“I didn’t leave the cabin!”

Gianna wanted to run and put as much distance as possible between them and the trail. “It was formed after the ice storm. See? Someone had to break the ice when they walked. What time did that storm happen? Seven? Eight?”

“Let’s get out of here,” Violet begged. “I think someone looked in our windows and spied on us.”

She was right. Gianna saw that the trail went to both of the lower-level windows and to the small porch.

“I didn’t notice it when I first got here,” said Chris. “I just looked at the damage.”

Gianna’s heart froze. “Did someone start the fire while we were sleeping?”

Chris met her gaze. “Very possible.”

Chris wasn’t surprised that it was after noon by the time they arrived at his cabin. Violet had kept up well, but Gianna had needed frequent stops and his arm to steady her steps. The mystery trail bothered him. Gianna hadn’t mentioned it since they left, but he’d thought of nothing else. Who spied on the women? Did that person start the fire? He knew Gianna had to be wondering the same.

During the hike he’d nearly told her what he suspected had been left inside her cabin. He’d kept his mouth shut because of Violet.

Twice Violet had broken into tears on the trail, describing her terror and struggle to get her mother out of the cabin. Chris knew she’d be haunted for weeks, possibly years, by her trauma. From his own experience, talking it out was the best therapy. Her mother had comforted her and commiserated; Chris had stood back and stared at the trees, feeling like an intruder and trying to give them some privacy.

Memories flashed as he listened to Violet’s fears pour out. Long ago he’d had a best friend for two years, someone to listen to all his terrors, someone who’d shared the same horrifying experience as he. That boy had died, and for over a decade Chris had had no one else. Then he’d met Elena. He could still feel her soft hands stroking his head on the dark nights when demons had sneaked up and destroyed his sleep. She’d never judged him. After Elena had died, he’d battled alone again until his sister and brother had dragged him and Brian into their daily lives and regular society.

Now Gianna and Violet huddled together under three blankets on his sofa while Oro pretended he was a lapdog. Gianna sipped coffee as Violet drank a cup of Brian’s stash of hot chocolate. Both of them stared off into space, haunted looks on their faces. He’d lit every kerosene lamp, wanting to eliminate every shadow from the room.

Chris stoked up the fire in the wood stove, slightly uncomfortable with the silence. He didn’t mind silence when he was alone; he treasured it. He avoided houseguests. The only people who’d been to his cabin were his sister, Jamie, and his brother, Michael. They understood he didn’t make small talk. Thankfully, Gianna and Violet didn’t seem to need a host; they simply needed to feel safe. He’d achieved that. He watched until the dry piece of wood he’d added caught fire, and then swung the iron door shut and twisted the handle to lock it. The wood stove gave off a pleasant smoky odor. Unlike what he’d smelled earlier.

As soon as he’d opened the door of Gianna’s cabin, he’d known something was wrong. He hadn’t simply smelled burned wood; he’d smelled burned flesh. He knew the odor of burning flesh; he’d smelled his own thirteen separate times. And he was haunted by the smell of other children’s burning skin. It didn’t matter who you were; when flesh burned, everyone smelled the same.

Someone or something had been severely burned in the cabin. In addition, there’d been an underlying odor of bowel. Like the smell of a burning latrine. He’d grabbed Gianna’s boots and then her coat while scanning the inside, unwilling to move in any farther. Everything had been covered in ash. The upper walls were black and there was a dark path scorched up the wall from the kitchen stove. To his scant fire knowledge, that pattern indicated where the fire had started. From Chris’s low point of view, everything in the loft was black and charred. No one would have survived up there. On the lower level of the cabin, the patterns and colors of the furniture were still discernible through the soot. His quick glance hadn’t revealed the source of the foul smell.

How did he tell Gianna that he believed something in her cabin was dead?

He’d asked the women about other people and pets in the cabin, trying to make sense of what his nose had told him. Their answer hadn’t satisfied him. He’d searched their gazes, looking for deception and awareness of the odor, or a fear that he’d seen something in the cabin that he shouldn’t. Either they were gifted liars or they were unaware of what was in the cabin. He’d seen a traumatized teen with a need to be close to her mother after her harrowing escape. In Gianna he’d seen confusion, but it was directed inward, as her nausea and clumsiness perplexed her. During their hike he’d heard her quietly ask Violet if she’d placed the wine bottle in the recycling. Violet had given her an odd look, saying she hadn’t touched it, no doubt wondering why her mother was concerned with a wine bottle when they’d nearly burned up in their sleep.

Chris had been just as puzzled by the question.

Now, in the warm cabin, Violet relaxed and her eyelids fell closed.

“Would you like to lay down on one of the beds upstairs?” Chris asked the teen.

Panic fluttered her eyelashes, and Chris felt a pang of guilt as he realized she’d remembered how she’d woken to find their cabin on fire. His cabin’s layout was nearly identical to their cabin’s.