Page 44 of Face Her Fear

Noah knelt slowly, calculating. There was no way he could draw on Cooper without getting killed before he got his pistol halfway out of the holster.

“Hurry up,” Cooper said.

“What do you want?” Noah asked.

“Your gun! Your gun! Come on, hand it over or I will blow your damn brains out.”

Noah did what he said. He gave up his off-duty weapon. Then his phone. At gunpoint, he walked to the locked door at the other end of the kitchen. As instructed, he unlocked and opened it. There was a set of wooden steps that vanished into darkness below. Cooper pushed him from behind and he tumbled down them. The wind was knocked out of him when he hit the floor. Then came the most terrifying seconds of his life as he registered Cooper moving down the steps after him. Noah wanted to close his eyes. He didn’t want to see the barrel of the gun before Cooper pulled the trigger, but he couldn’t get his body to do anything he told it. For what felt like an eternity, he watched Cooper approaching, willing the oxygen to come back into his lungs. It wouldn’t.

In his mind, he was already saying the words he couldn’t force his body to speak.I’m sorry, Josie. I’m so sorry.

TWENTY-EIGHT

Josie trudged up the snowy path, calves burning. She passed Sandrine’s cabin, then Brian and Nicola’s. Their door was open. Josie caught a glimpse of Brian moving the dresser across the floor as she went past. Taryn’s cabin was next. Her door was slightly ajar but Josie saw her moving around inside. Next came Meg’s cabin. Josie looked down the slope to make sure no one was watching and then she jogged up the steps and tested the door to make sure it was still locked. When the door didn’t budge, a wave of relief washed over her body, warming her momentarily against the freezing temperatures and the cutting wind. She moved on to her own cabin.

She hadn’t actually left any of her things inside but now that she knew the property owner wasn’t behind the hidden cameras in the main house, she wondered if whoever had put them there had also put them inside the cabins. A sick feeling sloshed in her stomach as she closed the door behind her. It was just as she had left it. Now looking at it, stripped of her personal possessions, there weren’t many places one could hide a camera. Still, Josie checked every corner and crevice. She was happy to find nothing. She exited, passing Meg’s locked cabin and heading back down the slope. A new thought struck her. Just because there was no hidden camera in her cabin didn’t mean that whoever was responsible for them hadn’t put them in other cabins. What if Cooper was behind the cameras? He had access to all the cabins. None of them would have found it odd to see him hanging around their cabins.

The problem was that Josie could not legally search any of the cabins occupied by others, not without their permission.

But she could do a plain view search if she was invited inside.

Taryn’s door was still cracked. Josie climbed the steps and knocked softly on the door. “Come in!” called Taryn.

She didn’t have any of the apprehension or hypervigilance the rest of them had. Josie envied that, but she was also happy for Taryn that she still felt a sense of safety and security in the world.

“Oh hey.” Taryn smiled. Her face was flushed. She was likely still sweaty from hours of shoveling snow. She’d taken off her hat, scarf, and gloves and left them on top of the dresser. She was bent over a collection of tote bags centered in the room, rifling through one of them.

Josie scanned the tiny room while Taryn was not looking, again searching for any cameras. Save Taryn’s bags, the cabin was identical to Josie’s. No cameras in the main room.

“You okay?” asked Taryn.

While she was still occupied with her bag, Josie edged around her, trying to get a glimpse into the bathroom. “Yeah,” Josie said. “You?”

From what she could see, there were no cameras in Taryn’s cabin.

“Under the circumstances, I guess.”

Josie turned away from the bathroom and saw that Taryn was fishing granola bars and packs of trail mix from each bag and consolidating them into a single tote bag. The other bags were filled with clothes, toiletries and what looked like a three-ring binder.

Taryn paused, a small pack of dehydrated cranberries in her hand. “It’s a lot for one person, isn’t it?”

Josie didn’t answer.

“I didn’t even eat any of it this week. It just made me feel better to have it. When I was a little girl, my parents would take me mountain-biking or hiking. My mom would bring food but never enough for me.”

Josie tried not to visibly flinch. She’d heard some of the stories about Taryn’s mother in their group sessions. They mostly revolved around neglect and intentional deprivation. Josie’s own fake mother, Lila Jensen, had also routinely starved her by locking her in a closet for days at a time. Josie thought about sharing her own experience, but it was still something she didn’t like to talk about. She’d had a difficult time talking to Sandrine about it earlier in the week. Instead, she asked the question she’d been itching to ask all week. “What did your father have to say about her starving you?”

Taryn rubbed the hollow of her throat with her index finger. “He always said I should listen to my mother.”

“I’m sorry,” said Josie.

She gave a half-shrug and bent again to search the bags for more food. “The truth? I wasn’t his.”

“What do you mean?”

“My mom adopted me when I was a baby, when she was married to someone else. Then that guy died, and my mom remarried a couple of years later—to the guy I considered my dad. But he wasn’t there for me, only her. He didn’t care what she did to me. I still don’t understand why she wanted me in the first place. To have someone to be shitty to, I guess.”

Josie thought of all the horrifying things she’d seen as a law enforcement officer. “Some people are just sick, Taryn. The important thing to remember is that it wasn’t your fault. Nothing that she did to you was your fault.”

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