Page 114 of You'll Be Sorry

“We’ll use our snowshoes.”

“The cave is a crime scene. No way Chief Grady isn’t going to have some opinions on this.”

“All the more reason to go now, while everyone’s at the town meeting. We’ll be in, out, done.”

Theo wasn’t fighting her that hard, given he was already lacing up his snow boots.

“And we’re looking for…?” Theo prodded as Mr. Man pranced between them in anticipation. Neither had had the heart to inform the dog that he was most definitely being left behind.

“I think it’ll be one of those we’ll know it when we see it kind of things.”

Theo straightened long enough to peer at her directly. He placed a quieting hand on Mr. Man’s back. “And the family?” he asked quietly. “If they’re indeed in there. Six bodies, including the kids.”

Raquel hesitated, then resumed fiddling with her gloves. “We’ll be respectful.”

But she knew that wasn’t what he really meant. She might have recognized the skeletal remains of an infant, but he hadn’t. And children, actual small children.

“I don’t mind going alone,” she offered softly.

Her husband, her beautiful darling husband, shook his head at her. Then he went to fetch the snowshoes while she turned to the dog to deliver the bad news.

Theo was not wrong. The conditions had deteriorated sharply, visibility already limited. They could use the bordering tree line as a guide, hunkering down against the heavy, wet flakes as they forged a parallel path. Theo graciously took the lead, bearing the brunt of the weather as she huffed and puffed behind him.

She worried she’d miss the entry point into the woods. The sheer whiteness of the landscape was daunting, ground and sky blending into a single disorienting plane. But after thirty minutes of hard walking, she detected a darker blemish among the snow-covered pines.

Both came to a halt. Theo’s dark hood and balaclava were covered in icy crystals. He even had a few flakes stuck to his eyelashes. At any other time, she would’ve been tempted to kiss them away. Now she focused on their target.

The dense clumps of trees formed a natural shelter, reducing the snow cover. They ditched their winter walkers to better manage the rough terrain. This time Raquel took the lead, threading her way carefully through the thick undergrowth and low-hanging limbs. She had a rough sense of direction from the night before. Up, to the left, more up, now easing to the right.

Then, there they were. The pewter-gray ledge thrust out of the woods like the wall of a medieval fortress, dusted in white, but losing none of its ominous edge.

“Wow,” Theo declared in awe. “That’s um…that’s real.”

Raquel clicked on her flashlight to assist in the falling light. It took a couple of tries to navigate up to the cave entrance, now marked by yellow tape, with a few orange cones added outside to show the way.

Theo whistled in appreciation. “Crazy. Without the investigativewindow dressing, I would never have spotted this.” He studied both sides of the steep granite, where the rock seemed to extend as a solid wall, when in fact it was one block nestled just behind another, with a narrow crevice in between, only visible from the side. “Mother Nature is one hell of an architect.”

He was stalling. She didn’t push, now that they were both here, knowing what they were about to see in this dark, oppressive space.

She felt a cold shiver down her spine. An icy draft of wind? An innate sense of foreboding?

Snippets of the journal entries flashed through her mind.

Terrible shadows…devils dancing…the flames of hell itself.

Theo’s hand was on her shoulder. “You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

He activated his headlamp. Together, they stepped into the gloom.

Emerging on the other side was both better and worse than Raquel anticipated. Better, because the search team had left LED lanterns softly glowing at strategic intervals to maintain basic visibility. Worse, because the lamps cast an eerie mix of shadow and light across an already disturbing scene.

Bones. Scattered in all directions. Larger piles clearly delineated with crime scene tape, while pink evidence flags bloomed like flowers across the dark floor. It would’ve been beautiful had it not been so macabre.

Beside her, Theo had gone still.

She squeezed his hand. After another moment, he returned the pressure.