Fear the Dark Read Online Free Page A

photograph, each one clear, correctly lit, expertly focused. Very professional, obviously taken by an expert.
    Except . . .
    â€œDid you close the car doors?”
    â€œNot until after I took those pictures,” Sarah said calmly.
    In each shot of the car, the doors were closed.
    â€œAnd the footprints?”
    â€œThey were just as you saw them, same as I did, when I took the shots. The camera is working fine; I checked it as soon as I saw these. What the hell, Jonah?”
    He really didn’t know. Because there were no footprints in any of the shots. None. And he could tell from the wide shots Sarah had included that she had taken the pictures where they had both seen muddy footprints of two people.
    Footprints totally gone. Gone as though they had never been there.

TWO
    May 12
    Judge Phillip Carson had called Serenity home for most of his life, minus the years away at college and law school and a five-year stint at a big legal firm in Atlanta.
    He’d hated Atlanta. Hadn’t thought much of the firm either.
    Coming home to Serenity had suited him perfectly. Even a small mountain town of hardly more than five thousand people could always use another lawyer—and had definitely needed a judge. Since the county in which Serenity resided could claim only two other towns, both also small and with small populations, it had been more or less tacked in a judicial sense onto the larger circuit that was literally on the other side of the mountain. And that one contained several large towns, which made for a busy judge.
    So it hadn’t been very difficult for Judge Carson to convince the powers that be that it would just be a good idea all around for this smaller county to become a single district, and for the judicial circuitto have its own judge residing in Serenity. Unless something really unusual came up, he only had to leave Serenity to hold court in one of the other small towns maybe once or twice a month.
    Holding court
in
Serenity—in the single courtroom on the second floor of the small police department—tended to consist of mundane traffic violations, the occasional half-assed assault between two drunks, and rare property damage from the handful of troubled high school kids they had to contend with seemingly every year.
    But all in all, it was a peaceful town. That was what he liked about it. He had lots of leisure for his favorite sport, fishing. And though it looked hardly more than a wide creek, there were plenty of fish, so the stream that was less than a mile from downtown Serenity suited him perfectly. He’d staked out his special spot—which everyone in town knew and respected—and the walk out there and back two or three times each week was what he considered to be sufficient exercise.
    Today, rod and tackle box in hand, he stopped in at the police station. “Is he in?” he asked Jean at the reception desk.
    â€œHe’s in, Judge, but I’ve seen him in better moods.”
    â€œI’m not surprised.” The information didn’t deter the judge, and he passed through the nearly deserted bullpen to the chief’s office. He didn’t let the closed blinds deter him either.
    He walked in without knocking, saying briskly, “Nothing new, I take it?”
    Jonah looked up from the usual clutter on his blotter with a frown, but it was a general expression of mood rather than anything directed at the judge. He looked very tired and a bit haggard. “Nothing. I’ve reached out to every law enforcement agency in three states, issued aBOLO, and took Sully’s dogs out for miles around on three different days even though there wasn’t much hope after that damned rain.
    â€œThere’s been no ransom note. We’ve personally interviewed every single high school student in Serenity,
plus
all the teachers and the guidance counselor, and contacted distant relatives of both kids. We’ve searched both their rooms and their