Headlights(71)

Hannah watches me, and I can’t see her nose or mouth, but that bit of light is there in her eyes. It’s only after I finish my food and the plate’s taken away that she starts to eat hers. “What were you repeating when I sat down?” she asks. “When I came back from the bathroom?”

“Wizdumteller, that chat room person, posted again. Have they tried the wolf of no name?”

“What does that mean?” she asks.

“Million-dollar question.”

“Well, No Name. I mean, could it be like the town?”

“What?”

“The town. No Name. We passed by it on the way here, right before Glenwood. It’s small, like three hundred people or something. Just like a bunch of houses, maybe a hotel.”

“Is there a wolf there?”

“Um … I don’t think … Oh! OH! Oh my god. Yes! There’s a…” She tucks her hair behind her ears, puts her hand over her mouth, closes her eyes, thinking. “Ranch. Sorry, was trying to picture it. I saw it once, when I went for a hike there. There’s a trailhead right nearby. There’s a wolf on the sign.”

I pull out the phone and search “No Name CO wolf ranch.”

The first thing that pops up is No Name Equine Therapy Ranch. But the images show a wolf on the sign. I click on the page, and it takes me to a website explaining the history of the ranch. Explaining how it used to be a wolf education place, but they moved to a much larger property. And Ryder Smith—the very same from that TikTok talking about a Witchwalker, the one who went to the same school as two of the victims and one of the Drifters and pulled that shit at his high school all those years ago—took it over. Brought in a couple horses, and provides rehabilitation for at-risk youth. Plans to expand to bigger, wider open land one day. Ryder Smith, the owner.

I clear my throat. “I know him. We thought he was attached to the case a while ago, but we dropped it.”

She sits up, watching me. “So we have a plan?”

“A starting point, at least,” I say.

She nods. “Okay.” This girl I don’t know, in a tank top and nose plug. Her hair sweaty and pulled back, light green eyes shining. That spicy smell mixed in with her ponderosa pine.

“Thank you,” I say, a little out of breath.

Her eyes search my face, I don’t know for what. But there’s feeling there. Her brow furrows, trying to find something. I let her look.

I don’t move, don’t do anything. Seconds pass. She raises her eyes to mine, and …

What is this look? So heavy. Complicated. Charged.

My heart, racing. Her breaths coming a little faster.

She bites her bottom lip, for just half a second.

“I—”

She glances over my shoulder, then double takes.

Her face drains of all color at whatever she sees there. Something behind me.

I slowly turn around.

On the TV behind the bar, a banner streams across the bottom of the screen.

DRIFTER SERIAL MURDERS ARE BACK.

Reports of four murders since the five-year hiatus.

I think it’s a mistake. It’s three murders back, not four. And how do they …

A photo flashes of a woman on the side of the road naked and wearing the skin of a man, blurred out for the program. But plain as day. A woman I haven’t seen. A new one. And someone got a photo. They got it, and it’s … on live news.

I don’t know who she is, don’t recognize her, but … I pull out the phone, click through articles, one after another, as fast as I can.

Someone leaked that the murders have started again. It doesn’t matter who, one of the victims’ or killers’ family or friends, probably in response to this one being recorded. People know. And there’s been a fourth one. Already, since we left. Last night, there was another—

“Oh shit,” Hannah says.

I turn again, but I already know what I’m going to see before I do. The bartender has stopped to watch the screen.

A second headline flashes.

WANTED FOR QUESTIONING, ARMED AND DANGEROUS.

And beneath it, two photographs.

One of Hannah. And one of me.





4



We duck into the gear shop next door that mercifully has no TV and get a couple fishing hats. I call a taxi back to town, and we hide our faces from the driver. We get the Bronco from the park and drive it back up the mountain, pack all our things into the red vintage Wagoneer in the garage. We take cash from James’s house. Hannah says he won’t care, but I’m taking her word for all of this. We were in the restaurant, with the news showing us plain and clear.

I grab the duffel Josie gave me from my car, the files. The knife. I pull a pair of blue jeans and my boots out of the duffel. A clean shirt. Change quickly in the garage. Hannah changes too, inside the house. She comes back out in a green sweater and her jeans. Her hiking boots. She leaves her USFS jacket in the mudroom, shrugs on a larger one, a black puffer probably belonging to a man. Belonging to James.

I catch sight of the stuffed mountain lion through a side window as we’re leaving the house. Hannah’s looking at it too.

We don’t talk, the road stretching out before us. Hannah’s window rolled down with her head leaning out, the heat on high.

“Take Me Home, Country Roads” plays on the radio. Even in this car that isn’t mine. I slam my hand against the off button, and it does nothing.