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Cora Callahan kicked back in the worn leather recliner, smiling as she watched her friends dance to Usher’s “Yeah!” in the living room. The plan to take a trip with Brynn and Aubree before the trio headed off to separate colleges in the fall had taken weeks to put in motion. Once the arrangements were made, Cora moved on to step two: convincing her mother to allow her to take a weekend trip without parental supervision. It took some finagling, but in the end, she’d done it.
Her parents believed the three of them were spending the weekend at the beach.
In truth, they were nowhere near it.
They were in the woods at Cora’s grandmother’s summer cabin.
And they weren’t alone … their fellow classmates Aidan, Jackson, and Owen had joined them.
It was the perfect getaway for what Cora was sure would be a weekend none of them would forget. Brynn was dating Aidan, and Aubree was dating Jackson. That left Owen, who had been Cora’s next-door neighbor since they were seven.
Cora and Owen had shared many memories over the years, and in recent months, her feelings for him had begun to change. What started out as a childhood friendship had blossomed into something more, and Cora found herself struggling to decide the best way to tell him. She was ninety percent sure Owen shared her feelings. But that stubborn ten percent kept her lips sealed, and she’d pushed her feelings down, down, down until she’d all but convinced herself she no longer had them.
Tonight, it was all about to change.
Tonight, she’d tell him everything.
Thinking about it now, her heart raced.
“Come on, Cora,” Aubree said, waving her over. “Dance with us.”
Cora looked at Aubree, whose long, blond hair was bouncing up and down to the beat of the song, and said, “I’m waiting for Owen.”
“You don’t need Owen in order to dance,” Aubree said.
“I know. It’s just … we’re supposed to go for a walk.”
Aubree glanced outside. “In the dark?”
“We have flashlights. We’ll be fine.”
“Where is Owen, anyway?” Aubree asked. “I haven’t seen him for a while.”
“He was outside earlier,” Jackson said. “He needed to get something out of his car.”
“When?” Cora asked.
Jackson shrugged. “I dunno. Been a while, I guess.”
Cora shot out of the recliner and walked to the door, opening it, and flicking the porch light on. She cupped a hand to the side of her mouth and shouted, “Owen? Are you out here?”
She was met
with silence.
Poking her head outside, Cora glanced in all directions, shouting his name a few more times. When she got the same results as before, she pulled a mini flashlight out of her pocket and clicked it on, shining it in the direction of Owen’s car.
Nothing suspicious there.
Still, she was beginning to worry.
She stepped back inside the cabin and said, “If he was out there, he isn’t now.”
“What did you say?” Aubree asked.
Cora walked over to the stereo and lowered the volume. “Owen’s not outside. At least he’s not answering when I call his name.”
“Have you tried looking upstairs?” Jackson asked. “Maybe he’s in his room. Brynn and Aiden are in theirs, spending … ahh, time together.”
“You can say they’re having sex,” Aubree said. “We’re eighteen, for heaven’s sake.”
Cora walked upstairs and noticed Owen’s door was closed. She knocked on it, waited a minute, and then opened the door, peering inside. Sitting on top of the bed was a coat and a thick pair of socks. Hiking boots were nearby on the floor, which made sense. He could have been preparing for the walk they’d planned.
A wave of concern turned Cora’s insides as she began to worry.
If he wasn’t here, and he wasn’t outside, where was he?
The door across the hall opened and Brynn stepped out. She smiled at Cora and said, “Hey, what’s everyone doing?”
“I can’t find Owen,” Cora said. “When did you last see him?”
Brynn ran a hand through her short, auburn hair. “Ahh … I haven’t seen him since we arrived, I guess. It’s not a big cabin. He’s gotta be around here somewhere.”
Cora hoped Brynn was right, and she did another sweep of the cabin, looking in closets this time.
Owen was nowhere to be found.
Cora asked everyone gather in the living room to talk about what to do next, and Jackson suggested the girls remain inside while he and Aiden searched outside.
Twenty minutes turned into forty, and the teen boys still hadn’t returned.
“Something’s wrong,” Cora said. “They should have been back by now. Maybe we should call our—”
“No,” Aubree said. “If we call our parents, it’s all over. They’ll kill us for lying about where we are this weekend. I don’t know about you two, but I’m not interested in being grounded all summer.”
“I get it, but I’m scared,” Brynn said. “I want to call my mom.”
Cora considered their situation for a moment and said, “Give me five minutes. If I don’t find them, we’ll make some calls.”
“You’re going outside?” Brynn said. “You’re crazy. Who knows what’s out there?”
“I’m not going to sit here and just hope they come back,” Cora said.
“Fine,” Aubree said, “I’ll go with you.”
“No way,” Brynn said. “You’re not leaving me alone, and I’m not going out there.”
“Aubree, you stay with Brynn,” Cora said. “Give me fifteen minutes. If I’m not back, call your parents.”
Cora grabbed Owen’s coat off his bed and fished a bigger flashlight out of the kitchen drawer. On the way out, she remembered her grandmother always kept a pair of night vision binoculars behind her jacket. She located them and stepped outside. The forest was quiet tonight, much more so than she remembered it being in years past. It was almost like it had been suppressed somehow, like all the life within had stilled.
She descended the cabin’s steps and started down the dirt road, shouting, “Jackson? Aiden? Can you hear me? Owen? Is anyone there?”
When no response came, she lifted the binoculars to her eyes and scanned her surroundings. She saw nothing unusual at first, and then she noticed a hand reaching up from the forest floor—a hand that appeared to be waving at her.
Cora rushed in its direction and found Jackson, his head bloody, eyes fluttering open and closed.
She knelt beside him, grabbing his hand as she said, “Jackson! What happened?”
“Hit me, and ...I fell. Need … go home. You … out of here.”
“I’m going to get help. I’ll be right back. I promise.”
Cora jumped to a standing position. She started for the cabin, and someone stepped out of the shadows, striking her on the side of the head with a heavy object. As her legs buckled beneath her and she sagged to the ground, she looked up, staring in confusion as her surroundings went black.
It had been a quiet couple of weeks at the office. So quiet, I’d given my partners Simone Bonet and Lilia Hunter, some time off until business picked back up again. I’d enjoyed the quiet for a few days, but now I felt restless, waiting for a new investigation to get my blood pumping again.
I was sitting at my desk, staring at Luka, my Samoyed, whose head was nestled atop my feet as he snored away. The office door jingled, and Luka sprang up, staring at the woman who’d just stepped through the door. She was tall with long, blond locks and a curvy figure. She removed her sunglasses and glanced around the room, smiling when her eyes met mine.
“Is this the Case Closed Detective Agency?” she asked. “I didn’t see a sign out front.
The sign was above the door and couldn’t be missed, a fact I decided not to mention.
“It is,” I said. “Can I help you?”
“I’m looking for Georgiana Germaine.”
I walked over and introduced myself. “I’m Georgiana Germaine.”
We shook hands and she said, “My mother is friends with your Aunt Laura. Laura suggested I stop in to talk to you. I’m looking for information on someone from my past.”
“I investigate homicides, but if you’re looking to find someone, I can set up a meeting for you with Lilia Hunter, one of my partners. She specializes in that kind of thing.”
She shook her head, saying, “Oh, no. I don’t think you understand. The person I want you to find … well, I don’t know how else to put this … about twenty years ago, my best friends were murdered. The case was never solved, and I can no longer live with that.”
The thought of a new murder to investigate shouldn’t have excited me as much as it did, but I couldn’t deny the feeling of elation I was experiencing.
“Why don’t we have a seat?” I suggested. “And you can tell me all about it.”
She followed me over to my desk, and we both sat down.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Cora Callahan.”
Cora Callahan.
I knew her story well.
Everyone in Cambria did.
The teenage murders were one of the biggest tragedies to ever happen in Cambria’s quaint town. Six teenagers who’d just graduated from high school had arranged to meet up at a cabin for a fun weekend before they all went off to college. Within hours of their arrival, five were murdered, and one, who was left for dead, managed to survive—the very
one sitting in front of me now.
“I know your story,” I said. “What happened to you and your friends was before I became a detective for the San Luis Obispo Police Department. It was a cold case I’d always wanted to look into, but I’m sorry to say I never got a chance.”
Cora stared down at her hands, clenching them like she was trying to get them to stop shaking. “For a long time, I didn’t even like to think about what happened back then. Every time I did, I’d just get frustrated. There’s so much I can’t remember about that night.”
There’d been many rumors around town after the murders. Some believed Cora knew a lot more than she was saying. Others thought the incident was so horrific, she’d found a way to block it out.
“Not long after the murders, you moved away,” I said. “I’d heard you vowed never to return. Are you living in Cambria again?”
“Not living—visiting.”
“For how long?”
She shrugged. “Hard to say. My father was just diagnosed with … well, I’d rather not go into the details of it right now. I’ll just say I don’t think he’ll be around much longer.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, me too. I’ve been back for a few weeks now, and even though I’ve done everything I can to make him my primary focus, I can’t stop thinking about that night at the cabin.”
I flipped my notepad open and grabbed a pen. “What can you tell me about it?”
“I have these flashbacks, moments where I remember something I didn’t before, but it’s all in pieces in my mind. I don’t know how else to explain it.”
“I think you explained it well.”
She crossed one leg over the other and leaned back in the chair. “The worst of it is I can’t separate fact from fiction. I’ll recall something vague, and I can’t be certain whether I invented it in my mind or it actually happened.”
“Trauma has a way of playing tricks on our minds. I bet a lot of what you remember has at least some basis in the truth.”
“Before I get into it, I guess I should make sure you’re willing to take the case.”
I was willing, all right, and I couldn’t wait to dive in.
“Of course, I’ll
take your case,” I said.
Cora breathed out a sigh of relief and said, “Good. Your aunt says you’re the best. She said you’ve solved every case you’ve ever had, even cases the police couldn’t solve.”
I remained still for a minute, trying to decide how to respond to her comment. At the time of the murders, my stepdad, Harvey, was the chief of police. I remembered him discussing the case with me. Not being able to solve it before he retired had been one of his biggest regrets.
“Cold cases offer their own set of challenges, I said. “But I, for one, love a challenge.”
“I’m glad to hear it. What information do you need from me?”
I thought about the best way to get her to talk about the events from that night. “You said you have fuzzy memories. Let’s try and piece them all together like you’re telling it to me in a story form.”
She nodded, and it looked like she was about to speak. Then she clasped a hand to her throat and said, “Sorry. My throat … it’s a little dry.”
I hopped up and walked over to the kitchenette, scouring the top shelf of the refrigerator for options. “We have water, soda, kombucha, and a couple bottles of wine. One’s a pinot noir, and the other is a chardonnay. What suits you?”
“Water is fine.”
I grabbed a bottle of water and a kombucha for myself and returned to my desk, handing her the water bottle as I sat down. She twisted the cap off, drank half of it down, and then set the bottle on top of the desk.
“It was supposed to be the best weekend of our lives, you know?” she said. “I’d been psyching myself up to tell Owen about my feelings for him. We’d lived next to each other since we were kids. I’d always considered him a friend until our senior year of high school.”
“What changed?”
“I don’t know. Comments from my friends, I guess. They teased me, saying they thought we had a thing for each other and wouldn’t admit it to ourselves. And then one day, I realized they were right.”
“Did you get the chance to tell him before … what happened?”
“I didn’t. After his funeral, his sister reached out to me. She told me Owen told her he
wanted to ask me out on a date. It’s too bad we never got a chance to see if we could have been more than friends. It took me a long time to admit to myself that I had feelings for him, and when I did, he was just … taken from me in the worst possible way. It doesn’t seem fair.”
“It isn’t,” I said. “It’s been many years since I looked at the file to go over the investigation, but I seem to recall there were six of you at the cabin that night.”
“Yeah, and I was the only survivor. It feels awful, you know that they died, and here I am, still living.”
“Your survival touched everyone in this town. When people found out you were alive, it was like a bright light shining through the darkness.”
“I’ve always worried the man who attacked me would come back for me one day. I’ve spent the last two decades looking over my shoulder, and I’m tired of it. I’m so tired. It isn’t any way to live.”
“No, it isn’t,” I said. “I’ll find the bastard, and together, we’ll make sure he pays.” ...
