Haunted by the Past (Original)

Chapter 48

Chapter Forty-Eight

At first I screamed in panic and horror, then in anger and frustration, followed by pain and despair. I screamed and screamed until there was no more voice to scream, then I screamed in silence. Eli didn't even bother to stop me. We were in the middle of twenty acres with no telling where the closest neighbor was, who was going to hear me? All the while I sat in the middle of the living room floor rocking back and forth while hugging my knees, Eli shuffled around the cabin. Eventually he sat down beside me and pulled his laptop out of his backpack. I noticed he had put a pair of black leather gloves on at some point, but he didn't bother to take them off while using his computer. Reopening Dr. Higgins' local surveillance, he scrubbed backwards looking for any signs of her killer.

"He took her computer and cell phone," he grumbled. "Afraid of what we'd find on it? Or still trying to frame us?"

"That's your concern right now!?" I snapped though my voice was hoarse from screaming. "She's dead because of us!"

"She was a dead woman walking," he shot me an intense look, then returned his attention to his laptop. "She was dead the moment Triple-6 entered her life. It was only a matter of time before he came for her to get rid of loose ends."

"A loose end!? She didn't deserve that!" I yelled. "Even if she forged documents and lied under oath, she didn't deserve that."

Eli continued searching the footage in silence for a few minutes before speaking up again, "It's possible he avoided the cameras. You can't cover the entire forest with cameras. We may have to accept that this entire endeavor was a failure."

"A failure? Look at the blood, Eli! She was alive when he-!" I couldn't even get the words out of my mouth. Admitting what I saw was too much - too much too soon.

"I know," he responded grimly.

"How can you be so calm!?" I exclaimed.

"I'm not, Dani," he sighed. "Right now I need to focus on our investigation and get any evidence possible while we're here. I don't want to risk us missing anything because we won't be able to come back."

"We can't leave her like that!" I stressed, wiping the tears from my face. "She lived alone. She may not be found for weeks! Animals will get to her!"

Eli lowered his shoulders and nodded knowingly. "We'll go into town, find a payphone and make an anonymous tip."

Though that solution satisfied me, I still couldn't shake an awful feeling. I thought back on the conversation we had and how she spoke in a hushed tone. "She had company when I spoke to her on the phone."

"What?" Eli exclaimed. "And we waited before coming here!?"

I shrugged, "She didn't want us coming here any earlier. 'Don't come unless you want trouble.'"

"She said that?" he questioned. He searched the surveillance for the exact time of our call.

Nodding, I started to wonder, "Do you think she knew?"

Eli tilted his head side to side in contemplation. "It would be difficult to say she didn't. Look at the state of the road. Not many people would come this way. People that live on properties like these with decrepit roads are the type of people that want to be left alone. To have a house guest now is too coincidental and if she warned you there would be trouble, then yes, she came to the same conclusion. But if she welcomed him into her home, that also means she knew Triple-6." The software failed to load any footage. Instead the search resulted in an error. Not wanting to accept it, he tried again, but it only resulted in the same prompt. "Of course, he deleted it."