Chapter 9: The Trap (Jasper)

We cut out through the forest track behind the cabin, and passed the library’s back alley first.

Ella stopped suddenly.

Deep in the alley, by the trash cans, was a pile of paper ash. Not ordinary trash—in the ash there was a half-burnt corner. I crouched and picked it up. It was old newspaper newsprint, edges yellowed, still smelling of scorch. Ella took it, held it up to the morning light, and her face changed.

“It’s those three weeks they cut out.” Her voice was low. “Late July. I’d know that layout anywhere.”

She turned the scrap over. On the back was half a line of ink; I couldn’t make it out, but she could. Her fingers were shaking.

“They’re not just hiding it.” She said. “They’re burning it.”

I took the scrap from her, wrapped it in my bandana, and put it in my shirt pocket.

“Let’s go.” I said. “The faster they burn, the surer we’re heading the right way.”

The mountain road was harder than I’d expected.

Not because of the fog. Because of what was in the fog.

About a mile in, I stopped and clamped a hand on Ella’s shoulder. She froze at once, no sound. Good girl.

I crouched. Under the pine needles, I saw a nearly invisible thin wire, strung across the trail at ankle height. Behind the wire was an old-style bear trap—the kind nobody’d used in thirty years, the kind that can bite through bone.

I kicked it aside with my boot toe. The spring snapped shut.

Ella’s breath caught.

“This wasn’t set by a hunter.” I said.

“What do you mean.”

“Hunters cover their traps with leaves, mark them, stay off the trail. This was set right in the middle of the trail.” I stood. “It’s for people. For people coming up the mountain looking for something.”

She didn’t speak. But I felt her shift half a step closer to me.

We kept going. Over the next two miles I found three more: a pressure plate buried in leaf litter, a low rope strung between two spruces, an iron can packed with nails. None of them was large, none was immediately fatal, but each was enough to make someone in the fog get hurt, get lost, bleed out, then slide off the bluff.

This wasn’t murder. This was an “accident.”

“They know we’ll take this road.” Ella whispered.

“They know someone will take this road.” I said. “Not necessarily us. They’re sending invitations to everyone who wants to go up.”

“Then why are we still going?”

I stopped and looked back at her. The fog had beaded a layer of water on her hair. Her eyes were bright, no sign of backing down.

“Because you said there’s a crack on the back.”

She nodded. “Another half mile. There’s a dry creek bed. Past the end of the creek bed, you loop around, and that’s the crack.”

“Wait here.”

“No.”

“Ella.”

“No.” She said. “If you go in alone and don’t come out, who drags you out? Besides—” she tapped her own pack. “The map’s in my head. You can’t remember those seventies markers.”

I stared at her.

Then I did something very much against ranger protocol—I reached out and brushed a pine needle off her hair.

Her breath caught.

“Stay close.” I said. “Within three steps. Step in my footprints.”

We kept going. The fog moved in the woods like something alive. In the distance, I heard a second car’s sound, coming up from below.

They were coming.