The engine ticked down in the stillness. He stood alone in the road and inventoried everything around him, thinking this is where Moore was alone, where she was stalked. There was nothing here but a whole lot of nothing. He couldn’t imagine the fear Sam must’ve felt. Being left alone out here in the night must have been overwhelming.

No one could hear you scream here. No one could help you. This is a perfect hunting ground.

Wyatt’s mind raced with a million thoughts—the legends, the strange disappearances, how Cass had lost her little boy. Suddenly, Wyatt felt the memory—the sensation—of Danny’s hand in his during the inferno at their hotel in Banff, Alberta. He embraced it for a moment, weaving it into his belief that somewhere in the world, Danny was alive.

Breezes hissed through the treetops, carrying Wyatt’s pain away with the wind.

Taking in the bogs, the swamps, and the woods with their hidden ravines, he thought this was a harsh, forbidding region. But he felt a connection to Sam Moore, as he considered the possibilities and theories about how she vanished. He felt that the answers were out here as he climbed back into his SUV and started the motor.

CHAPTER 28

Northeast Kingdom, Vermont

In the last few days, or what Sam guessed were days, she thought of the bat and took precautions to pull the hood of her hoodie and then the blankets over her head while she slept.

When awake, she’d kept watch over the area where she’d last seen the bat, frequently sweeping her flashlight over the spot. She kept the hood of her hoodie tight, pulling its drawstrings, depending on how things unfolded. She had built up a supply of rocks to throw in defense should it appear or attack.

She was ready for battle.

But she hadn’t seen it again.

Where was it?

Analyzing the situation, Sam recalled she had once prepared a school paper on bats. She’d learned that most kinds of North American bats roosted during the day in dark places, like caves. They would leave the roost at night to hunt for food.

So where was that bat’s exit point to go out and hunt?

Sam pointed her flashlight beam up to the top of the sealed shaft, where the monster dropped supplies to her.

It could’ve flown in from there.

Sam then pointed her light to the rock pile that blocked off the archway, to the spot where she had encountered the bat.

Or, it could’ve come from somewhere in there, which I think is most likely.

Sam reasoned that if the bat had somehow wriggled its way through the rock pile, it couldn’t have wriggled a great distance because bats are flyers, not crawlers. And that means that beyond the rocks, there has to be an exit point to the surface.

She combed her light over the rock pile.