by Dan Padavona
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Never Forget Me
A Wolf Lake Thriller
Dan Padavona
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
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Acknowledgments
About the Author
1
Kaylee Holmes cursed at her Kia Optima.
Since entering the hill country, the car had made a disturbing rattle that increased whenever she pushed her speed. When she purchased the Kia five years ago, there were ninety-five-thousand miles on the odometer. She’d added seventy-thousand since. It was time to upgrade. Would the Kia get her to her meeting place? After checking the map, Kaylee turned up Falls Road, where she stopped the car along the shoulder and shut off the engine. The trees grew thick along the roadside. Forest stretched over the hills for miles. She checked her phone for messages and found none. Coverage was poor this far outside of Treman Mills, so if Harding wrote her to cancel, she wasn’t sure the message would have pushed through the network. She checked her hair in the mirror, brushed the black locks out of her eyes, and climbed out of the car.
Recent rain colored the air with humidity, green and cloying. Puddles lay at her feet. She leaned against the car and stretched one leg, then the other. Jogging in place, she worked the jitters out of her body. Six weeks had passed since she last saw Harding Little. They’d attended Treman Mills High School together eleven years earlier. Not that he remembered her. He’d been a star athlete on the basketball team in high school, with a chiseled physique and the face of an angel. The beauty had only run skin deep. Inside, he was a stuck-up bully. In high school, Kaylee had been Kendra, a pimply, overweight outcast with a stutter.
For twelve weeks, Kendra had chatted with Harding online as Kaylee. Though she considered withholding her original name as disingenuous, she wasn’t lying. Five years ago, Kaylee petitioned the court and legally changed her name from Kendra Harmon to Kaylee Holmes.
New name, a new beginning. A fresh outlook on life, and an opportunity to put the past behind her.
Kaylee had encountered Harding on a social media website that catered to singles interested in hooking up. After exchanging pictures, Kaylee brimmed with excitement. Harding wanted a date. Would he recognize her after she’d lost ninety pounds, cleaned up her acne, and changed her hairstyle? He hadn’t, and the sex blew her mind the night they rendezvoused at a four-star hotel in Syracuse. She blushed thinking about it and imagined what their classmates would say if they learned the ugly fat girl was sleeping with the star of the basketball team.
But she needed to be careful. Kaylee knew nothing about Harding, except for the persona he used on social media. He must have matured after eleven years. Most people remembered teenage misdeeds with shame and regret. She wanted to believe he was as pure of heart as he was great in bed.
God knew she needed his company today. This morning, Kaylee learned her grandfather had passed. Grandpa had been her rock for her twenty-nine years, the only family she could depend on. During Kaylee’s youth, her parents were too drunk and aloof to care about their daughter. Dad was verbally abusive, referring to her as a loser who would never amount to anything until she lost weight and made herself attractive to boys. As if she lacked the intelligence to support herself after school.
Kaylee quieted the ghosts inside her head. She forced her lips into a smile and checked her reflection in the window, determined to look her best when Harding arrived.
So where was he? They were supposed to run together from the gorge to the cliffs. Five miles through the wilderness with the sexiest man she’d ever bedded. Check that. The only man she’d bedded.
She checked the time. He was fifteen minutes late.
Kaylee locked the Kia. She hoped the car would make it back to Kane Grove. She’d ask Harding to follow her home, just in case.
If he ever showed up.
A hand touched her shoulder. She yelped and spun around, the keys jutting between her fingers as weapons. Before she punched her attacker, Harding grabbed her arm and laughed.
“Hold up, it’s just me.”
Kaylee released a breath.
“Don’t sneak up on me. We’re in the middle of nowhere.” She stood on tiptoe and glanced over his shoulder. “Where’s your car?”
“At the scenic overlook a quarter-mile back, where I promised to meet you.”
She brushed a hand through her hair.
“Sorry. I got confused trying to find the right hill. I must have driven past.”
“No harm, no foul. You ready to get sweaty?”
Kaylee purred and touched his chest.
“Say when.”
“Anytime you want, and anyway you like it.”
He kissed her neck, and her knees buckled. She lay against his muscular body, wondering why they hadn’t been close when they were younger.
Because you were fat and ugly, idiot.
But she wasn’t anymore. She possessed a fit and trim body, killer legs, and a clear complexion that highlighted her skin tone. She’d never worn makeup, a decision that would pay off with healthy skin tone for years after her peers turned haggard.
“I wish I could take you right now,” she whispered into his ear.
“Here? Someone would see.”
“Who cares?”
“I do,” he said, holding her at arm’s length. He touched her nose. “Be patient. We’ll have our time together. How about we work up an appetite before the main course?”
They jogged together up the incline, the first minute hell on Kaylee’s lungs until she acclimated. Her pace quickened when the land leveled and took them toward the cliffs. She gave the edge a wide berth. The drop into the gorge was a hundred feet. Around them, birds took flight from the trees. Butterflies winged among the wildflowers as cicadas buzzed from the tall grass.
The sun broke through the clouds. It was then that she noticed a pale stripe around his ring finger. Panic seized her. She stopped and grabbed his arm, swinging him around as fury crescendoed in her chest.
“What the hell, Harding? Are you married?”
He glanced at her, then at his hand. The white stripe around his ring finger was unmistakable. Yet she hadn’t noticed during their night together. Probably because she was too busy ripping the clothes off his body.
“Harding?” She straightened her shoulders. “Tell the truth.”
He shifted away and stared at the horizon. Black clouds billowed through the western sky, promising rain.
“Look, I was going to tell you.” He scratched behind his head. “I’m married with a kid. A six-year-old daughter.”
“Oh, my God.” She scrubbed a hand down her face and swallowed a sob. “So what . . . I’m your mistress, your little strumpet?”
“Hey,” he said, reaching for her shoulder.
She batted his hand away.
“Don’t touch me. You haven’t changed at all, Harding. You’re the same creep you always were.”
He shot her a cockeyed glance.
“What?”
“Just guh-guh-go away.”
Kaylee covered her mouth. She couldn’t recall stuttering in the last decade. He glared at her through squinted eyes.
“Don’t I know you from somewhere?”
Kaylee turned and ran. He shouted behind her. She wished he’d leave her alone. Eleven years, and he was the same conceited prick he’d been in high school. The jerk who called her Heifer Harmon, the asshole who stood by and watched while Tina Garrison yanked the hair out of Kaylee’s scalp. Sprinting, she ran along the gorge, heedless of the precipitous drop. She could hear his footsteps pounding behind her, coming closer. After years of exercise and running, she still couldn’t match his athleticism.
Harding gained on her, breaths huffing against the back of her neck as he matched Kaylee stride for stride. There was no escaping him. No matter how fast she ran, he’d close the distance and catch her.
“Kaylee, stop. Let me explain.”
She leaped a split log, sneakers scuffing the dirt and stone as he came up behind her.
“You lied to me, you son-of-a-bitch! I never want to see you again!”
“You’re acting crazy. What the hell did you think? That we’d get married or something? It was a one-night stand. Get over it.”
His words stung like slaps across her face. She was so stupid to believe he’d changed, that there could be anything between them after the way he treated her when they were teenagers.
As the cliff loomed closer—the creek a gurgling haze inside the gorge—she yelped and tumbled to the ground, holding her ankle. Tears streamed down her cheeks.
He didn’t offer a hand. Just gazed down at her as she wept and averted her eyes in humiliation. Anger twisted his face.
“You’re a psycho bitch. We’re through. Don’t contact me online, don’t text. And if you screw with my marriage, so help me I’ll—”
Her leg swung behind his and knocked him off balance. As he reached out to brace himself, Kaylee snagged him by the wrist. She screeched like a feral animal and tugged, using Harding’s forward momentum against him.
His shadow catapulted over her prone body. Harding flipped once, his eyes wild with terror. With a scream, he flew over the cliff.
Kaylee struggled to her knees. Her breaths came in frantic bursts. What had she done? The sun glistened as the lone witness to her evil.
She touched her ankle and smiled. The bastard fell for the trick, hook, line, and sinker. After the way Harding and his friends tortured her during school, he deserved to die.
He was dead, wasn’t he?
As she crawled toward the edge of the cliff, icy dread touched her heart. What if Harding had fooled her? What if she glanced over the edge and found him hanging by a tree limb, with a deranged grin plastered to his face?
Kaylee held her breath.
Peered over the edge.
His crumpled body lay at the base of the gorge. The river bubbled beside him, snaking its way toward the heart of Nightshade County.
A sense of relief fell over Kaylee. She was free of assholes like Harding Little.
“I should have done this to you eleven years ago,” she said, leaning over the edge as the wind whipped her black hair. “You and all the others.”
A gust of wind shoved her from behind. With a start, she backed away from the cliff, heart hammering as if she’d ridden the world’s fastest roller coaster. She surveyed the dirt. Her sneaker tracks ran alongside his. After searching the area, she broke a leafy branch off a small maple tree. She scrubbed her sneaker prints away with the leaves, walking backward until the tracks disappeared in the tall grass. Her back ached from leaning over. She straightened and winced.
But it was a satisfied wince. It appeared Harding Little had jogged alone and leapt off the cliff.
“You committed suicide because your marriage was a failure, you stupid prick.”
Kaylee giggled. She’d gotten away with murder.
2
Thomas Shepherd, sheriff of Nightshade County in upstate New York, pushed Scout Mourning up the ridge trail in Wolf Lake State Park. Three years ago, his fifteen-year-old neighbor had lost her ability to walk after a tractor trailer lost control and slammed into her family’s car. Confined to a wheelchair, Scout worked as an amateur sleuth and helped fellow teenagers track dangerous criminals and solve cold cases. The teen tucked her black ponytail through the back of her baseball cap and squinted as sunlight glimmered between great pines and oaks.
The park butted up against Thomas’s property, and he found solace and peace of mind exploring the trails, sitting beside the falls, and watching the trees green up in spring before the leaves turned orange and red during the autumn. Two creeks gurgled through the park, one connecting with Wolf Lake, the other feeding into the Nightshade River.
“Bet you’re thrilled to be out of school for the summer,” Thomas said, maneuvering the wheelchair around a fallen branch.
“I suppose.”
“You suppose? When I was a teenager, I couldn’t wait for summer vacation.”
Scout sighed.
“I enjoy sleeping late, and it’s so nice when it’s warm out and the sun is shining. But sometimes it gets boring.” She peered up at Thomas. “I want a summer job. But Mom isn’t so sure.”
Scout’s mother, Naomi, ran daily operations for Shepherd Systems, the project management and collaboration company Thomas inherited after his father passed from lung cancer. His mother, Lindsey, still worked for Shepherd Systems as a high-level manager. Thomas scrunched his brow in thought.
“Shepherd Systems hasn’t hired a student intern since I took over the company. You could be the first.”
“I appreciate the offer.”
“But?”
“I don’t know.”
He smiled.
“You don’t want your mother hovering over you all day.”
Scout shrugged.
“It’s not that I don’t want to be around Mom. She’d do everything for me, and I’d never learn.”
As they rounded a bend and approached the clearing, the cabins materialized beyond the trees.
“Here’s another idea. What if we ask Darren? The state park advertises openings for summer work this time of year.”
Darren Holt, a former officer with the Syracuse PD, had retired to take the ranger position at Wolf Lake State Park.
“You think he’d say yes?” Scout gestured at her legs. “I’m in no position to clean debris off the trails, and unless Superwoman lends me her cape, I can’t rescue a lost hiker.”
“I’m certain there are jobs that don’t involve trail maintenance and emergency rescue missions.” Thomas waved to Darren, who stacked firewood beside his cabin. “Why don’t we ask? The worst thing he can do is say no.”
Scout gave Thomas an uncertain look
.
“I feel like I’m imposing.”
“Well, don’t. Darren knows you’re a hard worker. If you fit an open position, he’ll consider you. And hey, I’ll write your letter of recommendation.”
As Thomas and Scout approached, Darren set an armload of firewood against the cabin and removed his gloves.
“School already out for summer?” Darren asked, wiping a forearm across his brow.
“As of yesterday,” said Scout.
“Where does time go? Before you know it, summer will pass in a blink of an eye.” Darren turned to Thomas. “I didn’t realize the sheriff of Nightshade County took vacation days.”
Thomas ran a hand through his hair.
“The county keeps hounding me to burn my annual leave. Guess it’s time I took them up on their offer.”
Darren glanced between Thomas and Scout and quirked an eyebrow.
“You both look like you have something to say.”
“Scout is on summer vacation and searching for something to do.”
“Okay.”
“Well, I’d like to keep her out of trouble. If Scout doesn’t stay busy, I’m afraid she’ll spend her nights soaping windows and tipping cows. My deputies have enough issues to deal with without rabble rousing teens running amok.”
