You'll Thank Me for This by Nina Siegal (top novels txt) 📗

out the surveillance cameras on lampposts everywhere. Someone, surely, had been watching, but no one ever came to bawl them out and make them leave.

There was a little local history museum, a one-room brick building that had reminded her of an old village church, presided over by “the oldest man in the world,” as Grace had called him when they got back into their car and drove back home. After they shook off the strangeness of the whole experience, Grace had confessed to Pieter that she’d found it quite illuminating—so many stories in a tiny little place. She’d encouraged Pieter at the time to pursue the photo documentary project, but he’d gotten the job in Syria instead, and they never went back to Wolfheze.

To the right, where she was supposed to have gotten off the highway, she saw tall trees beside the highway and the creek that ran below, just along the line of the road. This was the Otterlo side of the Hoge Veluwe, she thought. Maybe she should skip visiting this lady and just head out into the park to look for Karin right away?

“Rerouting,” the GPS man announced, ever so politely defeated. “One moment, please. Rerouting. Rerouting.”

Grace decided to go see the lady first. Otherwise, she would have no idea where to start looking in the park. It was a pretty massive forest, and it was late and she couldn’t drive in till morning. Maybe this woman could lead her to the place where she’d found the shirt.

“In one hundred meters, turn left,” said the GPS man finally. “Turn left in one hundred meters.”

Just at the moment when she was about to lift her foot off the gas pedal and put her foot on the clutch to slow down, she heard a siren, high-pitched and shrill. The police. Oh shit. How fast had she been driving? She looked at the speedometer to see the needle pointing to 110 kph—way over the 80 kph limit. Fuck. I can’t stop now, she thought. It will take too much time. It’s already taken too much time. I need to go find Karin. She looked up and at that moment saw the exit sign reading, WOLFHEZE, 10 KM. So close. Right there already.

She depressed the clutch and moved into third gear, then into second, pressing on the brakes ever so slightly. But instead of stopping for the wailing police car behind her, she moved onto the exit ramp. Fuck it, she thought. He’s just going to have to follow me. The off-ramp took her in a circle toward her destination. She looked in the rearview mirror to see what the police car was doing, and now its lights went on, full blare.

“Just give me a minute,” she said to the cop car, even though he obviously couldn’t hear her. “I’ll tell you everything in a minute.” The cop would have to understand.

Turning onto the road she needed, the cop car still trailing and blaring its siren and flashing its lights, Grace recognized the location. “In fifty meters, turn right.” She was obedient now. You see? We are in the same territory. “Your destination is on the left.” And there it was, so close to where she and Pieter had parked that time they’d visited this storied town.

He would be mad—she knew that even before she stopped her car. She made sure not to hesitate and raised her hands in the air as she saw the officer getting out of his car. She rolled down the window and screamed out, in Dutch: “Sorry, Officer. I can explain!”

The policeman who’d stepped out of the car behind Grace was furious. She could see it in his face, which was flushed and beaded with sweat when he leaned, just a little, toward her car window to get a better sense of what kind of person he was dealing with here.

“I can explain, Officer,” said Grace, in her clearest Dutch, trying to sound as calm and sensible as possible. “I have a perfectly reasonable explanation.”

Chapter 21Little Red

“Martijn, O-M-G,” said Karin, looking up to see the figure of her stepfather scrambling down the side of the embankment to get to where she was standing. “I can’t believe you found me!”

Even though Martijn was definitely not her favorite person, right now she was pretty happy to see him. When he reached her on the trail, she even ran toward him. She gave him a hug. That might have been the first time she’d ever done that.

“Don’t worry,” he said, patting her head. “I’m here. You don’t have to be afraid anymore.”

Karin pulled back. She hadn’t been so scared. He smelled of sweat and something else—something she couldn’t place—but it was kind of gross. It was like he’d been to the gym and then hadn’t showered for days.

“I lost the others,” she said. “Or they lost me. I don’t know what happened. Are they all at the campsite already?” She assumed so.

“The others are fine,” he said, stepping closer to put a hand on her shoulder. “All tucked into their sleeping bags by now. I knew I had to get out here and find you, since we knew you were lost. And now I’ve found you.”

Karin felt embarrassment creep over her. She was supposed to be the nature girl, the one who knew this park the best. But they’d had to send him out to get her, because she was the only one who’d gotten lost. “They all just kind of left me,” she told Martijn. “First Dirk kind of beat us up, and then he and Margot just took off. Then I was with Lotte, but somehow she disappeared. Then I was on my own, and I thought I knew how to find the campsite. I was up in the sand drifts and then when it started to rain I ran into the forest, but then these people, these—”

“People?” Martijn was surprised.

“I don’t know who they were, but they didn’t look good. They didn’t look human. Maybe