Page 88 of A Future To Remember

But the bodies were too big, and they were both wearing men’s clothing. Their shoes were men’s boots, several sizes too big to belong to my wife.

Candice slid in beside me, her own head swiveling back and forth between the bodies. “What the fuck?” she whispered before pointing to a ring secured to one wall and a pair of shackles dangling from them.

I mentally took note but didn’t allow my mind to linger. I then walked over to the body on the left. There was a hatchet sticking out of the chest cavity. If he hadn’t died quickly, then he’d suffered.

Next, I moved over to the other body, and this time Candice followed me. Although he was in the midst of decay, it was pretty obvious by looking at the skull that he’d been shot in the face.

I moved back over to the other body. I found the gun near him. It appeared that one brother had shot the other after being attacked with the hatchet.

“Abby?” I called, not expecting an answer, given the condition of these two. They’d been dead several weeks. Maybe even several months. “Abby, you here?”

“Sir!” I heard from outside. “Come quick!”

Candice and I looked sharply at each other and bolted out the door, running around to the rear where Oscar stood some ten feet from the cabin. His stance looked off. He wasn’t holding his gun so much as barely hanging onto it and the flashlight in his other hand. His shoulders were slumped, and as my flashlight’s beam found him, I realized he was crying.

He seemed unable to speak, and he simply shook his head, then pointed the beam of his flashlight toward a mound of dirt behind him.

There was a shovel next to the mound.

“No,” I whispered.

Candice grabbed onto my arm before she sank to her knees.

I left her and ran forward. Oscar tried to block me, but I had to see. I had to see her.

He’d removed a little of the dirt to expose a skeletal arm up to the shoulder, clad in a red sweater.

Abby’s sweater.

I turned away, stumbling several feet before I dropped to my own knees and threw up. After that, I simply buried my face in my hands and wept.

CHAPTER 17

Her

Levi and I stood outside the dilapidated building that’d been Red’s Auto Shop, peering into the window.

Turning to him, I asked, “Can I borrow your phone for a sec?”

He reached into his back pocket and handed it over, no questions asked. I was starting to really love this guy.

The screen was severely cracked, but the phone was still functional. I felt my insides twist a bit; Levi had to make this phone last because he couldn’t afford a new one. It made me all the more determined to get him that reward money.

After tapping at the screen a few seconds, I handed it back to him and turned my attention once again to the window, squinting into the darkness again.

“What’re we looking for?” he asked.

Through the window, I shined the flashlight I’d borrowed from the tool kit in the storage room from Wanda’s. “That,” I said, pointing across the space to the far wall, where a security camera hung from a bracket that’d been bolted to the ceiling.

Levi hedged closer to me, peering over my shoulder. “A security camera?”

Instead of answering him, I stepped back from the window, looking up at the structure. “In twenty-five years, this place has never been torn down, sold, or renovated. Don’t you find that curious?”

Levi shrugged. “Small town with limited resources. Hell, my mom used to gripe that the town hadn’t updated any of the playground equipment at the elementary school since her mom went there. All of it’s falling apart.”

I considered that. “Still,” I began, “who installs a security camera in an old, abandoned building?”

“How do you know the camera wasn’t put there by Red Shoemaker?”