Page 16 of Into the Dark, We Go

I gave a half-shrug. Nothing specific. Just moving in with my mom and wallowing in misery.

"How about you?"

"I’d like to stick around for a couple of days, talk to the locals, see if anyone heard of this Mary woman. Someone’s gotta know something."

"And what if you don’t find her?" I asked.

"Then we’ll look elsewhere. We have one more lead we’re checking out next."

"Where?"

"West Virginia. Amanda was on a trip there shortly before her disappearance."

"Why didn’t you say anything earlier?" I asked in surprise.

"We figured we’d start with you, see if your guy’s tied to this mess. Plus, the psychic. Now that this lead’s gone cold, we’re gonna fly out there, see what’s what."

I was certain they hadn’t mentioned anything earlier because they didn’t trust me. They wanted to meet me first and make sure I wasn’t some creepy, jealous-girlfriend-turned-killer type. Even though they had their reasons, I was still offended.

"And precisely where did Amanda go?" I couldn’t keep the coldness from my tone.

"We ain’t sure. Her credit card was used at a gas station in Ridgewood County last before she turned home."

I choked on my cola and coughed. While Mitchell sympathetically patted my back, I desperately tried to convey something important to him. June stared straight at me, calmly dipping her fries into ketchup, waiting for me to either suffocate or stop coughing with the imperturbability of a cat watching a glass teeter off the edge of a table.

I was starting to think that maybe Lucas and Amanda’s disappearances weren’t so separate after all.

"I think I know where to look in West Virginia." I finally managed.

"What are you talking about?" Mitchell sat straighter.

"You didn’t know? Lucas is from Black Water, Ridgewood County."

"What? No way!" The siblings spoke over each other.

"We thought he was local," June added, meaning Minnesota.

"No, and like your sister, he’d just returned from visiting his parents a couple of days before." The memory of my last fight with Lucas flashed through my mind, leaving one more scratch on my heart.

"This is insane!" June almost screamed.

The waitress frowned with disapproval. Mitchell signaled his sister to keep her voice down. Unlike her, he quickly regained his composure and adopted a businesslike tone akin to that of a seasoned police officer. After what I’d been through with the police, it gave me the ick.

"Have you been there? You said you met his parents."

June immediately started searching for the mentioned city on the map, forgetting about her food.

I continued, "No, never. We only met once. At the police station in Minneapolis after Lucas disappeared."

Lucas never officially introduced me to his parents, which, to be fair, always bothered me. Whenever I brought it up, he’d brush it off with a promise that it would happen soon. It never did.

When I finally met his parents, we barely exchanged two words. They were withdrawn, likely due to their grief and shock. There were no attempts at further communication on either end. I didn’t want to bother them, and they never reached out.

Mitchell bombarded me with questions about Lucas, hoping to uncover more coincidences, but unfortunately, there were none. Unlike Amanda, Lucas wasn’t part of any support groups or societies. He was a typical American student and a talented football player with big dreams of making it to the NFL. In contrast, Amanda led a quiet life in Kansas City, living aloneafter her sister rented a room and moved out to start her own life. Though they didn’t explicitly mention it, I sensed a fallout between June and Amanda shortly before the youngest moved out.

Mitchell fell into thought, chewing on the cold remnants of his fries. After a moment, he looked up, eyes narrowed. "Something must have happened there. I knew we gotta go there. My training doesn’t start for another three weeks, so I’ve got time."

"I don’t care about work. I can just not go back at all," June said with a careless toss of her head, earning a disapproving glance from her brother.