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Chapter 7
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Murder on the Northwind Trail Chapter 10
It turned out, Mike been guarding against me all along.The recording kept playing. Mike's voice grew weaker, rasping like he was slipping away."You used my guilt… and made me… help you kill those four… I never thought… you'd try to finish me, too…"I should've done to you… what we did to your sister… We should've taken you, then left you… to die out there… just another body in the wild…"Then came my own voice on the recording."When did I ever use you? You all turned on each other. And after killing them, you tried to kill me, too, right? That cyanide drink was meant for me, wasn't it?"Too bad you grabbed the wrong glass and ended up poisoning yourself. Well, evil has its own way of catching up. What's that got to do with me? I'm just an innocent bystander."And then—silence. The recording cut off.The whole interrogation room went still, as if the air itself froze solid.That last piece of evidence felt damning enough to seal my fate. Did I lose?No.In those suffocat
Murder on the Northwind Trail Chapter 9
My body curled in on itself, crushed by so much pain that I could barely breathe. My nails dug into the table so hard that they almost bent backward."I searched for her," I choked out. "I searched for three whole months. I climbed down every rock under that cliff. I tore apart the valley stone by stone. And in the end… all I found was… just pieces of her backpack, a-and…"The words stuck in my throat, strangled by grief."A small piece of her skull… with blood still on it."My fist slammed into my chest, thudding like a drum. A scream tore out of me, ragged and broken, as tears drowned me."They didn't even leave me her body! I couldn't even hold her one last time!"The rest of my words drowned under sobs. I collapsed into the chair, shaking, my body jerking like a puppet with its strings cut. Tears, snot, and spit covered my face. My hair was stuck to my wet cheeks. I was nothing but a mess of grief and rage.The whole room went silent.Alex's grip on my shoulder loosened.
Murder on the Northwind Trail Chapter 8
Alex then flipped the photo over.On the back, where it should've been blank, three words were written in thick, dark ink.No date. No name. Just three words.Blood for blood.It was as if something had exploded in my brain. Every mask, every plan, and every ounce of fear I'd been holding onto shattered into pieces the second I saw those words.Alex's voice cut through the ringing in my ears. "Our investigation shows your sister, Sharon, was part of a hiking group three years ago. It was the same trail, the same five people. She went missing during that trip and was never found. Don't you think that's a little too much of a coincidence?""Aaahhh!"The scream ripped out of my throat, sharp and broken, almost inhuman. I shot up from my chair and lunged across the table for the evidence bag containing the photo.Tears blurred my vision, pouring endlessly down my face, mixing with snot and spit. My hands clawed wildly at the bag. "Give it back! Give her back to me!"Alex was ready
Murder on the Northwind Trail Chapter 7
A bone-deep chill ripped through me as a thought I couldn't control slipped out of my mouth."You're saying… Mike killed the other four guys in the van to get revenge, and then… he killed himself?"Alex gave a slow nod. "That's one way to read it."Then his voice dropped, sharper now. "But there's something even stranger. Each of their bodies was in a different position when we found them. But their hands? All of them were shaped the same way. It was like they were begging for forgiveness. The question is—who were they asking forgiveness from?"My throat closed up. "I-I don't know! I swear, I don't know anything!"The words tumbled out of me, broken, almost like I was choking on them. "I didn't notice any of that. I was terrified—I just ran out of the van and hid while I called the cops. I wasn't paying attention to anything else!"But even I could hear how messy and desperate my voice sounded, how it gave me away."Hannah!" Alex's tone snapped like a whip, sharp and heavy enoug
Murder on the Northwind Trail Chapter 6
My eyes widened as I stared at the photo. I felt my chest tightening, as if the air had been knocked out of me. My hands trembling, I looked up at Alex."How could you even think that about me? Yeah, I survived, but I was a victim, too. And now, just because of one photo, you're calling me a killer? Do you have any idea how much that hurts?"I swallowed hard, my voice breaking. "I said I probably fell asleep around 10 PM. I never said I was sure. My head was spinning from the altitude, and I wasn't clear. And come on—I'm just one woman. How the heck could I take out five grown men?"Alex's stare locked onto my face. "Yeah… doesn't seem likely."Just then, the coroner walked in with a fresh report, the pages still smelling like ink. He handed it straight to Alex."His time of death doesn't match the others'."He circled a name on the page with his pen. Mike.The words hit me like a needle jab, and I jerked upright, my eyes darting to the report curiously.Alex noticed. His voi
Murder on the Northwind Trail Chapter 5
There were a few short replies under Damon's message.Charlie wrote, [OK.]Russ replied, [Got it.]And Ken typed, [Alright.]Ten minutes later, they drove straight into that deadly stretch of road.Thirty minutes after that, the recording started.I couldn't take my eyes off the words "that girl", "let her sleep through the whole thing", and "dead weight". My whole body went cold.So that was what I was to them. To Damon, I wasn't a teammate. I was nothing but baggage.My lips were pressed so tightly that they turned pale.Alex slid a tablet across the table toward me. "Did you know you guys actually had two group chats?"I looked up, confused."One was the all-team chat—the one with you, Damon, Ken, everyone. That one was for planning routes, splitting costs, all that." He tapped the tablet. "But this one here, the one I just showed you—that was their private chat group. That's where they talked trash about you and made plans. You really mean to tell me you never noticed
