“It’s the condom from when I lost my virginity. Timothy threw it on the ground and I didn’t think about it again until I came back here a few weeks later. The barn was gone, but there was the fucking condom. It must have been covered in snow that night. That’s probably why they didn’t trash it.”

I stuffed everything back into the cooler. “I’ve searched this mountain for four years looking for her...” I turn to face them, my back to the house and the memories. “I know she’s dead. But if they buried her in these woods, I would have found her by now. I would have—”

“Someone’s in the house.” I looked at Molly, who was staring behind me, completely frozen. “There’s someone in the window.”

I spun around quickly, just as the shadow of a petite woman disappeared through the swinging curtains. How long had she been there for? How much had she seen?

“We have to go.”

There’s a hill five miles off campus called Covenant Landing. It’s rumored to have been where seniors used to go to make out. That is, until Dr. Felix Chastain got word of it and started having security patrol the area for students’ cars. Now it’s just an abandoned lot, covered in overgrown trees and weeds breaking through the gravelly ground.

Molly, Jess, and I sat on the hood of my car, drinking Bud Light and looking over campus as the sun set. For what it’s worth, Covenant is a campus straight out of a movie—brick buildings covered in green ivy; pristine lawns and quads, not one piece of mulch out of place. From the outside it was the perfect school, a small haven cut out of a gorgeous forest. But from the inside...

“You know Tim still lives up here, too?” Annie said. “We still talk sometimes. His real name is Gregory. Greg. I think I’m going to see him tomorrow.”

I hadn’t spoken to him, but I looked him up online a few times. Gregory Greene. Engaged. A police officer. Living thirty minutes outside of town in a trailer on a lot where he was building his own house, stone by stone. He’d figured it out. He’d moved on. They all did.

“Have you been in touch with him at all? Seen if he can help?” Catherine asked.

“He can’t. They’re impenetrable,” I responded, about the Walkers. “At first, I just figured they were big donors to the school, that’s why Gerwig didn’t do anything. And why Bregg convinced me not to file a report. But then the more I researched... They know everyone. Literally everyone. And every single person helped them cover it up. I just don’t know how. Finding a barn in Vermont is worse than finding a needle in a haystack.”