating around out there about kids who go missing in the woods only to reappear days, weeks, or months later with no memory of what happened to them. Some stories even claim the kids don’t get any older while missing.

“Shane?” I ask in a gentle tone.

“Yeah?” He looks up at me.

“What day is it?”

“Friday.” He scratches his head. “Or did I sleep all day to Saturday?”

Oh, crap. This kid doesn’t know a whole week passed, plus a few days. I take his hand, look him in the eye, and try to come up with a way to explain things.

“Uh oh.” He fidgets. “Something bad happened.”

“What makes you say that?”

He shrugs one shoulder. “You’re looking at me like the nurse did when she told me Mom died.”

Oof. Right in the feels. I can’t help myself and hug him. He squeezes me back and starts crying. I let him release his emotions until he’s done, then lean back to make eye contact again.

“What happened to Dad?” he asks, tearily.

“I don’t know. That’s why I’m here. Trying to find him and that lady.”

He nods once, calming down a bit.

“Shane, there’s something I need to tell you that might be hard to believe.”

He continues looking at me with these big, adorable hazel eyes.

“You and your dad and the woman came to this cabin on Friday, right?”

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