He’d refused his father’s offer to live at the motel. That just wouldn’t work. That was not Fletcher’s style.

And living in his camper wouldn’t work. It couldn’t withstand the winter.

That’s how he’d ended up here, sitting alone, staring at the walls.

He tried not to think of what he’d become, but the truth was on the walls. He’d sit for hours, sometimes dreaming how it would be if Sharon came home with the kids and they could be a family again. He knew it was impossible, but he was unable to stop thinking of Sharon and his children. He reached for the phone and called her in Kansas. It was answered on the second ring.

“Fletcher,” Sharon’s father breathed into the phone. “This is the sixth time today. She’s not going to talk to you.”

“Put her on, Chuck.”

“No. She doesn’t want to talk to you.”

“Let me speak to her.”

“She told me to tell you to stop calling. I’m sorry, son.”

“Chuck!”

The line went dead in Fletcher’s hand. He closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, he stared at the walls.

He couldn’t live like this.

He went to the kitchen, made sandwiches, got his gear together, got his gun, and tossed it all into the truck.

Little by little, Fletcher was dying.

He needed to go into the woods, because his salvation was out there.

CHAPTER 27

Near the Cold Hollow Mountains, Vermont

Stones pinged under Wyatt’s Ford Escape as he drove along the gravel road, following Sam Moore’s last movements before she’d vanished.

Wyatt’s interview with Rod Noble had yielded little, other than to underscore that all these months after Sam’s disappearance, investigators appeared to be no closer to finding her.

Unless Noble’s holding back a lead? I’ll go back to him later.

For now, Wyatt would continue his journalistic investigation.

After going through all of his notes and files again—much of it was now committed to memory—Wyatt pursued the same route Sam and her boyfriend had taken. They’d left Interstate 91, and driven a few miles west on Route 58 and through Spiritsburg. Then, heading north for the Canadian border, they went several miles on a narrow, paved road cutting through forests. It climbed to a fork, where one branch changed into an even narrower gravel road.

Taking in the same sun-obscuring forests that Moore had seen, Wyatt reflected on the remoteness of the region until he came to a gas station—the one the couple had passed without stopping until they had run out of gas several miles later. It was the one Kevin Tatum had walked to, leaving Moore alone to be stalked by a strange vehicle in the fog and gloom of the night.

Zeffie’s Gas & Grocery.