Page 3 of This is Why We Lied

Maybe he didn’t love this place after all.

Worse, at a very deep level, he blamed the Jackal for this misery. Nothing had ever gone right in Will’s life when that asshole was around, dating back to when they were kids. The sadistic prick had always been a walking bad luck charm.

Will rubbed his face with his hands like he could erase any thoughts of the Jackal from his brain. They weren’t kids anymore. Will was a grown man on his honeymoon.

He headed back toward Sara. Or at least in the direction he thought Sara had gone. Will had lost all sense of time and direction in the dark. There was no telling how long he’d run through the forest like he was tackling a Ninja Warrior set. Walking through the overgrowth was a lot harder without the adrenaline pushing him to run face-first into hanging vines. Will silently formed his own plan. Once he reached the path, he would put on his socks and tie his bootlace so he wasn’t limping through the rest of the week. He would locate his beautiful wife. He would take her back to the cottage and they could pick up where they had left off.

“Help!”

Will froze.

There wasn’t any uncertainty this time. The scream was so pronounced that he knew it had come from the mouth of a woman.

Then she screamed again—

“Please!”

Will bolted away from the path, running toward the lake. The sound had come from the opposite side of the swimming area, toward the bottom of the snowman. He kept his head down. Legs pumping. He could hear the blood rushing through his ears alongside the echo of the screams. The woods quickly turned into a dense forest. Low-hanging limbs slashed at his arms. Gnats swarmed around his face. The terrain suddenly dropped. He landed sideways on his foot. His ankle rolled.

He ignored the sharp pain, forcing himself to keep going. Will tried to get his adrenaline in check. He had to slow his pace. The compound was at a higher elevation than the lake. There was a steep drop-off near the dining hall. He found the back end of the Loop Trail, then followed another zig-zagging path down. His heart was still pumping. His brain was still reeling with recriminations. He should’ve paid attention to his instincts the first time. He should’ve figured this out. He felt sick about what he was going to find, because the woman had screamed for her life, and there was no predator more vicious than a human being.

He coughed as the air turned thick with smoke. The moonlight broke through the trees just in time for him to see the ground was terraced. Will stumbled into a clearing. Empty beer cans and cigarette butts littered the ground. Tools were everywhere. Will kept his head on a swivel as he jogged past sawhorses and extension cords and a generator that had been turned on its side. There were three more cottages, all of them in various stages of repair. A tarp covered one roof. Windows were boarded up in the next. The last cabin was on fire. Flames licked out between the log siding. The door was half-open. Smoke ribboned from a busted side window. The roof wasn’t going to hold for much longer.

The screams for help. The fire.

Someone had to be inside.

Will took a deep breath before he ran up the porch stairs. Kicked the door wide open. A blast of heat snatched the moisture from his eyes. All but one of the windows was boarded up. The only light was from the fire. He crouched down, keeping himself below the smoke as he made his way through the living room. Into the tiny kitchen. The bathroom with space for a soaking tub. The small closet. His lungs started to ache. He was running out of breath. He inhaled a mouthful of black smoke as he headed toward the bedroom. No door. No fixtures. No closet. The back wall of the cottage had been stripped to the studs.

They were too narrow for him to fit through.

Will heard a loud creak over the roar of the fire. He jogged back into the living room. The ceiling was fully engulfed. Flames were chewing away the support beams. The roof was collapsing. Chunks of burning wood rained down. Will could barely see for the smoke.

The front door was too far away. He ran toward the busted window, jumping at the last minute, hurtling past falling debris. He rolled to the ground. Coughs racked his body. His skin was tight, as though it wanted to boil from the heat. He tried to stand up, but could only make it to his hands and knees before he coughed out a wad of black soot. His nose was running. Sweat poured from his face. He coughed again. His lungs felt like shattered glass. He pressed his forehead to the ground. Mud smacked at his singed eyebrows. He pulled in a sharp breath through his nose.

Copper.

Will sat up.

There was a belief among police officers that you could smell the iron in blood when it hit oxygen. This wasn’t true. The iron needed a chemical reaction to activate the scent. At crime scenes, that something was usually the fatty compounds in skin. The odor was amplified in the presence of water.

Will looked out at the lake. His eyes blurred. He wiped away the mud and sweat. Silenced the cough that wanted to come.

In the distance, he could make out the soles of a pair of Nikes.

Blood-stained jeans pulled down to the knees.

Arms floating out to the sides.

The body was face up, half in the water, half out.

Will felt momentarily transfixed by the sight. It was the way the moon turned the skin a waxy, pale blue. Maybe joking about growing up in an orphanage had put it in his mind, or maybe he was still feeling the absence of any family members on his side of the aisle at the wedding, but Will found himself thinking of his own mother.

As far as he knew, there were only two photographs that documented the seventeen years of his mother’s short life. One was a mugshot from an arrest that had taken place a year before Will was born. The other was taken by the medical examiner who had performed her autopsy. Polaroid. Faded. The waxy blue of his mother’s skin was the same color as the dead woman lying twenty feet away.

Will stood. He limped toward the body.

He wasn’t under any illusion that he would see his mother’s face. His gut had already told him who he would find. Still, standing over the body, knowing he was right, etched another scar in the darkest place of his heart.