A Taste of… The Forgotten Girl

The Forgotten Girl (Lynn Rivers Mysteries, Book One)

Prologue

Shanna Myers was too glamorous for camping. She’d always known it and often said it. Starting when she was thirteen years old and had tried to persuade her parents to let her stay home from school camp—a week-long nightmare in some upstate forest, which was mandatory for eighth graders at her school to attend. 

She had a sinking suspicion this forest was the same one where that last trip had taken place. Back then, she had sprained her ankle walking to the playground on the second day, got stung by a wasp on the fourth and had to be in the same room as a snake on the fifth—right up next to the guy holding it no less, because her sprained ankle made it impossible to stand, so she had to sit in the front. That was the last time she’d even been camping, or in the woods for that matter.

Until gorgeous Jake had asked her to be the star in his movie. He was a film student, she majored in drama and English Lit. He was a six-foot three, muscular god with chocolate brown skin and green eyes that sparkled when he laughed. She was a beauty too. They were perfect for each other. And it was supposed to happen on this trip.

That kiss in the cafe before they got here sure felt like much more was to come, as did the one they shared right after they got here. But he’s barely spoken to her since then, unless it was to give her acting direction. His girlfriend Alicia has been by his side constantly, giving no sign that they were about to break up, as Jake claimed in between kissing Shanna like no one ever had before.

But on the set, Jake and his girlfriend had spent almost as much time smooching and touching each other as they did filming.

So Jake is just another two-timing liar. The city is rife with them. And Shanna wasn’t even interested in him anymore. But she did want payback for this camping crap he dragged her into.

Jake had also lied about the movie.

He had described her role in his movie as that of a beautiful woman alone in a forest finding herself. A nymph. A goddess. Those were the words he used. And he called the movie’s plot, “A celebration of womanhood.” Shanna couldn’t help snorting each time she remembered that.

 What they’d actually been filming for the last two nights was an awful horror movie. She looked terrible in all the shots. Snot and tears were running down her face half the time and everything was filmed in a green-tinted night vision goggles color that made her look like, at best, a skeleton, and at worst, an old woman.

If she could sleep during the day, like the rest of the crew had no problem doing, then at least she wouldn’t also have huge dark circles under her eyes, which the unnatural night vision light seemed to pick up and accentuate to epically terrible proportions. The woman responsible for the bad green lighting was, of course, Jake’s girlfriend. She was making Shanna look bad on purpose. Even though Shanna saved her from breaking her neck last night. But all she got in return for grabbing her arm to prevent her from falling backward down a ravine onto sharp rocks was a sour thank you and more crappy lighting.

Jake didn’t even want to show her any of what they’d already filmed, said he wanted to be sure of the shots himself first, so Shanna had to help herself. She had to sneak a look at the shots on Jake’s computer, while he was sleeping with Alicia wrapped so tightly around him it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began.

And after she’d seen them, she couldn’t sit still, let alone try to get back to sleep. In fact, she wanted to pack up her bag and go back home to New York City. Walk there, if she had to, just to get away from this terrible mistake.

And to make matters worse, that freak of a stalker she thought she was finally rid of had started sending her texts again. Sweet at first. Threatening after she hadn’t replied. And then sweet again.

Why do I only attract nut jobs and players?

She’d asked herself that question so many times lately, but she still had no answer.

It was almost two PM, the sun high in the sky, but none of its warmth reached Shanna as she walked beneath the canopy of red and gold leaves. She had left the log cabin she shared with Jake and his girlfriend, and the guy who played the boogie man following her through the woods in the movie, to call her friend Kevin and tell him the stalker was after her again.

He had chased him away before so hopefully he’ll can do it again. Otherwise, Shanna would finally tell her parents and auntie Lynn about him. Lynn was FBI and her dad a powerful NYC attorney. Between them, they could make the stalker go away better than Kevin could so maybe she shouldn’t even be asking him.  She did the first time because she wanted to deal with this problem on her own, not run to her family like a little girl.

She had no idea how the freak’s texts had gotten through at all, since the reception in this forest was so bad and so spotty none of her own calls were going through. The texts she sent didn’t either, unless Kevin was just ignoring them. Which he never did. He always replied in seconds, day or night.

She’d been walking for almost an hour, hoping to find the road that led to the small town they’d passed on their way here. Network coverage was bound to be better in that town, because it couldn’t be any worse. But there was no end to the trees and the cabins and no sign of the road.

She’d conceded that she was lost a while back and had already resigned herself to just getting a coffee from the camp’s cafeteria, but now she couldn’t find that either. She also hadn’t seen any other camper for some time now.

The woods also seemed darker in this part of the camp somehow, the canopy thicker and the smell of rot stronger. The cabins she was passing, and had been passing for the past fifteen minutes or so, were all empty and decrepit-looking, some with tiny trees growing amid the planks of their narrow porches. There were fewer cabins here too, and they were spaced farther apart. The ground around them was strewn with fallen black and rotting leaves several inches deep, yet the trees overhead still held onto their leaves.

Her heart thumped in her chest from more than just the exercise. It seemed as though she’d walked into a set in Jake’s movie. The bright sunny day had suddenly turned to twilight, and she was so done with all this it wasn’t even funny.

A gust of wind caught the front of her bright pink windbreaker, tugging it open. It also felt like a slap across her face. A cold one. She had no business being here.

Acting—or more like shrieking—in this second-rate movie Jake hadn’t even bothered writing a script for. So what if he was a six-foot-three god with a smile that lit up his face and made her wish they were kissing instead of talking? So what if she’d promised to be in his movie? They’d only filmed a couple of scenes despite working for two nights. Jake had already started talking about extending their stay.

No.

Shanna had had enough.

She was a city girl and too pretty to be associated with a second-rate, cheap knock-off of the Blair Witch Project. She’d never even owned so much as a knock-off key-chain, and she wouldn’t star in one either.

She zipped up her windbreaker, turned around and stalked back the way she came. Retracing her steps was the best way to get back to their cabin. And once she got there, she’d pack her bag, tell Jake she was leaving and get someone to drive her to the bus station so she could get back to the city.

She didn’t see anyone and didn’t hear anything but the squelching of her boots on the rotting leaves and the creaks and crackles of the forest. She had been alone in the abandoned part of the camp.

Or so she thought.

But the arm that grabbed her from behind was very much real and very strong. And the hand covering her mouth and nose as she was dragged into the darkness beyond the abandoned cabins prevented her from breathing, let alone screaming out.

For the first couple of seconds while it was happening, she was sure the man would release her any second now and she’d hear laughter and Jake’s deep tenor voice telling her it was just a rehearsal for tonight’s filming. That he wanted her to know the fear so she’d accurately portray it on camera.

He’d had one of his crew do this exact same thing to her the first night of filming, right after it got dark. Shanna cursed and screamed long after that guy had let her go, fuming at Jake to never, ever do a thing like that again.

So why wasn’t she screaming and cursing now?

Why wasn’t she fighting?

Because this wasn’t make-believe.

This was real. She felt it in her bones, heard it in the labored breathing of her otherwise perfectly silent attacker as she was dragged into the shadows, and then up a set of rickety wooden stairs that creaked and groaned under their combined weight. A tree sapling growing through the stairs snapped at her leg.

She smelled something sweet on him. Flowers, maybe roses. It only added to the ice-cold dread that filled her veins.

She was frozen, paralyzed. Just letting him do it. Or her? What man smelled of flowers?

It didn’t matter.

But the other question, namely, what happens now? that she did know the answer to.

There will be no escape. This was the end of her life. A tiny voice in her head told her that. And she believed it.

Even though it was the most terrible thing she’d ever heard.

Chapter 1

Special Agent Lynn Rivers was hugging her upper body and shivering so hard her teeth were chattering as she walked through the woods. Leaves, rotted and fresh, squelched, rustled and cracked under the rubber soles of her leather boots. The air was icy-cold, even though bright rays of the sun, glaring through dark blue autumn rain clouds blinded her the whole way here. But that’s not what made her shake.

That was all down to the sickening anxiety roiling and burning in the pit of her stomach. Her hands were clammy as she held her long Pepita grey coat tightly closed, her breathing came in short erratic gasps, and her heart was thumping, pumping blood through her with all the speed and noise of a freight train.

At the end of this trek, she would find a terribly disfigured young woman. But that wasn’t the real reason for her body’s violent fight-or-flight reaction either. For now, she could still pretend that the victim was not the same young woman she watched grow up.

Pretend. That’s all she could do. Because, as her body already seemed to know, her life would be forever changed by what she was about to find at the end of this trek. Once again irrevocably changed.

Just as it had been at the end of those other two treks in the past, through woods just like these. Not just like these, they were the same woods. They even smelled the same—rotting leaves on the ground, fresh ones dying and about to fall, the air crisp carrying just a hint of snow that wouldn’t fall for at least another month. The smell of autumn. The smell of her childhood. The smell of what had always been her favorite time of year.

 Memories of those past treks were flooding her mind now. The bright sun blinding her made the leaves above her and all around her glow copper and gold, but she didn’t really see any of it. All she saw was the darkness in her mind.

The first of those two terrible treks had occurred in the faint grey light of a misty autumn dawn. She’d been on her way home, but saw a yellow light shining unnaturally brightly amid leafless trees in a forest that should’ve still been dark. She walked towards it.

The air had been cold. Colder than it was today. Ice hung heavy in the damp morning air. The fallen, rotten leaves crunched and broke under her sneakers, because they were frozen. But she’d still been warm. Because she’d just come from the best night of her life.

Her father’s deputy—Terrence—had caught her in a wide embrace before she reached the pool of bright light, his broad back shielding her from the view that light illuminated from her. But not before she saw her best friend’s sightless blue eyes staring at the grey sky. Alicia’s skin glowed gold in the artificial light of the reflectors, everything else seemed to be in black and white.

The second time a trek through these woods ended the life she had known, it had been night and the lights guiding her were blue and white and flashing. They were bringing her to a two-story house with well-kept, white wood siding, and a pitched roof, red carnations in white pots on all the windows and embroidered lace curtains obstructing the view inside. Only the window of her bedroom on the second floor overlooking the forest was open. Only her window was dark.

Deputy Terrence didn’t rush out to intercept her this time. He had been standing by the old, wide, oak tree growing just to the side of the front door as she passed him, one of his hands braced against the thick trunk, the other across his stomach like he had been about to throw up. No one stopped her from going into the house.

So she had entered her home. And saw the blood. Saw her mother in her pink and yellow floral night gown lying in a glistening pool of crimson by the kitchen counter, the cup of warm milk and honey she’d always drink before bed laying in pieces beside her, the white almost swallowed by the red.

Her father was in the den just off the kitchen. Sitting behind the honey-colored walnut desk in his high back, black leather chair, his head thrown back, a single star-shaped circle of black in the center of his forehead. His face and white button-down shirt covered in dark blood.

Her brother Drew had already been taken to the hospital. She wouldn’t see him again for a while. Not until he healed from the gunshot wound to his stomach and the stab to his throat, claiming he remembered nothing of that night and protesting his innocence, screaming that he hadn’t killed his mother and father.

No one had believed him. Not Deputy Terrence or any of their father’s other men. Not anyone in town. Not the twelve men and women of the jury. Not their sister Kate. Not even Lynn. Not all the time, anyway.

Lynn stopped and took a deep breath of the cool air. Then she let her coat fall open relaxed her arms, shaking them out as she threw her head back and slowly counted to ten, picturing each number in her head like the glowing green digits on a radio alarm clock, focusing just on the freezing air going in and out of lungs. An exercise in grounding and focus that usually worked. Today she’d have to count to at least a thousand if she wanted to get even close to calmness. She didn’t have that kind of time.

These woods touched the ones surrounding the house and the town she grew up in. It’s been twenty years since she was anywhere near them. And it’s been nearly that long since the memories of what happened there had been this vivid in her mind.

But that’s all they were, memories. Things long since done and dusted and dealt with, however poorly.

She was needed here and now. That’s all she should be focusing on.

Her former criminal psychology professor and one of her closest friends, Cindy Myers, had called her last night. Frantic. Speaking disjointedly and almost incoherently, saying her daughter had gone missing in the woods upstate two days ago and no one was looking for her. Asking Lynn to help find her.

Cindy and her husband Roy were in the middle of their annual two-week break in Cabo, but were returning on an overnight flight this morning.

Lynn had tried to calm her friend down, placating her as best she could, promising she’d look into it. Which she did. And got the call this morning.

Shanna Myers wasn’t missing anymore.

She’d been found at dawn by a camper who couldn’t sleep.

No one had requested the FBI’s presence, but Lynn was here anyway and her partner TJ would be arriving shortly. And as much as she’d rather still be far away from these woods, she’d find out who killed Shanna Myers.

Which, twenty years on, was a lot more than she could say about the murders of her parents and her best friend.

***