When she turned back toward home, Tank refused to budge. He was trembling. Something he did often. Tank was a scaredy-cat, afraid of the dark, yoga balls, garbage bags, you name it. She petted his head. “It’s okay, buddy. It was probably just a squirrel.”
Usually Tank was easily persuaded to return home, but not this time. His legs remained stiff, his body trembling. He wouldn’t budge.
A snap of a branch stole Nora’s attention. Fear surged through her and scrambled up her spine.
Tank barked.
Her hand tightened on Tank’s leash as she listened closely. Her throat closed up, making breathing difficult. What was wrong with her? Nora wasn’t usually one to get easily frightened, but there was something in the air; the trembling leaves and swaying tree branches told her so. She studied the pathway, trying to figure out which way to run. Was she closer to the cottage or to the house? She wasn’t sure. Panic made it hard to think.
Another snap, rustling leaves, and then thump, thump, thump, as if someone or something was running off.
Tank barked again. Nora’s heart raced as she peered into the semidark woods, relieved to hear footsteps fading until it was quiet again. Whatever it was had vanished into the deeper part of the woods, and she was thankful for that. Her dad said he saw a black bear once, but only once, and he’d lived in the area for twenty-five years. Mom had heard that mountain lions roamed the area, but that didn’t stop her from walking every day.
Did bears’ and mountain lions’ feet thump when they ran through the woods? Something told her the answer was a big no. “Come on, Tank.” This time when she pulled on the leash, he turned and followed along back the way they had come.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
As soon as Mom left his room, Trevor continued his search on the internet. Although he still hadn’t found anything on Jane Bell besides her connection to IMPACT, on the day of the barbecue an idea had come to him—maybe he could find information about Jane Bell using a facial recognition program. He hadn’t told his mom about his idea because first, he wasn’t sure if it would work, and second, he didn’t know how she might react to knowing he’d taken photos and video of Jane at the barbecue to use with the program.
He would try it out first, and if he came up with anything, he would talk to Mom then. There were a lot of facial recognition systems, and it had taken him a while to decide which one he would test out. Some required law enforcement qualifications. Others asked for nothing more than an email. He loved the technology. The fact that a program could capture, analyze, and compare patterns based on a person’s facial details fascinated him. The process had been used recently to identify demonstrators and rioters by looking at video taken by everyday citizens and journalists. The fact that people could be distinguished by an iris, voice-, palm-, or fingerprint was awesome, but facial recognition was obviously the most efficient, since it was fast, easy, and convenient.
As Trevor waited for the photos and videos of Jane to upload to his computer, he heard the front door clang shut. He stood and walked over to the massive window in his room. When Grandma and Grandpa had lived here, nobody used this room, so the window had no blinds or curtains. After a few minutes, to his left, he saw Mom and Tank disappear within the tall pines and redwoods. If he let his gaze follow the water’s edge, he could see the cottage where Grandma and Grandpa now lived. It was small, though, and he could really only see the deck that stretched out over the water. If he looked straight ahead, across the lake, he saw the house where Gillian lived with her mom. Since arriving in Whispering Pines, he hadn’t run into Gillian. He remembered what Gillian had said about her mom thinking the lake house was haunted. What if that were true?
He worried suddenly that he should have gone exploring with Mom. She had Tank with her, but Tank was afraid of everything, too—just like Trevor. They both hated the dark, and they both jumped when startled, but at least Tank could swim—not for extended periods of time, but he could keep his head afloat. Trevor wasn’t even sure if he could do that any longer. He hadn’t been in the water since he’d nearly drowned. It was embarrassing to admit even to himself how often he awoke at night, clawing at the air with the horrible sensation of being smothered.
Only a few months before the incident, he’d gone out on the pontoon with Grandpa. Back when Grandpa knew his name. It made him sad to think that he and Grandpa might never go fishing alone together again. Not because of Grandpa’s mental decline but because the thought of going out on the water, even on a boat, scared Trevor to death.
He shivered as he stared at the large body of dark water outside. The lake looked like a giant watery mouth waiting to swallow him whole. His number one fear was no longer the dark. It was the water.
And his number two fear was Auntie Jane.
That disturbing thought popped into his head out of nowhere. The first time he’d ever met Jane Bell was at their house on Emory Street in East Sacramento, the house his parents had lived in since the day he was born. From a distance, Jane had looked like a princess in a fairy tale: tall and slender with golden hair that swept past her shoulders and a wide smile that he noticed, as she drew closer, did not reach her eyes—sparkling blue eyes he was sure could see right into his soul. The way she peered into his eyes made him feel as if she could read his mind and knew everything he was thinking, which wasn’t a good thing because in the time it took her to walk across the room and shake his hand, he’d decided he didn’t like her, didn’t trust her, didn’t like the way her voice changed when she talked to him, sort of singsong, high-pitched, but without the cutesy, nonsensical words people use when they talk gibberish to a baby. One of his main reasons for wanting to move to Whispering Pines was to get away from her. He wasn’t proud of it, but it was the truth. What he didn’t understand was how much everyone else seemed to like her.
When he’d heard his sister call her “Auntie Jane,” his stomach had felt queasy. Whenever Jane was at their house and Mom wasn’t there, which had very quickly become a regular occurrence, it was as if Jane were in charge. Trevor knew in his gut that Jane recognized his dislike of her. It seemed to frustrate her that she couldn’t buy him with expensive gifts.
He rubbed his arms, then grabbed a sweatshirt and pulled it over his head. When he went back to the window, hoping Mom and Tank would be on their way back, he saw someone standing at the edge of the lake staring this way. He peered closer, wondering if it was Gillian. No way could Tank and his mom have gotten that far that quickly. And besides, he couldn’t see a dog. He realized he was holding his breath when he remembered packing the binoculars Dad had given him last year. He rushed over to a stack of boxes and started rummaging through them. In the second box, he found what he was looking for. By the time he returned to the window, the dark figure was gone.
Maybe it had been Grandma or Grandpa he’d seen standing there. No. Whoever he’d seen was much taller and wore dark pants and a dark hoodie. He’d never seen either of his grandparents wear a hoodie before. Raising the binoculars to his eyes, he looked toward Gillian’s house. He adjusted the magnification, surprised by how well he could see the front deck and right through the floor-to-ceiling window. Someone was moving around. He wanted it to be Gillian. Because any other option made him nervous. And yet logically, he knew there was no way the person at the edge of the lake could have gotten from the spot across the lake to the house in a matter of seconds. He calculated the distance to be a ten-minute walk, and that’s if they hurried.