Fear flowed across her face. Jack grabbed her arm. “What is it?”
Danielle’s lips trembled. “He says there’s a message on the Web site that scares him.”
“What does it say?”
“It says, Do you want an encore? Then watch it at Laurel Falls,” Danielle whispered.
Jack pulled his wallet from his pocket and signaled for the waitress. “Where is Carter now?”
“In his room at the university.”
“Tell him to stay there. I’ll get an officer and check this out.”
Danielle repeated the message and closed the phone. She grabbed her coat and purse and followed Jack from the table.
At the door, she grabbed his arm. “Jack, what do you think this means?”
He halted and shook his head. “I don’t know. The message could have been left by some kook that came across the site. But it worries me that Tricia Peterson is missing.”
“What will you do?”
“I’ll call for backup and head to Laurel Falls.”
Danielle pulled her coat on. “I’m going with you.”
He debated what to do. After all, she didn’t have her car. “You don’t need to do that. I can drop you at home before I go out there.”
She lifted her chin and directed a determined stare toward him. “Tricia’s parents expect the school to keep her safe. If something’s happened to her, I need to know.”
Jack knew this was one battle he couldn’t win. “Okay, but you’ll have to stay in my car.”
He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and called Dispatch as he and Danielle rushed out of the restaurant. The memory of the girl’s body on the Web site flashed into his mind. When he’d first seen it, he had hoped the beautiful girl wasn’t really dead. Now he realized it might be too late to repeat that wish.
Two patrol cars drove up to the Laurel Falls Trail parking lot just as Jack and Danielle arrived. Danielle sat up straight in her seat, grabbed his arm and pointed to a red sports car parked at the entrance to a path that led up the mountain. “That’s Tricia’s car.”
“Maybe she hiked up to the falls.” He patted her hand. “Don’t worry. We’ll find her. I’ll leave the car key in case you get cold. You can start the car and turn up the heater.”
She pulled her coat tighter and shivered. “Thanks.”
Jack climbed from his car and nodded to the four deputies who joined him.
One of the officers pushed his hat back on his head. “What we got here, Jack?”
He tilted his head toward the parked sports car. “It may be nothing, but the girl who owns that car posed for the Web site we’ve been investigating. She’s missing, and a message on the site said to check out Laurel Falls.”
The deputies exchanged worried glances and hurried to their cars to get flashlights. When they returned, the officer in charge faced the three other men. “Two of you stay here. With this many police cars in the parking lot, we may have passersby who want to stop. Keep everybody off the trail until we get back.” He pointed to the third man. “Come with us.”
Jack shivered in the night mountain air as he and the two officers started up the trail. The beams from their flashlights cut through the darkness, lighting the path in front of them.
He waved his flashlight beam to the left, then straight ahead. “You two search up the trail and to the left. I’ll take the right side.”
They walked in silence for perhaps twenty minutes as they headed deeper into the wilderness that led to Laurel Falls. Jack struggled through the undergrowth that threatened to trip him. As the incline of the path grew gradually steeper, the vegetation became thinner, making it easier to walk. His heart hammered in his chest, and his lungs burned from the high altitude.
The sound of roaring water could be heard in the distance. They were approaching the falls, and they’d found nothing. Maybe Flynn had already found Tricia, and they were on their way to Asheville. They were probably warmer than he was right now. It was time to call it quits for tonight. If Tricia was still missing in the morning, they could bring in the mountain rescue team to search.
Jack was about to call out to the others that it was time to head back when he saw her. He pushed a low-hanging tree branch out of his face and stopped. Tricia lay just as she had on the Web site. He exhaled and squatted at her feet.
He gagged from the nausea roiling in his stomach, then stood and backed away so as not to disturb the crime scene. He couldn’t look away from the still form.
Jennifer McCaslin and now Tricia Peterson. How could he tell Danielle that the nightmare she’d lived with for ten years had returned? He thought of how her body had shaken all the way to Laurel Falls and how frightened she looked when he’d left her at the car.
With a sigh he pulled his cell phone from his pocket and called the officers in the parking lot. Briefly he described what he’d found, asked them to notify headquarters and cautioned them to be on the lookout for anything suspicious.
As he flipped the cell phone closed, he took a deep breath and called out to the two deputies searching with him. “Over here!”
Within minutes the other two officers joined him. None of them spoke as they stared at the dead girl beside the trail.
Jack turned and started toward the parking lot. “I’ll be back shortly,” he called over his shoulder.
His feet felt like lead as he trudged down the path. Telling Danielle was going to be the hardest thing he’d ever done. At that moment he wished he didn’t know her. It would be so much easier to tell a stranger. In twenty-four hours’ time, she was no longer a stranger, and he was about to deliver news she didn’t want to hear.
The coat Danielle wore did little to ward off the chill of the October night air as she climbed out of Jack’s car. She crossed her arms and hugged herself in an effort to keep warm. Every few seconds she glanced at her watch and wondered when Jack would step from the dense forest.
The two policemen guarding the entrance to the trail watched as she paced back and forth across the asphalt parking lot. After fifteen minutes and no sign of Jack, she approached them. “Have you had any word from Detective Denton yet?”
“Can’t tell you anything, ma’am,” one of them said.
She pulled the car door open and crawled inside. The only policeman she wanted to see was Jack Denton, and she had no idea how long it would be before he would reappear.
Thirty minutes later Jack was still nowhere to be seen, but other deputies stood all around the parking lot. One after another police cruisers had arrived, and now they lined the roads. The blue lights of the cars blinked in the darkness, and several deputies stood in the road directing traffic to keep cars from stopping.
The scene, so similar to one at the same spot the night of Jennifer’s murder, told Danielle that something horrible had happened in the wilderness. She squirmed into a more comfortable position and glanced out the car window. The beam of a flashlight appeared on the path. She sat up straighter and strained to see who was coming out of the forest.
Danielle shoved the door open and ran to Jack before he’d even reached the end of the trail. “Tell me what you found.”
The dim light in the parking lot shadowed his face and accented the sadness in his eyes. He licked his lips. “We found Tricia’s body.”
“W-w-was it like the Web site?”