Blind Faith by CJ Lyons Read Free Book Online Page B

the intoxicating perfume of his last summer of freedom.

CHAPTER 8
    A short time after Hal left, Sarah hoisted her pack on her shoulder and let the backdoor slam shut behind her. No need to lock it—she had nothing left for anyone to steal.
    She craned her neck to look up at the mountain towering above her. The summit wasn't visible, not from here. A crowd of trees, just coming into their foliage, waved in the wind as if inviting her to join them. Two hawks spiraled overhead, high enough to appear as small black dots against the afternoon sun.
    She shrugged her pack into place and began hiking up the trail. It would be a longer trip up, but this felt better than driving. As if she truly was following the footsteps her heart heard every night—at least on the nights when she could sleep.
    The trail curved along the side of Snakehead, coming to a clearing where the Lower Falls could be seen in the distance. Sarah forced herself to stop even though she'd come less than a mile from her house. She looked out over the edge of the gorge down to the dam, the reservoir, up river to the falls. Then she turned to stare downstream at Hopewell: a hodgepodge of whitewashed siding, asphalt shingles, and brick poking through the trees. The only distinct landmark was St. Andrew's bell tower reaching heavenward.
    Her heart sped up as the clearing closed around her. Trees and brush crowded together as if preparing for an ambush. This was it. This was where Wright had caught up with them.
    Silence reigned here. The buzz of gnats and mosquitoes vanished, soft evergreen needles muffled her footsteps and filled the air with the damp, sweet scent of pine. All she could hear was the sound of her own breathing; even the roar of the distant waterfall was subdued. As if this was a holy place, a sacred place.
    She turned in a full circle, her mind filling in physical details two years had erased. The clump of mountain laurel that had been splattered by Sam's blood, the dirt beneath the red oak that had turned into a small lake of crimson after he fell, the churned up leaves where he'd tried to fight Wright, spilling a small amount of the killer's blood, the hemlock tree where the camera card had been found....
    She blinked and the sun-dappled clearing transformed into crime scene photos. Blinked again and reality returned. Sarah swallowed hard, found herself breathing through her mouth as if trying to avoid the scent of death.
    Her hands gripped her pack straps so tightly the nylon webbing bit into her skin. Many times, swaddled in the mountain's mist, she'd fled here in the middle of the night, trying her best to cross over, commune with the shadows. One night last year, she'd almost made it. The night she'd given up, when she'd decided to break with this world and surrender to the next.
    Sarah waved her hand in front of her face as if chasing cobwebs away. She hitched her pack, settling it into a comfortable position, and marched through the clearing without looking back.
     
    August 30, 2006
    This will probably be my last entry—who needs words when we'll be together soon? Sorry if it's hard to read, I'm sitting under an oak in the clearing above the dam. You know the place. You died here.
    At least that's what the experts finally decided. The rain came too soon for them to do a complete analysis, but based on the photos Hal and his men took, they figured you tried to save Josh, fought Damian Wright, managed to hurt him a little before he killed you. They found a few tracks from a man moving slowly, possibly carrying a heavy object and decided that, for whatever reason, Wright carried you away before returning to take Josh.
    Hal doesn't know that I've read the forensic reports. He keeps his copies locked up, refuses to let me see them. But Alan was finally able to get a copy of the FBI report—Freedom of Information Act, they call it.
    It sure as hell freed me. Even if Damian won't talk to me, won't look me in the eyes or give you and Josh back to