Page 49 of The Witch’s Orchard

FORTY

O N THE WAY BACK to the cabin, I call AJ.

“I think you need to try and get a warrant for Susan McKinney’s property.”

“That little cabin?” he asks. His voice is muddied, and he cuts out, so I only hear pieces of the next bit. “Jacobs said—FB—so I’m—road and—”

I try to tell him what I’ve learned from Tommy, but the phone cuts off.

Instead, I text the most abbreviated possible message along with a question about whether Susan owns any other buildings on the mountain.

I think about how the combined force of the FBI and the local sheriff’s station would be better equipped than me to go combing through the woods around Susan’s house, but I also wonder what they might have missed ten years ago.

I drive back to Max’s farm. I know Susan said there are several paths to her cabin through the woods, but I only know the one.

Through Max’s field, down the gorge, through the stone circle, and up the hill.

On the way, I think about the moments I’ve spent in Susan’s cabin.

The way I’ve grown to like her. The way she reminds me, subconsciously, of my own granny.

The way she handed me warm tea for comfort and read my fortune and always pointed me in any direction but her own.

The way she appeared as if from nowhere, startling me, looking right through me.

The way her wrist was scratched. The way she hadn’t been in her cabin this morning when I was getting shot at.

By the time I pull onto the Andrews property my hands are shaking with anger and frustration, but it all turns to cold, sweating panic when I see Shiloh sitting on my front porch, crying.

I park and jump out of the car and I’m standing next to her before I’ve even registered my movement.

”What happened?” I ask. “Did they find her?”

She wipes her nose and eyes on the sleeve of her shirt and looks up at me.

“They found a shoe,” she says.

My heart takes a big swan dive into my belly.

“Is it—”

She shakes her head.

“No,” she says, a bitter smile twisting her mouth. “It was a little pink shoe with lights in the heels. They found it out on one of the trails behind the church and they brought it to me and all I could think was why hadn’t I ever bought Lucy shoes like that?”

Like the rest of her, Shiloh’s tears are big and full. They roll down her cheeks, and she puts her hands up to her face.

“I made her a cake,” she says. “This morning I made her a cake. Lemon raspberry. For when she comes back. But then… I saw the shoe and… I just…”

“Oh… Oh, I’m so sorry, Shiloh.”

She shudders with crying and then scrapes at her face with her thumbs and looks at me.

“I didn’t know where else to go,” she says. “There are reporters at the bakery, my home, even my parents’ house! I had to get away and I… I came here.”

“Come on,” I say. “Come on, let’s get you inside.”

She follows me in and I lead her to the couch where I’d been sitting, listening to Sheriff Jacobs, only that morning. I pull a blanket from the other end of the couch and put it over her, go to the coffee maker, and flick it on. I look at my phone and see a text from AJ.

Meeting with FBI now. Working on the warrant.

I glance at Shiloh, shivering on the couch even under the blanket.

I crank up the thermostat and look again at my phone.

Wonder how long it will take the FBI to get a warrant to search Susan’s place.

Wonder where Lucy and Jessica are now. Wonder if I’m wrong about everything.

If I’m just chasing my tail again, like Jacobs had said.

“Max texted me this morning,” Shiloh says, looking at the cookies. “He said that someone shot at you. Are you okay?”

“Yes,” I say. It’s more or less true.

“Do you think someone shot at you because you’re trying to find the girls?”

“Yes,” I say.

“Are you going to stop looking?”

“No,” I say.

“Even though you got shot at?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“It’s what I do,” I say.

I go back to the kitchen cupboards and take down two mugs, fill them with coffee, add plenty of milk and sugar. I get the plate of cookies I’d set out for Mandy earlier and put the coffee and the sweets down in front of Shiloh.

“Baking is what I do,” she says, looking at the cookies. “It’s what I’ve always done when I was upset or depressed or angry. I’m all of those things now. And more.”

“I know.”

“I never asked,” Shiloh says. “You don’t have kids, do you?”

“No,” I say.

“Do you think you will?”

“I don’t know,” I say.

She nods and takes a drink of her coffee. Then, I watch as she absently opens the notebook I left lying on the coffee table, pulls out the folded piece of paper with Olivia’s spirals all over it. I watch as she traces a long finger along one spiral and then another. Her hands are shaking.

I look down at my own hands. They are the hands I’ve always had, and they are also my mother’s hands, my granny’s hands. They have peeled apples and fired guns and held children and thrown punches and turned the pages of book after book after book.

My hands. My mother’s hands. My granny’s hands.

Will they become a mother’s hands once more? Will I pass them down the line?

I don’t tell Shiloh that I was pregnant once.

That it was still early. That I was still in the Air Force and that the pregnancy had been an accident.

That I wasn’t sure what I was going to do.

That I’d never really wanted kids. That, even so, I couldn’t help picturing the child, the way it would look, a cross between myself and the father.

That I cried one night, curled around my belly, trying to know what to do.

That one day soon after I saw that positive test, I was escorting a prisoner from one base to another.

Routine. That we came under fire. That the driver was hit.

That the vehicle tumbled off the road, flipping over and over.

That I woke up in the hospital and my choice had been taken from me with a single bullet.

That Leo had been there, had taken my hand, and had held me while I cried and told him about the pregnancy. How we felt the loss together. A choice we never got to make. A discussion we never got to have. Would we ever have it again?

“Do you think you’ll have children?” she’d asked.

“I don’t know,” I repeat.

I look back at Shiloh, and she holds my gaze for a long, long moment before giving me a gentle nod.

“Where did this come from?” she asks, holding up the paper full of spirals.

“Olivia Jacobs,” I say. “She’s drawn them ever since her kidnapping.”

“Do you know what they are?” she asks.

“No. Nicole brought her around… Oh my God, was it only last night? Anyway, Nicole brought her and I asked her a few questions. She drew those—she’s been drawing them for years—and held the paper up to her face. But… no, I don’t know what it means.”

I’m trying to decide whether to tell her how Olivia reacted to my question about the witch story when my phone buzzes. It’s AJ.

“What’s up?” I ask, stepping outside and onto the porch.

After the warmth of the cabin, the cold air hits hard, and I cough and sputter into the phone.

“You okay?” he asks. “You sound terrible.”

My mind swirls. My chest aches. A cough tries to fight its way up my throat, but I suppress it.

“Yeah.”

“We got toxicology back,” he says. “On Molly Andrews.”

“Okay?”

“You know Doc Jenkins said there was evidence of damage to her internal organs? It looks like something called grayanotoxin.”

“Grana—what?”

“It’s a plant toxin. It’s found in Mediterranean rhododendrons, but around here it’s found in higher quantities in mountain laurel. Looks like it was either in honey or tea.”

“Is it a lethal poison?”

“In high enough quantities it can be,” he says. “But it’s used recreationally for its hallucinogenic properties, apparently. The side effects can be pretty severe, though. Nausea, vomiting, sweating, even seizures.”

“Shit,” I say. Thinking about the tea I drank in Susan’s house only this morning. The warm feeling that swam through my body. The sleepiness I’d felt as she told me the story.

“You’ve got to get them out here,” I say. “You’ve got to get the cops on the mountain. I don’t know where they are but—”

“I’m working on it,” he says. “We should be there soon.”

“How soon is soon?”

“Well—” And then I hear another voice. A woman with a DC accent telling everyone it’s time for a briefing. There’s a dog barking. A rush of other voices.

“I gotta go,” AJ says. “But we’re on the way. Just stay where you are.”

“Sure,” I say.

He hangs up, and I look through the window back at the cabin. Shiloh is still sitting there, wrapped up in her blanket, holding her coffee in one hand and the page of spirals in the other. I take a deep inhalation of breath and force myself not to cough as I breathe out.

If anyone has the ability to use this mountain’s plants for harm, it’s Susan McKinney.

But why drug Molly? And why take Molly at all?

Why Olivia or Molly? And why Lucy now? If the whole scheme was to take Jessica away from an abusive father, then why take the other two girls? Was it really part of some ritual?

“Okay,” I whisper to myself. “They’re on their way. It’s okay.”

I remind myself that the real cops have more means of getting these answers than I do. More means of finding Jessica and Lucy than I do. They’re on their way. And they’ll handle it, I tell myself.

And then I see the silhouette of a man coming up over the ridge and toward the cabin. I realize, as he shambles toward me with his hands in his pockets, that it’s Max Andrews.

I walk off the porch and into the field, meeting him halfway.

“You okay?” I ask.

“Yeah,” he says. His eyes are red-rimmed, though. He looks even paler and thinner than he did at the start of the week.

“I went down to see Susan,” he says.

“You… what? What did she say?”

“I wanted to talk to her about Molly. I just… I didn’t know who else to talk to. Sometimes, Susan is good like that. She listens.”

“Yeah,” I say. “So… was she helpful?”

He shakes his head.

“She didn’t have time,” he said. “She was leaving.”

“Leaving?”

“Yeah, she was saying something about getting them out of there before it was too late.”

“Getting who out?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “I kind of walked up on her and she was muttering to herself.”

“Do you know where she was going?”

“No.”

“Was she still in the cabin when you left?”

“No, she was leaving when I got there. She was carrying this big heavy basket, and her hair was all wrapped up in a scarf. She followed me off the porch and then waved me goodbye.”

“Shit,” I hiss, already sprinting back to Honey, wrangling my keys out of my pocket.

I slide behind the wheel and rev the engine.

Of all the cars Susan has access to, mine and Max’s are probably closest. But given Susan’s talent for town gossip, she must know there’s always the chance that AJ will be here.

So, the next closest would be Deena’s. Would it even seem out of the ordinary for her to suddenly appear on Deena’s property, to ask for a ride to the nearest town or the nearest bus station or the nearest airport?

On the road to Deena Drake’s house, I call AJ.

“Annie?” he says, though his voice is garbled and cutting out. “Ann—we’re—the warrant—as soon as—”

“AJ, you’re cutting out. If you can hear me—”

But the call dies. I phone him back and get his voicemail and leave him a message. I tell him where I’m going, what I’m doing.

Honey’s tires squeal as I pull from the highway onto Lilac Overlook Lane. The scent of the mountains pours in. The cold air burns my lungs.

Leo had called me a crow.

Susan had called me a knight.

In the end, I’m just a girl from the hills with a stubborn streak and a bleeding heart I wear on my sleeve. I am not big or strong. I’m not a crack shot or a genius. But I will do everything I can for Shiloh, and Max, and Mandy, and Olivia, and Quartz Creek itself.

And I will fight like a dog for the truth. Even if it kills me.