Total pages in book: 126
Estimated words: 119746 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 599(@200wpm)___ 479(@250wpm)___ 399(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 119746 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 599(@200wpm)___ 479(@250wpm)___ 399(@300wpm)
The bartender clears her throat again. This time Pete eyes her and frowns.
I focus my pleading look on Zach.
Hurry.
“Oh, well you just head back out toward Donner Lake,” Zach says, pointing in what I assume is the right direction. “Like you’re heading to the campgrounds. You’ll come across Cold Stream Drive. Follow that until it turns into a dirt road and about a few minutes after that you’ll come across the ranch. Can’t miss it.”
“Thank you,” I tell them, placing my empty glass down on the nearest high table. “You’ve been very helpful.”
I start walking to the door when Pete calls out after me. “What business do you have with Jensen again?”
I glance at him over my shoulder before pushing open the door. “I need him to find someone.”
“Who?” I hear him say as I step out into the bright mountain sunshine and head across the dusty parking lot toward my car.
“My dead sister,” I say under my breath.
2
AUBREY
When I woke up that morning, I was certain my day was going to go like every other day since I was placed on mandatory leave: Whatever guy I brought home the night before I’d shoo out before they could have breakfast and promise I’d keep in touch (though I never would). I’d guzzle back electrolytes in order to quell my hangover, ignore the guilt, and head to the gym for a punishing workout while listening to an X-Files podcast or Deftones on full blast. After, I’d think about going to the shelters again to look for a cat, though I’d end up not going for fear of commitment, then I’d go back home and wait for an email from Carlos saying I’d been reinstated. When that never came, I’d email my partner Diana and see what’s happening, looking for any clues that I’ll be welcomed back to the bureau soon. Then, when I wouldn’t get what I wanted, I’d get in my gamer chair and lose myself to a few hours of Call of Duty or Dragon Age before ordering delivery, swiping right on a dating app, or heading out to the bar and starting the process all over again.
But that’s not what happened.
Instead, I went to be bed alone and woke up to a Google alert I had set for the names “Lainey Wells” and “Adam Medlock.” The same alert I had setup three years ago, a few days after my sister and her boyfriend disappeared, when I realized the FBI wouldn’t be getting involved and the incompetent local cops were going to fuck things up royally. It was when I knew I was going to have to do everything I could to find her alive.
At first the alerts came in every hour, postings about people who thought they saw Lainey, articles in the local papers, then national news sites, with headlines like “What happened to Lainey Wells and her boyfriend when they decided to go hiking in the Sierra Nevada’s that warm day in May?” There was speculation that Adam had killed her, that they both got in trouble with some Reno gangs, that they either were killed or faked their disappearance and were living a new life in Mexico. It wasn’t long before the cops decided that Lainey was just another drug-addicted woman who wasn’t worth searching for, and they gave up and the news alerts started to dwindle.
Lainey became a cold case to everyone but me.
But I had hope. I always had, perhaps too much.
No one ever talks about how destructive hope can be.
And so the article I read this morning that had mentioned her disappearance was about a guy who had gone hiking recently in South Tahoe, but never returned when he was supposed to. This prompted a multi-day search for him that turned up nothing. That is until his family hired a tracker out of Donner Lake called Jensen McGraw, who was able to locate the missing hiker in a matter of days, discovering him in a ravine where he had fallen. He had suffered a broken leg and concussion, hidden from the searching helicopters by the rocky terrain, but thanks to Mr. McGraw’s help, he was now in the hospital and on the mend.
Perhaps it was foolish to even get excited about what I read. When I was placed on leave, Carlos told me I needed to find closure with Lainey, not keep reopening old wounds. But the thing he doesn’t get is that the wounds never closed to begin with. They remain as raw and open and bloody as the day she disappeared. They’ll stay that way until I get actual closure.
Which means when they find her body.
I’ve come to terms with the fact she’s dead. I know it. My dreams tell me so every night. The dreams never start the same but they end the same. In my sister’s death.