Page 29 of Wilderness Search (Eagle Mountain: Unsolved Mysteries #2)

Light shone through the front windows of the cabin, a rectangular log structure with green shutters. They knocked on the door. After a moment, the door eased open and a slender girl with long brown hair looked out. Her eyes widened when she saw Jamie and Aaron.

“Did you catch him?” she blurted.

“Catch who?” Aaron asked.

“You two are cops, right?”

“We are,” Jamie said. “Can we come in and talk to you for a minute? I’m Jamie and this is Aaron. Are you Kelli?”

She looked past them. “There’s no one else with you, is there?”

“No,” Jamie said.

The girl held the door open wider and stepped back to let them pass. She moved over to a bunk and sat on the edge of the mattress. “Where’s Mr. Sprague?” she asked.

“Mr. Sprague is with some other deputies,” Jamie said.

Kelli gnawed at her thumbnail. “Are they, like, arresting him?”

“Do you think we need to?” Jamie asked, her voice gentle.

Kelli burst into tears. Jamie moved to her side. Kelli leaned into her, sobbing. Jamie patted her back.

“If Scott has done something to hurt you or anyone else, we will arrest him,” she said. “You don’t have to worry about him hurting you again.”

Aaron sat opposite on another bunk, feeling helpless in the face of this child’s obvious pain.

“Aaron, could you get us some tissues?” Jamie asked.

He found a box of tissues on a table by the door and brought them to her. Kelli pulled out several and blew her nose.

“When you’re ready, could you tell us what happened?” Jamie asked.

“Yes.” Kelli’s voice was stronger than Aaron had expected, tinged with anger. She blotted her eyes and raised her head. “I want to tell you what happened. I want him to get everything he deserves.”

“We want that, too,” Jamie said.

“Mr. Sprague is a creep and a perv,” Kelli said.

“He pretends to be all concerned about us campers but really he’s just waiting for a chance to grope one of us.

I even fell for his nice act, then, a couple of days ago, he cornered me on the way back from evening assembly.

He said he needed help with something in his office.

The next thing he had me in there and he was trying to feel me up and stuff. ”

“That must have been terrifying,” Jamie said.

“It was.” She looked at Jamie with pleading eyes.

“At first I was just, too grossed out to even move. Then I kind of woke up and tried to fight him off, but he said no one would hear me. There isn’t anybody in that part of camp at that time of evening.

Everyone is back here at the cabins, getting ready for bed. ”

Fresh tears welled in her eyes. Aaron fought down a rage that squeezed his chest.

“Did Mr. Sprague threaten you if you told anyone?” Jamie asked.

Kelli nodded. “Yes. And not just me.” She bowed her head, her fingers shredding the tissue. “I have a little sister. She’s eight. She’s in Willow Cabin. Mr. Sprague said if I didn’t do what he wanted—everything he wanted—he would hurt her.” She began to sob again.

Jamie’s expression remained neutral, but Aaron sensed the anger radiating off of her. “Thank you for telling us,” she said. “I know it’s not something that’s easy to talk about. What happened tonight?”

Kelli sniffed and blotted her eyes. “He sent me a message this afternoon. He said I needed to wait by the bonfire and when he signaled, I was to meet him by the pit toilets—the one with the burned-out light. I didn’t want to do it, but I didn’t have a choice. I couldn’t let him hurt Emma.”

Jamie handed her more tissue and waited until once more her tears subsided. She looked at Aaron. “You’d better notify Gage.”

Aaron moved toward the door to step outside to make the call, but before he could open it someone knocked.

Declan stood on the top step, a plastic bag in one hand. “I found this on the ground by the pit toilet,” he said. “It might be the girl’s phone. It keeps buzzing, but I couldn’t figure out how to unlock it.”

Aaron stared at the phone. Flowered case, with a purple stick-on socket on the back. “That looks like Willa’s phone,” he said.

“What would Willa’s phone be doing behind the pit toilet?” Declan asked.

Aaron took out his phone and punched in Willa’s number. The phone in the bag vibrated.

He took the bag and turned back to Kelli and Jamie. Even though he knew the answer, he asked Kelli, “Is this your phone?”

She looked at the phone in the bag. “No.”

He kept his voice even. “Was there anyone else there at the pit toilets tonight, when you went to meet Mr. Sprague?” he asked.

“No.” She wet her lips. “I mean, not at first. He was waiting for me and he…he tried to kiss me. I tried not to struggle, but he was holding me so tightly, he was hurting me. I cried out, and I scratched at his face. He didn’t like that. He slapped me. And then someone shouted at us.”

“Who shouted at you?” Aaron asked.

“A woman. I didn’t get a very good look at her. She had blond hair, and she ran toward us. Mr. Sprague let me go and I ran. I ran all the way back here.” She looked at Jamie. “Did I do something wrong?”

“No. Of course not.” Jamie patted her hand and sent Aaron a questioning look.

“I’m sure this is Willa’s phone,” he said. “I think she was the blonde woman who shouted at Mr. Sprague.”

“Willa is the nurse who gave the first aid class to campers yesterday,” Jamie said. “Do you think this woman was her?”

“I don’t know,” Kelli said. “It was dark and I didn’t get a good look. I just wanted to get away.”

“I’ve been searching for Willa and I can’t find her,” Aaron said. “After Kelli left, Scott would have attacked her. He would have wanted to stop her from telling anyone what she had seen.”

Aaron was a cop. He had been in scary situations before.

Once a burglar had held a razor to his throat, the sharp blade nicking him and drawing blood.

He had talked down drunks armed with broken beer bottles, and done traffic stops with semitrucks whizzing by inches from his back.

But never had fear hit him the way it did now—clutching his throat and threatening to pull him under.

Jamie studied him, then pulled out her radio. “We need to talk to Gage,” she said. “And we need to talk to Scott.”