Page 12 of The Souls of Lost Lake

Wren reached out and snapped a dead stick off a branch from an oak tree. “I’ve stayed at Eddie’s house since I was a kid. I don’t have slumber parties withhim. You know his mom has been there for me during—well, everything.”

Pippin’s expression remained passive. He had never been close to the Markhams, and Eddie’s mom’s fight with breast cancer was a vague concern to him, unlike how it was eating at Wren’s insides.

“What was your dream about?” He skirted any further discussion about Wren’s surrogate mom. She knew it was purposeful. Losing their own mother had crushed Pippin. In his early twenties at the time, Wren wondered now if that was why he’d never really come up out of the family basement. Coming up meant facing a loss. Pippin didn’t face loss any better than she did. Not really.

Wren broke a three-inch section off the stick and flicked it at Pippin. “So, you know Lost Lake?”

Pippin nodded.

“I dreamed I went there searching for Jasmine and I found her. She was lying on the shoreline. Dead.”

Pippin eyed her. “Dreams aren’t real.”

“But ghosts are?” Wren tossed the dead stick to the forest floor.

“Did anyone search Lost Lake?”

“I don’t know.” She looked up at her brother, who topped her by three inches.

“If they did, then you’d know your dream was just a dream and nothing more.”

No dead little girl. He had a point.

“Lost Lake doesn’t even fall within the search area. It’s outside the grid. You know how deep in the wilderness preserve that lake is.”

Pippin nodded. “Fair enough. Let’s keep moving then?” He took a few steps, dismissing Lost Lake altogether. When Wren didn’t follow, he stopped and looked over his shoulder. “You coming?”

Wren couldn’t shake the feeling that had gnawed at her ever since she’d admitted her dream aloud. It must have shown on her face, because Pippin gave an exasperated cluck of his tongue.

“We’re not going to Lost Lakenow.”

She lifted her eyes and met her brother’s.

“They’ve assigned us this search area,” he continued, “and it’s our responsibility to make sure it’s well covered. You could screw up the entire search and rescue by deviating off course, not to mention how it could have terrible ramifications for the girl. The odds that Jasmine is here and not at Lost Lake are much higher.”

Wren covered the few steps between them. “We can finish searching this grid, but then later today we can just hike out on our own. I think we can find it. Lost Lake? Eddie can come with us. He’s got the coordinates for it on his GPS.”

“No.”

“Why not?” Wren challenged him. “What if my dream was really a premonition? God’s way of saying ‘Look here’? What if we need to get there to save her before she dies?”

“You’re being ridiculous.”

“But thinking Ava Coons haunts these woods and steals people isn’t?”

“Do what you want,” Pippin said. “But our priority is to finish what we started here or we could sabotage the entire search and rescue.”

He was right. Wren knew that. But she also knew she couldn’t dismiss her dream that easily—that readily—and that she was going to have to find Lost Lake. Even if she went alone.

They hadn’t found Jasmine. No one had. Not even a torn piece of her clothing, a shoe, a candy wrapper, nothing. The mood at the SAR base was somber. There was little to no socialization as search teams arrived shaking their heads. Another nine hours added to Jasmine’s clock. And while this wasn’t a kidnapping, that didn’t mean the odds were any better after the first twenty-four hours gone missing.

Wren was thankful the parents hadn’t been stationed at the SAR base. The idea of watching their desperation was horrific. She heard that Jasmine’s father had demanded to join a search team but was finally convinced to stay behind after his wife collapsed. Wren couldn’t fathom how torn he was. His wife versus his little girl.

“Hey.” Eddie met Wren as she hiked toward the canteen. It was for campers, but all she could think about was a cherry slushie. It would be refreshing, and she could drown her own sense of failure in sugar.

“Thanks for whipping together those sack lunches.” She gave him the side-eye as he matched her pace.

“I had the volunteers bag a bunch more for tomorrow. I’m glad we’ve got a good set of high-school camp staff this summer. They’re eager to help out.”