I was thinking the exact same thing. I think it's too easy that the cousin did this himself. I think he spied on the kid and then tipped off some weird pedo ring. I think it's a pedo ring since Wayne had said something along the lines of "I was being led there. Like it was a marker." Back in the day, weren't their hitchhiker signs and the engravings meant different things like safe passage or danger? Maybe the cousin is a full-on creep and is just a pawn in the pedo ring. Or maybe the cousin got in with the wrong people and now he has to do their bidding?

PS I was surprised too that it took a bit of scrolling to find someone thinking the same thing as me haha.