Page 11 of Wilderness Search (Eagle Mountain: Unsolved Mysteries #2)

“Did she have a phone?” Aaron asked. Veronica had told him campers were not allowed to have cell phones, but he was curious if Olivia had sneaked one in.

“No, I have it with me.” Sylvia dug in her purse and handed him the cell phone.

“Has it been on the whole time?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I switched it on after we found out she was missing. In case she tried to call.” She bit her lip, holding back tears.

“Could you unlock it for me, please?”

She unlocked the screen and returned it to him. He scrolled through the history. No calls in almost a month, and before that calls to home and someone named Sara. “Who is Sara?”

“Her best friend at school.”

He had to scroll back two more weeks to find a series of text messages to Jared—a furious discussion of her parents’ anger and threats to tear the young lovers apart.

Then a gap of a few days and an angry exchange in which Olivia said she was glad they broke up and she never wanted to see him again.

That fit with the story Stella had told them.

He returned the phone. “Thank you for looking through these things. I’ll take you to the lodge now.”

“I can do that.” Scott Sprague crossed the cabin to them. Freshly shaved and wearing pressed khakis and a green Mountain Kingdom polo, he looked less haggard than he had yesterday. “I’m sure you have questions for me,” he told the Pryors. “I’ll do my best to answer them.”

“I have a question for you,” Aaron said. “Are you intending to keep the camp open while Olivia is missing?”

Scott looked puzzled. “I don’t think it’s wise to disrupt the children’s lives any further.

While we don’t know yet what happened to Olivia, I’m sure she’s merely run away and will be found very soon.

And I truly believe, despite this very unfortunate incident, that the children are safer here than almost anywhere.

So far, the parents agree with me. Though any parent may remove their child at any time, none of them have elected to do so.

I see it as a testament to their faith in me. ”

Aaron didn’t want to point out the possible significance of the bloody shirt with Olivia’s parents there, so he merely frowned and shook his head.

He didn’t think the sheriff could order a private business to shut down, though if he had been a parent in this situation, he would have been retrieving his child as soon as possible.

Aaron left the Pryors with Scott and was headed toward the parking lot when someone hailed him. He turned back to see Gary Reynolds jogging toward him. “I’m glad I caught you,” Gary said and stopped beside Aaron, a little out of breath.

“What is it?” Aaron asked. He braced himself for anger. Maybe Gary wanted to berate him for telling the sheriff about Rachel’s disappearance and Gary’s role as a suspect.

But Willa’s brother didn’t appear angry. “I’ve found something,” he said. “Something you need to see.”

“What is it?”

“Come look.”

He followed Gary across camp, around to the back of the mess hall to a small storage shed.

“This is a shed where we keep extra canned goods, bottled water and stuff like that,” he said.

“I came out here this morning to get a case of spaghetti sauce for the cook and saw someone broke the lock.” He stepped back so that Aaron could move in closer.

The padlock which had fastened the door was intact, but the wood around it was splintered.

“I think they broke it with that crowbar.” Gary pointed to an iron bar that lay on the ground nearby.

“Is anything missing?” Aaron asked.

“I don’t know. I didn’t want to touch anything until someone official got a look. But I know it wasn’t like this yesterday.”

Aaron nodded. Yesterday they had searched this area multiple times. Someone would have seen this damage. He took out his phone and snapped half a dozen photos of the door and the crowbar on the ground, then put on a pair of gloves. “Let’s take a look inside.”

He eased open the door and peered into the dark space. “There’s a pull chain for a light overhead,” Gary said.

Aaron tugged on the light. “Notice anything out of place?” he asked.

Gary shouldered his way into the small space.

“That case of water wasn’t open last time I was in here.

” He indicated a flat of water bottles, the plastic wrapping on one corner pulled back and three bottles missing.

He moved farther into the space, toward the back.

“There are bins back here where they store extra blankets and sleeping bags. The lid is off one of them and it looks like someone rifled through here. And there’s some backpacking equipment that hangs on the wall.

There’s an empty spot where I think there might have been a pack.

You’d have to ask the counselors what was in it. ”

Aaron joined him and took more photos, then they both backed out of the building. “What time did you get to work this morning?” Aaron asked.

“My shift starts at eight. I got here a few minutes before, parked and walked up to the mess hall for a cup of coffee. The cook asked me to fetch the spaghetti sauce, so I got the key from her and came back here and found the lock busted. I saw you walking across to the parking lot and thought I’d better have you take a look. ”

Aaron nodded. “Thanks.”

Gary shifted from foot to foot, hands shoved in the pockets of his jeans. “Should I be worried?” he asked. “Willa says we should hire a lawyer. Should we?”

“I talked to your neighbors this morning,” Aaron said. “The woman across the street says your truck was parked at the curb all night. Her kid was sick with a stomach virus and she was up and down all night and she could see it out of her front window. She’s pretty sure Willa’s car was there, too.”

“So you’re saying my alibi holds up.”

“We had to question you. We wouldn’t be doing our jobs if we didn’t.”

“You guys in Vermont wasted a lot of time with me. They never found who killed Rachel.”

“No, they didn’t.”

Gary kicked a rock. “What is with these people, hurting little kids?”

“I don’t know. We don’t know Olivia is hurt. Maybe she took these things and ran away.”

“I heard they found a shirt of hers. With blood on it.”

“Where did you hear that?”

Gary shrugged. “People talk. And what about Trevor? Did he really kill himself? He didn’t seem the type.”

“What’s the type?”

Gary sighed. “Yeah. I guess you never know. It just seems weird, him dying, then Olivia disappearing.”

“Maybe she ran away because Trevor died. Maybe he was the person she was meeting when she sneaked out of the cabin.”

“I don’t know anything about that.”

Aaron would talk to Trevor’s brother again. Maybe there was something there. It didn’t explain the ripped shirt or the blood, but it was something…

“How did Willa seem, when you talked to her?” Gary asked.

Aaron stared at Gary, surprised. “What do you mean?”

“Was she different from before?”

“She still hates my guts, if that’s what you’re asking,” Aaron said.

Gary shook his head. “Did you notice she’s thinner?

And just, I don’t know, sadder. I mean, I get that what happened, with Rachel and me being arrested, and then all the people who thought they could solve the case hassling us, was really awful.

But when she decided we should change our names and move here, I thought it would be a good thing.

A fresh start. She got a good job, then joined search and rescue.

Guys ask her out all the time, but she won’t say yes to any of them. She just seems, I don’t know, stuck.”

“She’s been through a lot,” Aaron said. Had he hurt her so badly she would never recover? “All this happening isn’t helping any.”

“Seeing you again upset her lot,” Gary said. He shifted again. “But it got me thinking.”

“About what?”

“You don’t get upset about something you don’t still care about.”

“She cares about you,” Aaron said.

“She does. But at one time she cared about you. A lot.”

Aaron’s throat tightened, making it difficult to speak. “Those days are gone.” He forced out the words.

“I don’t know about that,” Gary said. “I mean, you have to wonder why we ended up here, in Eagle Mountain. Willa says she forgot that you had family here, but I wonder.”

Aaron’s radio crackled and Gary took a step back. “I have to get to work, but I’ll be around if you need me.”

Aaron keyed the mic and responded to a summons to meet the sheriff at the lodge.

He needed to report the broken lock and the theft from the storage shed, but instead his mind raced with what Gary had told him.

Did Willa still care about him? He certainly hadn’t seen it in her eyes last time they had spoken.

At one time he would have said he knew her better than almost anyone in the world. Now she was a stranger to him.

As for whether or not he still cared about her…

it was a question he didn’t have to think about very hard to know the answer.

Willa would always be the one he measured every other relationship against. That didn’t strike him as particularly healthy or well-adjusted, but it was the truth.

She may have grown to hate him, but his heart had never let go of her.