Known (3 page)

Within sixty seconds she was exhausted and the sharp snowflakes stung her face.

They’d nearly passed the burned cabin when Chris stopped, staring at tracks that led to his left. Gianna looked past him and noticed that the path they were on headed in a different direction. He glanced back at Violet.

“Did you make that path during the night?”

She shook her head.

Gianna stared at the broken ice and snow that led off to the east.
Chris didn’t make the path?
Her gaze tracked the new path, which led straight to her cabin. She swallowed hard. “That’s not the way you came from your place?”

“No.” He pointed ahead to a break in the woods. “I came from this way. Have you seen anyone in the area? Who knows you’re staying here?”

“No one knows except the rental agency,” stated Gianna. “And we haven’t seen a single person since we’ve been up here.” The sight of another trail that led to where she’d slept with her daughter last night made her skin crawl. “Who could have made that? Violet, are you sure?”

“I didn’t leave the cabin!”

Gianna wanted to run and put as much distance as possible between them and the trail. “It was formed after the ice storm. See? Someone had to break the ice when they walked. What time did that storm happen? Seven? Eight?”

“Let’s get out of here,” Violet begged. “I think someone looked in our windows and spied on us.”

She was right. Gianna saw that the trail went to both of the lower-level windows and to the small porch.

“I didn’t notice it when I first got here,” said Chris. “I just looked at the damage.”

Gianna’s heart froze. “Did someone start the fire while we were sleeping?”

Chris met her gaze. “Very possible.”

Chris wasn’t surprised that it was after noon by the time they arrived at his cabin. Violet had kept up well, but Gianna had needed frequent stops and his arm to steady her steps. The mystery trail bothered him. Gianna hadn’t mentioned it since they left, but he’d thought of nothing else.
Who spied on the women? Did that person start the fire
? He knew Gianna had to be wondering the same.

During the hike he’d nearly told her what he suspected had been left inside her cabin. He’d kept his mouth shut because of Violet.

Twice Violet had broken into tears on the trail, describing her terror and struggle to get her mother out of the cabin. Chris knew she’d be haunted for weeks, possibly years, by her trauma. From his own experience, talking it out was the best therapy. Her mother had comforted her and commiserated; Chris had stood back and stared at the trees, feeling like an intruder and trying to give them some privacy.

Memories flashed as he listened to Violet’s fears pour out. Long ago he’d had a best friend for two years, someone to listen to all his terrors, someone who’d shared the same horrifying experience as he. That boy had died, and for over a decade Chris had had no one else. Then he’d met Elena. He could still feel her soft hands stroking his head on the dark nights when demons had sneaked up and destroyed his sleep. She’d never judged him. After Elena had died, he’d battled alone again until his sister and brother had dragged him and Brian into their daily lives and regular society.

Now Gianna and Violet huddled together under three blankets on his sofa while Oro pretended he was a lapdog. Gianna sipped coffee as Violet drank a cup of Brian’s stash of hot chocolate. Both of them stared off into space, haunted looks on their faces. He’d lit every kerosene lamp, wanting to eliminate every shadow from the room.

Chris stoked up the fire in the wood stove, slightly uncomfortable with the silence. He didn’t mind silence when he was alone; he treasured it. He avoided houseguests. The only people who’d been to his cabin were his sister, Jamie, and his brother, Michael. They understood he didn’t make small talk. Thankfully, Gianna and Violet didn’t seem to need a host; they simply needed to feel safe. He’d achieved that. He watched until the dry piece of wood he’d added caught fire, and then swung the iron door shut and twisted the handle to lock it. The wood stove gave off a pleasant smoky odor. Unlike what he’d smelled earlier.

As soon as he’d opened the door of Gianna’s cabin, he’d known something was wrong. He hadn’t simply smelled burned wood; he’d smelled burned flesh. He
knew
the odor of burning flesh; he’d smelled his own thirteen separate times. And he was haunted by the smell of other children’s burning skin. It didn’t matter who you were; when flesh burned, everyone smelled the same.

Someone or
something
had been severely burned in the cabin. In addition, there’d been an underlying odor of bowel. Like the smell of a burning latrine. He’d grabbed Gianna’s boots and then her coat while scanning the inside, unwilling to move in any farther. Everything had been covered in ash. The upper walls were black and there was a dark path scorched up the wall from the kitchen stove. To his scant fire knowledge, that pattern indicated where the fire had started. From Chris’s low point of view, everything in the loft was black and charred. No one would have survived up there. On the lower level of the cabin, the patterns and colors of the furniture were still discernible through the soot. His quick glance hadn’t revealed the source of the foul smell.

How did he tell Gianna that he believed something in her cabin was dead?

He’d asked the women about other people and pets in the cabin, trying to make sense of what his nose had told him. Their answer hadn’t satisfied him. He’d searched their gazes, looking for deception and awareness of the odor, or a fear that he’d seen something in the cabin that he shouldn’t. Either they were gifted liars or they were unaware of what was in the cabin. He’d seen a traumatized teen with a need to be close to her mother after her harrowing escape. In Gianna he’d seen confusion, but it was directed inward, as her nausea and clumsiness perplexed her. During their hike he’d heard her quietly ask Violet if she’d placed the wine bottle in the recycling. Violet had given her an odd look, saying she hadn’t touched it, no doubt wondering why her mother was concerned with a wine bottle when they’d nearly burned up in their sleep.

Chris had been just as puzzled by the question.

Now, in the warm cabin, Violet relaxed and her eyelids fell closed.

“Would you like to lay down on one of the beds upstairs?” Chris asked the teen.

Panic fluttered her eyelashes, and Chris felt a pang of guilt as he realized she’d remembered how she’d woken to find their cabin on fire. His cabin’s layout was nearly identical to their cabin’s.

“No, thank you. I’ll just lie down over there. I didn’t sleep much last night.” The teen moved to the other couch, farther back in the big room. She stretched out under a blanket and closed her eyes, using a beat-up throw pillow to rest her head. Oro followed, spreading his body out next to hers. Violet scooted closer to the back of the couch to give him more room, wrapping one arm around the dog.

Within seconds her breathing slowed and deepened.

Gianna’s gaze rested on her daughter, sad resignation in her face. She turned and caught Chris watching her.

“She’ll be okay,” he offered.

She took a deep breath and looked into her coffee mug. “It’s possible she may have started the fire. Not intentionally, but I’ve caught her with cigarettes recently. Although I went through every bag she brought up here, I may have missed something,” she said softly.

“But according to her, the fire started downstairs in the kitchen area. Not in the loft where she was sleeping.”

“Maybe she threw a burning cigarette in the trash under the kitchen sink. I don’t know.”

“Did you ask her if she was smoking last night?” He knew Gianna hadn’t; he’d been with them nonstop since Gianna had awakened.

“No. That trail in the snow shows that someone else could have started it.” She glanced at her sleeping daughter. “I’m shaken at the thought that someone may have tried to murder us in our sleep.”

Chris nodded. “I don’t think your daughter started it. Someone else was clearly there.” He paused. “When I went in to get your boots, it smelled like a body had burned inside,” he said carefully.

Gianna stared at him. “What do you mean?”

“There’s something inside. I could smell it. That’s why I asked about pets or anyone else being with you. There’s something dead in there and it burned in the fire.”

“Are you sure?” Her eyes widened. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I didn’t want to in front of your daughter.”

“We should have checked it out!” Gianna set her mug down on the coffee table, her back ramrod straight. “Someone may have needed help.” She looked ready to hike back to her cabin.

“Whatever it was is dead.”

“How do you know what a burned body smells like?”

“Trust me, I do.”

Her gaze probed him. “I deal with death every day. Burned bodies, drowned, shot. You should have told me what you suspected.”

He stared back, curiosity rolling through him. “What do you do?”

“I start with the Oregon medical examiner’s office in a few weeks. I’m a forensic pathologist.”

“You do autopsies,” Chris said flatly.
I should have told her my suspicions.
“Christ. I had no idea. You didn’t smell it?”

“I didn’t smell a thing. Probably because too much was going on. But you’re right . . . that smell is hard to mistake. We need to call the police.”

Chris spread his arms. “We’ve got no cell service and we’re stuck until better weather. I haven’t heard the plows, and I won’t risk the drive until then. We’re on a low-priority road because there’s only a few cabins up here. The last forecast I saw showed only a little snow coming after the ice storm rolled through, so I bet they’ll plow it by tomorrow. We don’t have many plows around here, and their priority is the highways.”

“Do you have some sort of radio to call out with? I saw a ranger station out on the highway not too far from here. Can we reach them?”

He shook his head. “I don’t have anything else. Someone from the ranger station might check on us, but we’re used to waiting things out up here.”

Her expression indicated she didn’t like having her hands tied. She looked ready to drive through the snow and ice to the ranger station. He waited, watching her process every possibility. He knew she’d eventually arrive at the conclusion that they’d done all they could.

“There’s really nothing else we can do about the fire right now, is there?” she asked.

“Trust me. I’ve been thinking about nothing else. There’s something dead in that cabin, and it’s possible the two of you were meant to die in there with it.”

“We need to go back,” Gianna stated, nervous that a death might have happened that close to her daughter. “If there’s a body in there, we can’t just leave it. We need to see if something can be done.” She stood up and fought the wave of dizziness that swamped her.

Chris jumped up and held out a hand. Gianna didn’t know if it was to stop her or give her something to grab to keep from falling. “You’re not thinking straight. Remember that walk?”

She did.

She ignored his hand and sank back into the couch. “I’m not used to sitting around doing nothing. Especially when something horrible has happened.”

Chris lowered himself back into his chair, his gaze penetrating. “You want to rush back to a scene where someone may have tried to kill you and Violet.”

“Who would want to kill us? You’re jumping to conclusions. We spent the rest of the night sleeping in my Suburban. Anyone who wanted us dead could have walked right up and taken care of it.” She looked pointedly at him. “No one wants to kill us.”

She wouldn’t let him get in her head. She and Violet had survived a horrible night, but until she had proof that the fire had been deliberately set, she wouldn’t panic.

“Why’s there a dead body in that cabin?”

“You don’t know that for certain,” she argued. “You said you didn’t actually see it.”

“I
know
something was in there.”

“Maybe an animal went in while Violet was getting me out. That could be what you smelled.”

“I don’t think animals rush toward fire and smoke.”

Gianna threw up her hands. Clearly they were of two minds about what had happened. “I don’t know what to tell you. Yes, there was a trail outside and I’m sure you smelled something that burned, but I’m not going to sit here and stress. Until we go back and look, we’ll never know what happened. But you don’t want to go back.”