By the time I walk through the kitchen and into the living room at the back of the house, the room is full. From the doorway, I zero in on Evie’s mom, Lena, sitting on the edge of a leather recliner with her husband, Dan, standing at her shoulder. She has the exact same bright red hair as Evie. I recognize Evie’s aunt standing near Dan, her eyes wide with concern, and Tate Garrison—the chief—sitting on the sofa next to Lena.
There are two other officers standing across the room. One I’ve never seen before, but the other I recognize and it immediately puts me in a foul mood. Wells Rhinehardt, Jay’s older brother, jots down notes as he speaks with Scott. What an asshole. Fortunately, he doesn’t seem to recognize me. Then again, I’m not the last person from Dire Ridge he tried to arrest…
When there’s a lull in the conversation, Tate scans his notes, “Alright,” he clears his throat, “I have Evie leaving Scott and Christy’s in Dire Ridge yesterday, late afternoon. You said she was talking to one of you before she left?” Tate shoots a glance across the room at Scott.
Scott nods at me, “My son, Colson, talked to her before she left.”
“Do you remember what time you last saw Evie?” Tate asks.
“Yeah,” I shift my stance against the door, “we left around the same time. I think it was about 5:45.”
Tate starts writing, “Then she arrived at Dan and Lena’s at 6:30…accounting for drive time…Hannah Bailey picked her up at 6:45 and we have them on camera at the Palomino skate park at 7:26. Then she left with Hannah, who let her out at the Circle K on Pinecrest.”
“Why did Hannah leave her there?” Lena cuts in.
Tate pauses, flipping a page in his notebook, “Hannah stated Evie decided she wanted to go back to the skate park and said she’d get a ride from someone there.” He flips back to his original page, “The camera at the Circle K has her walking west, back the way she came, just out of frame at 9:17, but she didn’t go into the store.” Tate glances between Evie’s parents, “Could she have been meeting someone else?”
Lena rubs her temples and looks at Scott, who’s looking more and more desperate. In return, he shakes his head and tosses his hand in the air.
“Is there any reason she might’ve left on her own?” Tate asks.
At this, Scott perks up and narrows his eyes, “What are you implying?”
Tate arches his brow and takes a breath, but before he can get a word out, Scott raises his finger and shoots Tate a sideways glance.
“She’s not a runaway,” he states with conviction, “the girl just got into her dream school, she’s going to play ball, she just went with her mom to buy a prom dress, and she was completely normal and happy the last time I saw her. She did not run away!” His voice gets louder with each breath.
“Her car is still here,” Lena pipes up, trying to quell her ex-husband’s temper, “even if she wanted to run off, why didn’t she take her car?”
“What about her phone?” Evie’s aunt chimes in, “If she took her phone, shouldn’t you be able to track it?”
Tate slowly nods, trying to pacify the tension quickly compounding, “We’ll contact the phone company, see if we can get a location and whether she’s been communicating with anyone. Otherwise, we need to figure out who else saw her after 9:17 last night.”
With that, he flips his notebook shut and moves to stand. All the while, I’m still leaning on the doorframe, watching in silence while these idiots try to insinuate that Evie hitched a ride out of town on a train car.
“That’s it?” I sneer.
Everyone stills and Tate swivels his head around, “Do you have something to add?”
He doesn’t like my tone, which is fine, because the badge he’s wearing and the last name stamped next to it guarantees that I don’t like him, either.
“Yeah,” I dish just as much attitude back to him, “Evie told me she was meeting Bowen last night.”
Tate shifts his eyes with irritation and nods, “Yes, he was with the rest of her friends at the skate park.”
“Did he also tell you they were secretly dating and she dumped him last night?”
A heavy silence settles in the room as Wells and his other goon exchange awkward glances. Lena’s mouth opens in surprise, but no words come out.
“Dating?” Scott pivots to me, his jaw tightening as he catches my drift.
“Since when?” Lena calls across the room as she finally finds her voice. She whips around to Tate, “Did he tell you about this? What did Bowen say?”
Tate is quickly losing control of the room.
“Alright…Colson?” he asks as though he can’t remember my name. But that’s also fine, because he’ll remember it, soon enough. “What do you know about this?”
“Before Evie left, she told me they’d been together for a few weeks, but she didn’t want Hildy to know. She said Bowen wasn’t too happy she got into UCLA and started being a dick to her about it—”
“Wait, wait,” Lena cuts me off, “what you mean started being a dick to her? What does that mean?”
She probably has a pretty good idea what it means, and I’m not going to correct her in the slightest. “She said she was going to talk to Bowen at the skate park last night and break everything off because she’s leaving for school soon anyway,” I reply.
Scott swivels his head back around to Tate, the veins in his temple pulsing, “Was he the last person to see her? Have you talked to him yet?”
“Alright, alright,” Tate deflects, raising a hand to calm the situation quickly getting out of hand, “we’ll talk to Bowen and see what he has to say. Meantime, we need to get a location on Evie’s phone if we can.”
●●●
That’s about the last useful thing Tate Garrison does. Evie’s phone is still missing, but the last tower it pinged off of before it went dark is close to Palomino Park, which sparks a massive search two days later. It’s like we’re back on the soccer field, both teams, along with Canaan’s softball team and basically the rest of the town, shows up to search for Evie. Except, this time, we’re not throwing elbows or shit-talking after bad calls.
I’m not sure whether it started out as Bowen’s secret or Evie’s, but it’s out now. Rumors spread between the lines of comments in Facebook pages dedicated to finding Evie and trite posts about thoughts and prayers that never did anyone any good.
No one’s talking about it, but the menacing glares being exchanged across the parking lot as Tate Garrison explains how to conduct a search through the woods all but confirms the bad blood spilling out across the pavement. Everyone from Dire Ridge knows Bowen was the last one to see Evie, and everyone in Canaan is already on edge from one of their own going missing.
I can’t stand to even look at him, standing at Hildy’s side, leisurely smoking a cigarette while she’s on the brink of a meltdown. And she should be—fucking bitch. As soon as he catches sight of me and gives me a nod, I have to turn away before I charge through the crowd and grind his face into the gravel. It might help me, but it won’t help Evie. We have to find her.
I’m used to hiking through the woods for days on end, and so is Evie. We go hiking with Scott all the time and go on a week-long camping trip in August every year, which was why it doesn’t make sense for Evie to decide to walk into the woods in the middle of the night and vanish. These woods aren’t even that big. They aren’t vast like the Rockies or even Cuyahoga. But if you don’t know where you’re going—or someone lures you too far out—I guess it doesn’t matter.
