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  “No, I'm afraid that I don't,” Maaike replied, and Grace could see that she was now unraveling the leashes from around her ankles and starting to break free. At last she was jangling her car keys, walking toward the front door of her house.

  Chapter 25

  Off Course

  “We’d better go back,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” she said. “You said you knew the way. You said it was this way, even when I told you it was the other direction.”

  “Well, I am sure you know this park better than me,” he said. “You’ve been here so many times before. I’m new. I am just getting to know the forest.”

  This change in attitude was really odd. First he knew where he was going and then suddenly he didn’t? Suddenly it was her job to show him the way?

  She was going to argue, but then he just started to walk back to where they’d come from, now picking up speed. She had to run to catch up with him.

  “Uuuuuuugh!” she cried. “Stop. I don’t even want to go to the campsite now. Can’t we just go home? Can’t we just go back to the parking lot and skip the rest of this? I’m tired of all this, and I want to give up. Can’t we just call Mom and have her pick us up? I give up. It’s not worth it.”

  He stopped and turned back to look at her. He seemed to be inspecting her like a robot that had just malfunctioned. “Karin, giving up?” he said.

  “Yeah, well, it’s okay to give up sometimes.”

  “What would be the fun of that?” he said. “Come on. No whining, Karin. You show me the way back.”

  “Ugh, fine.”

  They retraced their steps for at least ten minutes until they got back to the mouflon spot. She saw the two boulders and the tree, and the place where they’d camped that last time, and other times before that. It felt nice to be someplace she recognized again, but she expected they would just keep walking past it in the right direction this time.

  “Here,” she said. “This was our camping spot. So if you think about it, the campsite has to be northwest of here, which means it’s that way, right?” She started off in that direction.

  “Very good, Karin,” said Martijn. But he didn’t look in the direction she figured the camp must be. He just stood there, looking at the spot where she and her dad had camped, like he was seeing it for the first time, even though they’d been here just before.

  “Could you show me exactly where you would set up camp? Around here somewhere?” He made a circle motion with his hand. For some reason Martijn had this creepy way of being particularly interested in everything her dad had done. If his name came up, he always wanted to know more, to ask more questions. She’d thought it would be the opposite—why would a second husband be so interested in his wife’s first husband? Karin could only reason that he was probably jealous that her dad had been more important to her mom, and he was trying to figure out how to be more like him.

  Karin was so tired. “I mean, I don’t know why you care so much.”

  “I just want to know where you camped. No reason.”

  “Are you jealous or something?”

  Martijn seemed really impatient now, glaring at her in the darkness. “Show me where you set up camp, Karin.”

  He was really irritating when he got this way. “I’ll tell you if it’s so important to you,” she said. “There, we’d pitch our tent about there.” She pointed to the place under the tree.

  “Tell me more,” he said. “How you got here, where you put your stuff.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Just tell me.”

  Karin had no clue why he wanted to know this, but she was too tired to argue. “We always parked our car at the Otterlo gate, and then we’d bike down here with our gear. We always set up our tent over there, under that tree,” she said, whirling around to show him. “We made our fire there. We’d go to sleep, like, right after the sun set. Even him. So in the morning we could wake up really, really early and watch the mouflons. We must have seen hundreds of mouflons here. He liked to photograph them when they were in a herd, and they only came here when it was really silent, so we—”

  “The tent went here?” he said, walking to the spot, like a land surveyor or something. Like he was going to build a house right there. Or put up a statue or something.

  “Yeah, about there,” she said. “What’s this all about?”

  Martijn started to do the weirdest thing then. He took a small shovel out of his backpack, shined a flashlight on the ground at the base of the tree, then dropped to his knees and started digging.

  “I thought we were going to the campsite,” Karin said. “Why are you doing that?”

  “I’m looking for something,” said Martijn. “Something that belongs to me.”

  “You left something here? Or you lost something? I don’t understand.”

  “Don’t ask questions if you know what’s good for you, Karin. Just keep quiet.” The coldness of his voice and the way his eyes glared at her—without a hint of pity or patience—suddenly terrified her. It occurred to her that he had in fact been bitten by one of those ghouls.

  She stood stock-still and dared not say another word. She kept her eyes on him, though, hoping he might soften, crack a smile. It would all turn out to be a big joke. “Ha ha, gotcha!”

  But no. The more she watched him, the more she saw that he was involved in something completely different from the dropping. He wasn’t here for her. He was here for some other reason. He was searching for something, digging for something. He had wanted to find her not to save her but to get her to lead him here.

  Karin had the sudden instinct to run, and she took a few steps backward before she suddenly whipped around. But as she was just about to sprint, at nearly exactly the same moment, Martijn lurched up from where he was digging and tried to grab her. He fell over and caught her ankle instead, holding it fast and tight. Then she fell, face-first, into the dirt.

  “What are you doing…?” Karin tried to say, but she couldn’t get the words out. She was panting and trying to squirm out of his grip. The more she did, the tighter he clenched. What was he doing? Why was he trying to prevent her from moving?

  She tried to lift herself off the ground, but he pulled himself on top of her, pinning her to the dirt. A kind of wrestling move. It shocked her. What was he going to do to her? Was he going to try to assault her? Was this what he did to her mother?

  “Just stay still,” Martijn said. He was panting too, breathing hard, trying to catch his breath. He pushed himself up to kneeling, and put one knee on her waist to keep her pinned. They continued to struggle until she gave up and went limp.

  “You’re hurting me, you know,” she said.

  He nodded. He did know.

  “You’re obviously not taking me to the campsite,” she said.

  “Okay, you win,” he said, suddenly very matter-of-fact. “No, we’re not going to the campsite. Well, maybe we’ll go later. But we’re not going until I find the photographs. I just need to know where he buried them. That’s all. I need you to show me. I need you to help me find them. He said he’d left them in the woods. They must be buried where he camped. I’m pretty sure you know where they are too.”

  Karin had no idea what he was talking about. No idea. It was the strangest thing she had ever heard, and yet he seemed to be talking about something she was supposed to understand completely. “Buried photographs?” she said. “What are you talking about? Who?”

  “Your father,” he said. “Good old Pieter Hoogendijk. Come on, Karin, don’t tell me you don’t know. I know he told you. I know you’re the only person who knows.”

  “What?” Karin was beyond herself. She felt like he was accusing her of being some kind of accomplice to a crime she didn’t commit. To a crime she hadn’t even ever heard about. “You think my dad buried photographs? Out here? Why would he do that? Why would he tell me?”

  “I didn’t believe him at first, of course,” said Martijn. “It did seem stupid, like he was trying to send m
e off course. But now I’ve searched every other conceivable place. All his storage facilities, all his files, all his computers, all his everything. Then I thought: What if he wasn’t shooting digitally? What if he was shooting on old-fashioned film? He liked to do that sometimes, didn’t he? He did his nature photography on film.”

  This much Karin did know. Her father had an old-fashioned side. He was used to using film, and he liked to shoot sometimes in black-and-white. And he liked to develop his rolls of film in the darkroom at home. He’d even taught Karin how to do it. She wasn’t allowed to put her hands in the chemicals, but she was allowed to put them in the final bath and hang them up to dry, using clips that he’d attach to strings hanging from the ceiling.

  “This was where you came on the last trip you took with your father,” Martijn said. “You were determined to come back. That was part of the reason, wasn’t it? He buried the negatives out here. Maybe he even told you about what the photos were of?”

  Now Karin thought Martijn had really gone off the deep end. What kind of person would bury negatives in the forest? Why would he tell his ten-year-old daughter about it and not anyone else? Everything Martijn was saying seemed to make no sense. But he was so sure of it.

  “No.” Karin shook her head. “No, he didn’t tell me about anything like that. He didn’t tell me about what he was doing. He wasn’t like that. I was just a kid. Why would he tell me?”

  Martijn looked like he maybe believed her for a moment. He seemed, at least, to consider what she said. She had to convince him that she really didn’t know—because she really didn’t know—what he was talking about.

  “Because he had to tell someone,” said Martijn. “And it seems he didn’t tell your mother anything.”

  Karin thought of all the times Martijn had hurt her mother. Was this what it was all about? Was he trying to get something out of her too? Her mind skipped a beat. All kinds of thoughts came flooding in. All kinds of thoughts she didn’t even want to think.

  She asked him, “Did you ever actually love my mother at all?”

  Chapter 26

  Letting Jezebel Loose

  The dogs leapt out of the car and ran into the park, pulling Maaike behind them. She nearly tripped in her boot. They were all on leashes that connected to a big metal ring, so she could hold them all at once, but in their excitement, they catapulted her forward. Grace was surprised by their level of energy—after all, it was the middle of the night.

  There was a slanted wooden gate that stood at the edge of the forest and opened onto a dirt clearing. Just beyond that was a post that had all kinds of markings on it, indicating which trails went in which directions. Once they were inside the park, Maaike leaned forward and unclipped the dogs from their leashes, one by one, and off they ran.

  Jezebel was the last one on the lead. Maaike motioned to Grace to give her Karin’s shirt. Without any further discussion, she held it up to the dog’s nose and let her get a good long whiff. “That should do it,” she said to Grace. “She’ll take us there.”

  Then she let Jezebel go. The dog behaved strangely at first, just running in circles around the dirt clearing, not seeming to know which direction to go. Then she ran up and down one trail and back to Maaike, like the other dogs were doing, and leapt up on her master. Maaike held out the shirt again, and Jezebel barked, just once. She chose a trail and ran off quickly in that direction, and Maaike and Grace nodded to each other before they turned on their flashlights and followed. The rest of the dogs also came along, running up and down the path, up ahead and then back, playfully, with no sense of the terrible dread Grace was feeling.

  They’d been following Jezebel for about ten minutes already, shining flashlights into the dark, when they heard Jezebel wailing.

  “I guess it worked,” Maaike said as she picked up her pace. Grace began to run, charging ahead of the older woman. As she did, she felt a stab of pain in her chest—was it fear and dread, or just her heart worn out by the strain? She was nearly breathless when she pressed through some branches to find the dog digging furiously with her paws in the dirt under a cluster of trees. No sign of Karin there.

  Grace stopped and shone her flashlight all around the floor of the forest, seeing garbage everywhere. Plastic bottles, large ones and small ones, and giant tin cans strewn about the place, lots of plastic bags. A large green tarp was half suspended from the branches of a tree, and half fallen into the dirt. There were also filthy sleeping bags, cups and knives, and metal plates strewn about, and industrial-size containers labeled ACETONE and WEED KILLER.

  Maaike caught up with her, breathing heavily, and her flashlight also scanned the scene. “Looks like someone has been living here,” she said.

  They wandered around the empty campsite, seeing the now-dead campfire, its embers seemingly doused by water. There were all kinds of chemicals everywhere and a concerning amount of garbage. It was clear that some people had been here pretty recently. Maybe even hours ago. Where had they gone? Did they leave or were they chased out?

  “I think it’s a meth lab,” said Grace. “I’ve been reading about this in the papers. They’re using various forests for it these days.” Her heart began to sink—this was frightening, but it held no clue to Karin’s whereabouts.

  Maaike went over to inspect what Jezebel was digging up. She was wrestling something out of the dirt with her teeth. “Is this…” she started to say as Grace turned to see what the dog had unearthed from her hole. “Is it…?”

  “Karin’s backpack,” Grace said as Jezebel lifted the zebra-striped bag in her teeth. “She was here.” Grace felt her stomach drop. At the very least, Karin had been out here with some frightening people. Why? Had the other kids been here too? Or just Karin? What on earth had she been doing here? Had they kidnapped her? What did they plan to do with her?

  The obvious next question didn’t need to be said aloud, but Grace said it anyway. “So where is she?”

  “Let’s call the police,” said Maaike. “We’d better call now.”

  Grace grabbed her phone out of her jacket pocket and was about to dial when the phone rang instead. It was Rutger calling. Maybe he had news. She accepted the call and held it to her ear.

  “Hello, Grace. I wanted to let you know that one of the children has arrived. Only one, but that’s something. Dirk is here. He found his way to the camp.”

  “Only Dirk?” said Grace. “What about the girls?”

  “So far it’s only him,” said Rutger, slowing his speech so that Grace knew she needed to listen carefully. “He is very shaken. He says that he was with Margot, but the two of them went off on their own and left Lotte and Karin behind. He is the only one who has made it here. Have you reached your husband yet?”

  “Left the other two behind? Where?” Grace was trying to take this in. She was sure she hadn’t heard him right.

  “I guess they were trying to have a private, um, moment. They’re thirteen—I don’t know. Sometimes kids do that. Your husband, Martijn,” said Rutger. “He was supposed to follow the kids. Did you talk to him?”

  “No, I’ve been calling him for hours,” she said. “I can’t reach him. I can’t understand why.”

  Rutger paused for a pregnant moment. “Dirk says that Martijn found him with Margot—they were not where they were supposed to be. I think they were doing something…something sexual. Martijn apparently separated them and sent Dirk ahead on his own. Martijn told him he would accompany Margot to the camp because she should not be alone out there. But they have not arrived. No one else has arrived yet.”

  “What?” Grace was dumbfounded. She was beginning to understand that the spool of thread that held this whole event together had unraveled. How far had it unraveled? Was there no one in charge? No one was where they were supposed to be. “What?”

  “Your husband was with Margot, but…” He started to repeat his story, as if she hadn’t heard him.

  “No, no, I heard what you said. I just don’t understand; I don’t unders
tand what all of this means. Martijn was with Margot? But they aren’t there yet. They didn’t make it to the campsite. What about Riekje?” asked Grace. “Did you hear from her?”

  “No,” Rutger said with a deep sigh. “Nothing. I’ve been calling and calling her too. She’s not answering her phone, and she didn’t come back to camp. Right now it’s just Dirk and me here. I need to make sure he’s okay, get him warm and safe, and in the meantime, I’ll keep trying her.”

  “Did Dirk say anything else about what happened? Where he was when he saw Martijn? Is he talking about what happened to him?”

  “No, he’s very shook up. I’m giving him some food now, and I’ll try to sit down with him when he’s a little more, well, calmer. Something seems to have spooked him badly. He seems like he is kind of in shock, I think. I’m as confused as you are. I don’t understand what’s happening. And we don’t have Margot or Lotte or Karin. And now both of the supervisors are missing as well. So things have gone really wrong somehow, I have to admit. I’m sorry about this, Grace. I’m calling the Scout organization to see if they can send out some help. Maybe you can drive down.”

  “I’m already in the Veluwe,” said Grace. “I told you that this woman called me on the phone because she found Karin’s shirt. So I drove down here. We found the place where Karin lost it; we discovered her backpack here too. But she’s not here.”

  “Oh?”

  “It is a strange place, I think a meth lab. I really don’t know what it is, but it’s creepy. There’s no one here, but there were people here recently. I can’t tell if they took Karin with them or if she got away. I can’t see any signs of any of the others here, but there is a lot of garbage. Maybe they are attacking people in the park. I don’t know. I don’t know what to think. It’s all very upsetting. We were just about to call the police when you called me.”

  “Oh Jesus,” said Rutger. “I don’t understand what’s going on. Should we come to you?”