Page 95 of Silent Bones

“Another?” Noah felt his gut tighten.

“Logan is gone.”

“What? He ran?”

“No.”

A beat.

“He’s dead. Hung himself in the motel. No note.”

Callie turned, watching his face change.

Noah closed his eyes for half a second. Then opened them.

25

Multiple unread messages stared back, bright against the black screen, as if demanding an answer no one could give. Noah scrolled through his messages as the cruiser idled outside the Pines Edge Motel. His last text to Logan had been three days ago.

He had received no response.

The transcript from Logan’s motel interview was open on his lap. The kid had been nervous, evasive, but something in the final exchange stuck with him.

“It wasn’t just noise in the woods. It was the way they ran. Like they saw something. Like they knew.”

Noah didn’t know what the teens might have seen before they died. But he was starting to think Logan did. And now Logan was silent.

A knock on the window startled him. McKenzie, sunglasses on, a half-empty coffee in his hand. “You ready?”

He nodded and stepped out. The sun had baked the motel lot into something brittle and stale. Pines Edge was the kind of place people didn’t talk about staying at.

A sign flickered the word “VACANCY”. Room 6 was already cordoned off. Two uniformed officers kept the perimeter clear while a coroner tech loaded gear from the van.

“Our cop was posted outside, and the guy from the front desk said Logan only exited the room to have a smoke,” McKenzie said. “No one else showed up at his door.”

“And now he’s dead,” Noah murmured, glancing toward the second-story walkway where the door stood open and a camera flashed inside.

Callie hung back, visibly shaken. “He was a mess,” she whispered. “But he didn’t want to die. He wanted to disappear, not vanish.”

Inside, the room reeked of mildew and stale cigarette smoke. Logan’s body had already been cut down, laid out beneath a stained white sheet, his pale toes peeking from the bottom. A folding chair was knocked over near the closet rail, a belt still cinched to the rod. The scene was textbook, too textbook.

Noah crouched beside the tech bag as the coroner, Ozzy, adjusted gloves. “Neck’s distended. Ligature furrow is deep but uneven. Could be self-applied,” he said, but his tone lacked conviction.

“Any signs of struggle?” Noah asked.

He hesitated. “Small abrasions under the nails. No skin samples yet. Also, odd bruising on his lower back. Shallow, like someone grabbed and held him from behind.”

Noah nodded. “Get a tox screen from Addie. Full panel. And a fingernail kit.”

Ozzy gave a quick nod and got to work.

Noah stood and looked around the room. It wasn’t messy. If it wasn’t a real suicide it was… staged. Logan’s backpack rested on the chair. Zipper shut. Phone charging, still at 82%. Wallet on the desk. No suicide note.

Noah pulled on gloves and carefully opened the pack. Inside were socks, a protein bar, a half-empty bottle of ibuprofen, and, folded neatly at the bottom, a sketchpad. He flipped it open. Inside were page after page of loose drawings; trees, firepits, what looked like a shoreline with tents. Then, near the back, a rough rendering of a silver trailer with scribbled words in the corner:

“Don’t trust Mack.”

And beneath that, a smear. Like the pencil had been smudged in haste. Or panic.