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more like a dragon in waiting, not a monster tearing apart its cage. She knew this wouldn’t set off a panic attacked. She’d just be pissed.
    Chris pulled into a parking lot just off the main drag of downtown. Across the street was a diner that looked like it was a throwback to an older time. At the door, they greeted the waitress warmly, then proceeded to avoid eye contact with each other. After their drink order was taken, Chris put a hand out on the table.
    “We shouldn’t be fighting like this,” he said trying to fix the damage. “We don’t want to be like Mark and Steph and here we are, acting like this over a trip to the store. I’m sorry, babe.” He genuinely didn’t want to fight with her. Despite their past arguments, she was a savior in his life and he truly loved her.
    Jess turned to face him, prying her eyes away from crowded street. He seemed to be really sincere, but sometimes he would just give in if it meant she’d stop sulking and complaining. He’d told her as much before and it had, of course, launched her into a tirade. This felt genuine though and she thought his eyes said it best, whether he realized it or not. She’d never tell him though. When they did fight, she needed to know what his tells were so he couldn’t poker face his way into sucking up and trying to slip his way out of trouble. “I’m sorry, too.”
    With a laugh, he added, “Our blood sugar was just low, right?”
    Jess laughed along with him and put her hand on top of his. She wondered how long he’d wanted to say that. He’d probably been thinking of it since they’d gotten in the car at Wal-Mart, but he had probably mulled it over a thousand times to make it sounded as hilarious as he thought. “Not like we’re even in a rush to get back,” she said with a devilish smirk. Right as they were sitting down to order, the site next door back at camp should be clearing out and the odd couple would almost definitely be driving through the checkout lane at the registration office.
    As they ate the complimentary bread, two older women were seated at the table across the aisle from them.
    “Oh my gosh, it’s on the news again,” said one of them pointing up at the single television screen mounted near the ceiling.
    Jess looked up and saw a picture of a dark-haired young woman in what appeared to be a crummy driver’s license photo. The text at the bottom declared that she was missing for the second day in a row. Her car had been found with clear signs of a struggle about five miles from the entrance of the state park.
    “Chris, check this out!” she said poking him in the hand as he reached for more bread.
    He turned to look at the screen as they showed aerial footage of the road she had been found on and how close it was to the campground and the lake. The shot panned back down from showing Lake Ontario and focused on the dirt road below. A car was pulled far off to the side with black skidmarks showing the path the tires had taken and the driver’s side door was wide open. Jess wasn’t sure that constituted something that looked like a struggle, but from the air there wasn’t a lot of visible evidence of anything except an empty car on the side of the road.
    The news continued to cover the story in depth, repeating and replaying everything from hard fact to speculation. For such a rural area, this was a big deal. People in the region basically never went missing and definitely never in such a supposedly violent way, though that was still only assumed. It was so unusual and no one had dug up any other instance of such a thing happening for as long as anyone could remember.
    The police had begun a sweep of the area with search parties and dogs, but so far nothing had come to light. They had combed through the majority of the woods, but there was still no evidence that’s where the girl had ended up.
    Officers were even searching the campgrounds going site to site and inspecting tents and campers. The cameraman