You'll Thank Me for This Nina Siegal (red white and royal blue hardcover .txt) 📖

But no. The more she watched him, the more she saw that he was involved in something completely different from the dropping. He wasn’t here for her. He was here for some other reason. He was searching for something, digging for something. He had wanted to find her not to save her but to get her to lead him here.

Karin had the sudden instinct to run, and she took a few steps backward before she suddenly whipped around. But as she was just about to sprint, at nearly exactly the same moment, Martijn lurched up from where he was digging and tried to grab her. He fell over and caught her ankle instead, holding it fast and tight. Then she fell, face-first, into the dirt.

“What are you doing…?” Karin tried to say, but she couldn’t get the words out. She was panting and trying to squirm out of his grip. The more she did, the tighter he clenched. What was he doing? Why was he trying to prevent her from moving?

She tried to lift herself off the ground, but he pulled himself on top of her, pinning her to the dirt. A kind of wrestling move. It shocked her. What was he going to do to her? Was he going to try to assault her? Was this what he did to her mother?

“Just stay still,” Martijn said. He was panting too, breathing hard, trying to catch his breath. He pushed himself up to kneeling, and put one knee on her waist to keep her pinned. They continued to struggle until she gave up and went limp.

“You’re hurting me, you know,” she said.

He nodded. He did know.

“You’re obviously not taking me to the campsite,” she said.

“Okay, you win,” he said, suddenly very matter-of-fact. “No, we’re not going to the campsite. Well, maybe we’ll go later. But we’re not going until I find the photographs. I just need to know where he buried them. That’s all. I need you to show me. I need you to help me find them. He said he’d left them in the woods. They must be buried where he camped. I’m pretty sure you know where they are too.”

Karin had no idea what he was talking about. No idea. It was the strangest thing she had ever heard, and yet he seemed to be talking about something she was supposed to understand completely. “Buried photographs?” she said. “What are you talking about? Who?”

“Your father,” he said. “Good old Pieter Hoogendijk. Come on, Karin, don’t tell me you don’t know. I know he told you. I know you’re the only person who knows.”

“What?” Karin was beyond herself. She felt like he was accusing her of being some kind of accomplice to a crime she didn’t commit. To a crime she hadn’t even ever heard about. “You think my dad buried photographs? Out here? Why would he do that? Why would he tell me?”

“I didn’t believe him at first, of course,” said Martijn. “It did seem stupid, like he was trying to send me off course. But now I’ve searched every other conceivable place. All his storage facilities, all his files, all his computers, all his everything. Then I thought: What if he wasn’t shooting digitally? What if he was shooting on old-fashioned film? He liked to do that sometimes, didn’t he? He did his nature photography on film.”

This much Karin did know. Her father had an old-fashioned side. He was used to using film, and he liked to shoot sometimes in black-and-white. And he liked to develop his rolls of film in the darkroom at home. He’d even taught Karin how to do it. She wasn’t allowed to put her hands in the chemicals, but she was allowed to put them in the final bath and hang them up to dry, using clips that he’d attach to strings hanging from the ceiling.

“This was where you came on the last trip you took with your father,” Martijn said. “You were determined to come back. That was part of the reason, wasn’t it? He buried the negatives out here. Maybe he even told you about what the photos were of?”

Now Karin thought Martijn had really gone off the deep end. What kind of person would bury negatives in the forest? Why would he tell his ten-year-old daughter about it and not anyone else? Everything Martijn was saying seemed to make no sense. But he was so sure of it.

“No.” Karin shook her head. “No, he didn’t tell me about anything like that. He didn’t tell me about what he was doing. He wasn’t like that. I was just a kid. Why would he tell me?”

Martijn looked like he maybe believed her for a moment. He seemed, at least, to consider what she said. She had to convince him that she really didn’t know—because she really didn’t know—what he was talking about.

“Because he had to tell someone,” said Martijn. “And it seems he didn’t tell your mother anything.”

Karin thought of all the times Martijn had hurt her mother. Was this what it was all about? Was he trying to get something out of her too? Her mind skipped a beat. All kinds of thoughts came flooding in. All kinds of thoughts she didn’t even want to think.

She asked him, “Did you ever actually love my mother at all?”

Chapter 26Letting Jezebel Loose

The dogs leapt out of the car and ran into the park, pulling Maaike behind them. She nearly tripped in her boot. They were all on leashes that connected to a big metal ring, so she could hold them all at once, but in their excitement, they catapulted her forward. Grace was surprised by their level of energy—after all, it was the middle of the night.

There was a slanted wooden gate that stood at the edge of the forest and opened onto a dirt clearing. Just beyond that was a post that had all kinds of markings on it, indicating