Chapter 1
When Joy-Lynn heard the first yelp, she lifted her head from her sketchbook and squinted into the woods. She waited, the expensive double-sided marker she’d saved up for months to buy hovering over the page, suspended in the air. Maybe it was an animal in distress.
After two long beats, she heard nothing more, so she exhaled and returned to the landscape she was drawing. She smiled, admiring how she’d captured the way the sun filtered through the branches of the towering old-growth trees. Mr. Pine, the middle school art teacher, who also gave weekend lessons on the Qualla, would be impressed. Shoot, even she was impressed, and Mama, Mr. Pine, and Mr. Caine always said she was her own worst critic.
A second yelp broke into her thoughts, louder and way more desperate than the first. No, that was a person, a person in pain. She bit down hard on her lower lip. She’d promised her mom she wouldn’t go anywhere other than the grove and wouldn’t talk to anyone except the rangers. That was the deal if she wanted to go to the forest by herself.
But what if someone was hurt? The ground here was rocky and uneven. A hiker could have stumbled and sprained an ankle. Or worse.
She didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t ignore the sound. There were wild animals out there. If somebody was stuck and couldn’t move, they were in real trouble.
“This is why I should have a cell phone, Mom,” she said aloud to no one.
But she knew most phones didn’t get a signal in this part of the forest. And Mom couldn’t afford to give her a phone anyway, even though her excuse was Joy-Lynn was too young. Maybe next year, when she was twelve.
Okay, think, Joy-Lynn. Think.
She was allowed to talk to the rangers. She could go see if there was a person in trouble, not even talk to whoever it was, just peek through the trees to see. And if someone needed to be rescued, she could hop on her bicycle and ride to the ranger station for help. All without breaking mom’s rules.
She packed up her art supplies in a hurry, cocking an ear toward the clearing where the cries seemed to be coming from. She heard another shout, filled with fear and pain. She zipped up her backpack, flung the straps over her arms, jumped on her bike, and pedaled as fast as she could toward the sound.
When the path crested behind a stand of trees, she slowed and coasted to a stop. She rested her bike against a tall pine tree and crept forward to peer down into the clearing. Beyond the trees, the ground sloped down and flattened into a bowl. A picnic table and a fire ring were centered in the clearing. She scanned the area, looking for a fallen hiker.
Instead, to the far right of the picnic table she saw two men. The men were about the same height, but one was skinny with light hair and one was muscular with darker hair. The stronger-looking, dark-haired man pulled his arm back and slapped the other man hard across his face, hitting his mouth. The skinny man’s head bobbled and he howled. He reared back his head and spit, red, at the feet of the man who’d slapped him.
“Is it getting through yet? Porchino wants his money.”
The man wiped his sleeve across his mouth, leaving a trail of blood. “And I told you, he’ll get it. Dragging me up here to smack me around won’t make the money magically appear. Are we done now?”
He turned away from the man who hit him, and Joy-Lynn winced. Even she knew it was a bad idea to turn your back on someone who was attacking you.
The slapper grabbed a fistful of the skinny guy’s shirt and dragged him toward the picnic table. Skinny guy dug the heels of his hiking boots into the soft dirt but it barely slowed his progress.
“We’re done when I say we’re done.”
The big guy shoved the skinny man against the table and pushed his forearm into the guy’s throat. With his free hand, he reached into his pocket and took out a gun.
Joy-Lynn clamped her hand over her mouth to trap the gasp that tried to come out. She needed to get out of here, fast. But her legs were frozen, stuck in place. She leaned forward.
Skinny guy laughed shakily. Joy-Lynn wasn’t sure how he was talking with a thick arm crushing his windpipe, but he rasped, “I know you aren’t the brightest bulb, but if you kill me, he’s definitely not going to get his money.”
The guy with the gun smiled a slow, mean smile and removed his arm from the other guy’s throat and took aim. “Who said anything about killing you? One tap into your kneecap ought to be enough to give you a reminder to pay your debts on time, don’t you think?”
Real fear flashed in the man’s eyes and he raised both hands as if he were surrendering. Then he did something Joy-Lynn recognized from the active shooter drills they did at school. He pitched forward, fast, and head butted the guy with the gun.
Her eyes widened as the big guy staggered back, roaring in pain and anger. The skinny guy pushed off the picnic table in a hurry and kicked his attacker hard between the legs. He crumpled and collapsed to his knees. His grip on the gun loosened and it fell to the ground beside him.
Joy-Lynn could hardly believe what she was seeing. Skinny guy kicked the gun away from the man and crouched to pick it up, keeping his eyes on the other man, who was now curled forward.
He thumbed the safety down and advanced toward the man on the ground.
What was he thinking? This was his opening to get away. Everybody knew when you get a chance to run, you run!
She almost shouted to the man, but at the last minute, she snapped her mouth shut and pressed herself into the tree, unable to turn away.
“Look at me,” the man with the gun ordered his attacker.
The guy on his knees lifted his head slowly.
Without another word, skinny guy lowered the gun so it was pointed at the man’s forehead and squeezed the trigger. The man fell back instantly and landed in the dirt with a thud, with his arms outstretched. A second later, the gun’s report echoed off the trees with a loud crack. In an instant, dozens of birds swooped from the trees, wings flapping furiously as they scattered away.
Joy-Lynn’s eyes were glued to the man on the ground. Blood poured from what was left of his face and soaked the dirt around him. Her knees buckled and she grabbed at the tree to stay on her feet.
The shooter stared down at the body for another second, then he kicked the dead man in the side and re-engaged the gun’s safety. He jammed the gun in his jacket pocket and pushed his hair out of his eyes.
Joy-Lynn’s brain switched back on and told her to get out of there, fast. She released her grip on the branches, too quickly, and they flung back against the tree trunk with a vibrating sound. The guy with the gun whipped his head around, searching for the source of the noise as his hand went to his pocket.
* * *
Marlene Glasser checked the time on the apple-shaped wall clock hanging over the range and pursed her lips. Where the devil was Joy-Lynn?
She knew darn well going to the national park alone, on her bicycle, was a privilege. How many eleven-year-old girls had that much freedom? Especially an eleven-year old with a condition like Joy-Lynn’s.
She slammed the lid down on the pot of boiling water. Joy-Lynn’s counselor, Boyd Caine, was forever nagging Marlene about letting Joy-Lynn spread her wings. He claimed giving her a taste of independence now would make her less likely to rebel when she was a teenager and the stakes were higher.
That argument had made sense to Marlene, based on her own troubled adolescence. So, she had loosened the reins, even though doing so meant expanding the catalogue of horrors that ran through her head every night when she tried to sleep. But if Joy-Lynn wasn’t going to hold up her end of the bargain, Marlene would shut this little experiment down, and fast. That girl was about to lose all her privileges for a month, including her beloved Saturday art classes. That ought to teach her a lesson.
She tore open the top of blue-and-white box of macaroni and cheese too violently, and dried pasta showered the counter and the tile floor. And, of course, this was their last box—the pantry had the familiar nearly-bare, just-a-few-more-days-until-payday look she’d come to hate. Swearing under her breath, she fetched the broom from the broom closet and swept up the macaroni.
Well, the water was boiling. It’d sterilize the pasta. And what Joy-Lynn didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.
She tipped the pasta from the dustpan into the pot, scooped up the remaining macaroni elbows from the counter, and added them to the water. She poured a glass of tap water and drank it slowly, willing herself not to explode when Joy-Lynn finally walked through the door.
* * *
Joy-Lynn held her breath, convinced the man with the gun was looking right at her. She was going to die, she knew it. She tried to remember the active shooter drills, but her mind was blank, empty.
He stared into the trees for years. She went as still as a tree herself.
After a long moment that stretched out for years, he shook his head and turned away. He walked toward the path that led down to the lake without a second glance at the dead man.
She released her breath and sagged against the tree, her chest burning, and her entire body quivering with fear and relief.
He didn’t see you. He didn’t see you. He didn’t see you.
She silently chanted the words over and over as she sped away from the clearing. Tears streamed down her cheeks, blurring her vision. Her hands shook on the handlebar, making the bike wobble.
Keep it together. You have to get out of here, get home before he sees you. She followed the winding gravel trail through the woods even though the paved road would’ve been faster. She leaned forward and shifted her weight to increase her speed, as she raced down the hill past the blur of the ranger station. There was no point in stopping. That man was dead.
He was dead!
Her brain went staticky for a second, like a computer on the fritz. Her mouth filled with saliva the way it did sometimes before she threw up. She opened her mouth and panted, trying to remember to breathe deep from her belly like Mr. Caine had taught her, but her panic was rising too fast. She felt hot and dizzy. But even though she was sweating, her hands had gone cold, almost icy, as she gripped her handlebars.
She had to rest and breathe. She coasted to the mouth of the road and headed straight for the general store with its one lonely gas pump. It was the only place between Crossfire Creek and the entrance to the park. She came to a stop and stumbled off the bike. She walked it around to the back of the squat concrete building, hurrying as fast as she could on her trembling legs, and propped it against the windowless back wall. She shrugged one shoulder then the other out of her padded backpack straps and slid her back down the wall until she was sitting on the hot blacktop with her arms wrapped tightly around her knees.
Hidden from view by a rusty dumpster, she listened to the sound of her heart thudding in her chest. After a while, a car door slammed and feet pounded across the parking lot. She squeezed her eyes shut, held her breath, and scrunched up her shoulders while she waited for the sound of the gunshot that would kill her.
But the footsteps headed toward the front of the store. After she heard the bell tinkle over the store’s entrance, she let out a big whoosh of breath and opened her eyes. She was soaked with sweat and she wasn’t sure, but she thought she might have peed herself, just a little bit.
Shivering a little now as her sweat dried in the cool evening air, she cried. Mad at herself for being a baby. Mad at everyone else for looking the same. Mad at her mom for making her this way.
She didn’t know how long she sat there. But when her tears stopped, the sun was low, behind the mountain, and the fading light told her she had to get moving unless she wanted to bike the rest of the way home in the dark.
She struggled to her feet.
* * *
As the minutes ticked into hours and the macaroni and cheese congealed into a bright orange blob, Marlene’s anger morphed, first to worry and finally to abject, all-consuming terror.
Her darkest fear, the one she’d pushed way, way down for all these years, had burst to the surface and become reality: her daughter had been taken by a stranger whose face she thought she ought to know. The chilling possibility had haunted Marlene for over a decade, since long before anyone ever uttered the word ‘prosopagnosia’ to her. And now it was happening. She covered her face with her hands.
The door opened, and Joy-Lynn wheeled her bike into the hallway.
“Where have you been?”
Even as she screeched the words, Marlene knew she had to gain control of herself. But the long hours of worry had driven her too far over the edge. The repo man had taken the car over a week ago, so she couldn’t go out and cruise the neighborhood and the route to the forest looking for Joy-Lynn. Instead, she’d sat, frozen on the couch, her stomach churning, and stared at the door, willing her daughter to walk through it. And now that she had, Marlene’s emotions were raging out of control.
Joy-Lynn’s tear-stained face sapped her anger from her in an instant. She leapt to her feet.
“What happened? Are you hurt?” She did a quick scan and saw no blood, no evidence that she’d fallen off the bike or been hit by a car.
Joy-Lynn shook her head and let the bike drop to the floor. She ran into the living room and threw herself into Marlene’s arms and sobbed. The words tumbled out in a rush.
Marlene guided her toward the couch and gave her shoulder a gentle push to sit her down. She sat beside her, holding both of her hands, and listened until Joy-Lynn had talked herself out.
When she finished, they sat in silence. The only sound was Joy-Lynn’s occasional sniffling. After a while, Joy-Lynn’s red-rimmed eyes found hers.
“We have to tell the police, Mama.”
Mama. Marlene’s heart squeezed in her chest. At eleven, Joy-Lynn had largely outgrown Mama in favor of Mom. But when she was sick, or tired, or very scared, Marlene was still her Mama.
She exhaled a long, loud breath. “You’re right. We do. But here’s the thing, baby. You can’t identify the skinny blond man.”
“I can describe his clothes and his size.”
“Yep, sure. But when they ask you what he looked like, what will you say?” She kept the question gentle.
Joy-Lynn frowned, struggling to describe something beyond her reach. Marlene watched as the familiar frustration played across her face and turned to resignation. Joy-Lynn shook her head.
“He doesn’t have a face.”
Marlene rubbed her arm. “It’s okay, you know that. But they’re not going to understand. And they’ll keep pressuring you to try harder to remember what he looks like.”
Fresh tears sprang to Joy-Lynn’s eyes. “But I can’t. I don’t—”
“Shh, shh. I know. I have an idea but you have to do what I say. Do you promise to do what I tell you?”
Joy-Lynn blinked at her. “Of course.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise, Mama.”
She kissed Joy-Lynn on the forehead. “Good girl.”
Then she picked up the phone to call and report that she, not Joy-Lynn, had witnessed a murder.
Chapter 2
One week later
“What do you say? Will you do it?”
Aroostine Higgins smiled to herself. Despite being phrased as a question, the words emanating from her mobile phone didn’t remotely resemble a request. They were a demand. A gentle demand, but a demand nonetheless.
She wasn’t surprised. Her caller, Tribal Judge Carole Orr, came across as thoughtful and warm, but her soft, aging hippie exterior hid an inner core of pure steel.
Aroostine laughed silently at the contrast between her and the judge. Most people would describe her as tough and unyielding. If they only knew about her gooey marshmallow center.
Carole, of course, did know about it, and wasted no time using that knowledge to her advantage.
“Roo? We’re talking about an eleven-year-old girl who’s missing. This shouldn’t be a hard decision. A little girl is out there, scared and alone—”
“Hang on. I thought you wanted me to find a mother and a daughter. Presumably, they’ve disappeared together. Right?”
“Well, perhaps. We don’t know that for a fact. We assume so because they went missing at the same time. But there are … circumstances.”
Circumstances? Goody. She loved circumstances.
She cradled the phone between her neck and ear and watched Rufus, her sweet, but dopey, golden retriever turn away from the water and take off across the wide expanse of grass between the creek bank and the farmhouse, barking at the fallen leaves skittering across the lawn in the breeze. In his eagerness to chase the leaves, he’d run right past a chittering squirrel perched on the wide boulder mere feet from where Aroostine sat.
After Rufus pawed the foliage into submission, she turned her attention back to the phone call.
“What kind of circumstances?”
“Let’s start at the beginning. Marlene Glasser and her eleven-year-old daughter Joy-Lynn went missing from a small town outside Cherokee, North Carolina, a week ago.”
Seven days? She was a tracker, not a magician. Any trail the pair had left would be going cold.
“And nobody on the Qualla thought to look for them before now? They could be anywhere by now, including out of the country.”
“It’s complicated.”
“Isn’t it always?”
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