41. MEGHAN

Cascade, Idaho

Around 4:00 a.m., April finally wiped her eyes, tucked the creepy bear quilt around the girls' shoulders, then climbed back into bed.

I felt my last bright inklings of hope slip away from me, into the darkness beyond the closed bedroom door.

It was just a waiting game now.

Even so, we tried again the next night. And the next night. With about the same results.

Once, after the "dream talking" as Skye had started calling it, April wound up thrashing and screaming so loudly it woke the girls in the other room. James rolled over and shook her roughly to wake her. When she kept whimpering, he pushed her hard enough that she tumbled off the bed in a tangle of sheets and quilt.

As the covers came off the bed in a pile, he swore loudly and stretched out across the bed to snatch them back, ignoring the girls' thin wails from the other room until April slowly picked herself up off the floor, gingerly touching her head.

"You woke them up, you deal with it," he muttered. Then he rolled over and went back to sleep.

As his breathing turned slow and deep, Skye spoke up. "Let's do it to him."

I stared at her, not quite following. "Do what to him?"

"The dream talking thing. The worst nightmare we can come up with."

Brecia shook her head. "He's the worst nightmare I can come up with. What scares a fucking narcissist who gets his kicks from killing women?"

Her question hung in the darkness between us for a long moment.

"April," I finally whispered. "And the kids. That they'll see through him and turn him in. That they'll eat all his food and mess up his insane fugitive-on-the-run game."

Skye closed her eyes and nodded. We couldn't send him those nightmares.

He smiled and murmured something in his sleep, as if being rocked to sleep by the waves of simmering rage building and crashing around him.

* * *

The days ticked by even more slowly than they had when I was alone in the mountains. There wasn't a lot to do. No TVs or tablets to distract the girls. Just a few books and toys that were already in the minivan. And the Mountain Meals, which had been a novelty at first, were getting old fast—even at two meals a day. Everyone had the runs, which meant that the one tiny bathroom with the door that didn't fully close was in constant use.

It would have been sort of funny if it weren't so awful.

James stayed in the cabin most of the time, increasingly irritable. He snapped at the girls whenever they asked about mealtimes or said they needed to use the bathroom. He paced the floors back and forth, eyeing the backpack and the neat rows of survival gear and meals he'd arranged into rations and days.

Even at two meals a day, the food was going fast. So was his patience.

April managed to keep the girls occupied with what she dubbed "nature school." Little hikes and lessons about birds and fauna. Stories and art projects made from fallen leaves and rose hips. Kimmie managed to turn a long, skinny pinecone into a doll and named it Pippa. Emma coaxed a chipmunk into eating a little granola from her hand. April smiled brightly and praised the girls' ingenuity. She hadn't asked about school or truancy again. And she hadn't asked about the plan. Or the police. Or when they were going back.

On the third night after April went to sleep, James sat at the kitchen table, staring at the supplies. He stood to look at the food and touch the tarps. Then he walked to the bedroom where April was asleep. But instead of getting undressed for bed, he turned off the hall light and stood in the semi-darkness, listening to the cadence of her breath.

"He's done. He's getting rid of them," I said matter-of-factly like the dread wasn't pooling around me. "Look at his face."

Brecia and Skye were already staring at him. His eyes were different. Calculating. He didn't appear to be anxious, though. Just resolved.

April rolled over in her sleep, but her breathing was even and deep.

He closed the door softly and walked back to the living room, where he extracted a headlamp from the backpack, put on his jacket, and slipped out the front door.

"Where is he going? Is he leaving?" Skye asked hopefully. "Maybe he'll take the van and go."

But the beam of the headlamp had stopped on the shovel near the woodpile.

I watched in horrified silence as he picked it up and started walking into the forest.

* * *

He chose a spot about a quarter mile from the cabin, along a deer path. The ground was soft and mulchy enough beneath the cover of the pines that it didn't take long for him to complete the first hole to his liking.

The three of us stood along the deer path, trying to make it make sense.

The hole was about three feet wide, six feet long, and three feet deep.

He dug in silence, looking up only when the crackle of twigs from some creature broke through the still night and the soft thunk of a shovel hitting dirt over and over again.

We stayed long enough to let the reality of what he was doing sink in. Long enough to see that the hole was, unmistakably, a grave—and that he was starting on a second.

Then we fled back to the cabin.