Page 40 of High Country Escape

“What happened to the little girl?” she asked.

“We’re not sure. She told her mom she was going to walk a hundred yards or so from their campsite and take a picture at the entrance to the campground. A tracking dog followed her scent that far, then she was just...gone.”

“Do they think someone picked her up?” Roxanne asked.

He glanced toward the kitchen. He could hear both his parents in there, talking softly, their words reduced to a low murmur. “I was wondering if it was William Ledger,” Dalton said.

Roxanne pressed her lips together and gripped her knees with both hands. “Is that what the sheriff thinks, too?” she asked.

“He says they’re looking for Ledger, but they haven’t seen any sign of him or that truck he was driving when he went after you. They think he’s switched vehicles and is probably traveling under another name and is using cash or a stolen credit card. But no one has seen him.”

“He was very good at hiding in plain sight,” she said. “I didn’t realize how good until years later.”

“I brought you some dinner.” His mother returned, carrying a tray like the one she’d bring his meals on when he was home sick with a cold. She placed the tray over his knees and the aroma of a hot roast beef sandwich hit him hard enough that his stomach clenched and his mouth watered.

“Thanks, Mom,” he said. “I’m starving.”

“I called Bethany and Carter while I was waiting for the bread to toast,” his mom said, as Dalton ate. “They both made it home safely. Carter said they may need to go out and search again tomorrow, so we’ll have to rearrange the tour schedule. I figure Dad and Clayton can fill in for you boys for most of the day.”

“They’re going to search the woods again tomorrow?” Roxanne asked.

Dalton finished chewing and swallowed. “We have to, unless we get other information to confirm the little girl isn’t there,” he said.

“Her poor parents,” his mom said. “They must be worried sick.”

Dalton finished eating, but he watched Roxanne out of the corner of his eyes. She pretended interest in something his mother was saying about her conversation with Bethany, but he thought she wasn’t really listening. There was a new stillness to her face, and a pinched look somewhere between worry and fear.

He finished eating and pushed his plate away. “I think I’ll go upstairs and take a shower,” he said.

“Your old room is ready for you,” his mom said. “Go right to bed and rest.”

He supposed his mother was never going to stop talking to him as if he was still six years old, instead of twenty-six. Tonight, it was easy to shrug off her words, probably because he had already planned to turn in as soon as possible.

When he emerged from the shower twenty minutes later Roxanne was standing in the doorway of her room, across the hall, as if she had been waiting for him. She glanced down the hallway, as if to make sure they were alone, then motioned for him to come into her room.

Suppressing a grin, he did so. He didn’t really think Roxanne was inviting him inside for anything risqué, but he couldn’t help but feel like a teenager sneaking around behind his parents’ backs. She closed the door behind them, then moved past him into the room. The furniture had been Bethany’s before she moved out, though tranquil oil paintings had replaced the posters she had tacked to the wall in her teen years, and the space was more orderly than he remembered his sister keeping it. “I’ve been thinking about this missing little girl,” she said.

“Her name is Sarah,” he said.

“Sarah.” She nodded. “It sounds like if someone took her, it happened very quickly, is that right?”

“I think so. One camper thought he might have heard one short scream, but no one else heard anything. She wasn’t gone that long before her parents went looking for her.”

She hugged her arms across her stomach. “When Ledger took me, it wasn’t like that,” she said.

“It wasn’t?”

“No. He didn’t go after me directly. He used Alice to get close to me.”

He didn’t say anything, waiting for her to explain.

She blew out a breath, stirring the tendrils of hair framing her face. “I met Alice at a playground near my home. Ledger must have been nearby, but I have no memory of him. All I remember is this very pretty girl who went out of her way to be nice to me. I told you I was living in a group home at the time, right?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t have friends,” she said. “None of the other kids in the home were close to my age. They were all much younger. There were six of us and I always felt left out.”

He pictured her—a little girl playing by herself at a playground.