One Step Too Far (Frankie Elkin, #2)

by Lisa Gardner

Seasons turned into years and Timothy O’Day became one more missing hiker, vanished without a trace.

Here are things most folks don’t know: At least sixteen hundred people, if not many more times that number, remain missing on national public lands. Hikers, day-trippers, children on family camping trips. One moment they were with us, the next they’re gone.

Ramsey, Wyoming.

Soon enough, he’d go from a terminally ill wife to a missing son.

I’m basically hiking my way through Christmas. I fucking hate Christmas.

Till one day, hundreds of miles away, a driver swerved across the center line. He hit a vehicle head-on, and just like that, my parents were dead.

Why do I do what I do? Because at the end of the day, the people left behind matter as much as the ones who are missing. We mourn the ones we’ve lost, but we agonize over the pieces of ourselves they took with them. The identities we’ll never have again. The emotions we’re certain we’ll never feel again. The sense of our own selves, becoming undone and disappearing just as completely and suddenly as those who vanished.

The hunter has arrived.

read once that soldiers hold the line for the sake of the buddy beside them. I get it now. I can fail myself, have failed myself. But I don’t want to leave Neil to face whatever’s out there alone.

For five years these woods have been their enemy. They already know nothing good happens here.

so many people, milling about the parking lot, climbing into their vehicles. The world, still turning, as if nothing happened. As if eight people hadn’t gone into the woods, but not all eight of them made it out again.

This is my gift, this is my curse. I joined seven people I never knew, and within a matter of days, I learned, loved, and lost. And yet I’m a loner, belonging to no one.