FIVE
One moment. That was all the time it had taken for Wyatt to completely lose Elsie. She’d taken off after the dog and he’d caught his foot on a root and gone down.
He stood up fast, but she’d already been out of his sight, maybe not entirely surprising in woods this thick. He could almost feel them pressing in on him, memories from that night, of knowing someone was inside Elsie’s house twining with his own imaginings of what it might have been like for Elsie to be abandoned here as a kid. There was no avoiding it—he was panicking at this point. That was the honest truth.
Hopefully for nothing. Search and rescue was her job. She did this all the time, but that didn’t erase his desire to protect her. Maybe because she’d always seemed fragile to him, with something in her eyes that was a little vulnerable. Maybe because in high school she hadn’t dated much and he’d always been under the impression that there was something in her that needed shielding.
Those impressions conflicted with the capable woman he’d talked to the other night, the one who didn’t seem fazed by hiking through the woods in the middle of the night, or terrified by a home intruder.
Still, Wyatt told himself now, he didn’t like the fact that he’d lost her in the woods. Or she’d lost him.
Probably she was fine. Probably he was losing his head for nothing.
The first gunshot convinced him he was wrong.
He started running, willing himself to see something, anything that would indicate which way Elsie and Willow had gone. There was a barely discernible trail they’d been following—had they stayed on it?
Against all his rising panic, he made himself stop. Listen.
Something off to the left. Running feet or just the wind in the branches?
He didn’t know.
He wondered if he should call for her. It could alert her to his presence, or call an attacker’s attention to her and put her in more danger.
Or would the shooter back off if they knew they weren’t alone?
It was worth the risk. “Elsie!” he yelled as he ran toward the noise. “Elsie!”
A blur caught his eye seconds before he felt the impact of Elsie’s petite body colliding with his.
He caught her upper arms. “Hey, it’s okay.”
Her eyes were wide and she shook her head. “No. It’s not. Run.” And she was off again, backtracking toward the shore, Willow running along right beside her.
At least he was sure the dog wasn’t going to let harm come to Elsie if she could help it, but Willow wouldn’t be able to stop a bullet from hitting her handler.
Wyatt positioned himself behind both of them as they ran. The blur of trees made him dizzy but he stayed focused ahead of him.
Then the woods opened up. Beach. Open air.
Elsie and Willow were up and into the plane before Wyatt could catch up.
“You don’t think he’ll follow you all the way here?” he asked when he’d climbed inside to the pilot’s seat.
“I have no idea.”
He radioed the troopers who were on the island searching, explained the situation.
Mostly.
As Wyatt talked to them on the radio, he watched Elsie’s eyes widen. She still clearly wasn’t a fan of looping law enforcement in to what was going on. He supposed if they knew of the danger, they might take her off the case, but he didn’t think this case was worth her life.
He clicked the radio volume down when he’d finished his conversation, scanned the beach and, satisfied there was no sign of whoever had been in the woods, turned to face Elsie, who was holding Willow in her lap, stroking her.
A fifty-something-pound husky made a strange lapdog, but he wasn’t about to say so.
“Thank you for not telling them it might be a specific threat against me,” she said immediately, leaving him no time to wonder how to broach the subject with her.
He nodded, feeling the heaviness of the situation settle on him. “Mind telling me why you’re so determined for them not to find out? They’re the good guys, you know. They could help you.”
Something in her eyes flickered.
“I don’t want my personal business becoming common knowledge. I don’t want to walk back into the past.” She turned away from him, her eyes on some far-off point.
“Sometimes you have to face things and not run from them.”
Elsie flicked her gaze back to him, her eyes burning into him. “You have no idea what you’re talking about. No idea what this would mean for me.”
“Because you won’t tell me.” He spit the words without thinking, then took a deep breath. He was being insensitive, and she was right—he didn’t have any idea why she was so upset.
“Listen,” he tried again, “a woman is in danger. A woman who could be tied to you.”
“She’s a random hiker. The fact that she is on the island has to be a coincidence, Wyatt. I don’t think anyone brought her here as some kind of bait for me. Not when they could just try to abduct me from my house again.”
“Maybe they decided that wouldn’t work after the other night.”
“I have no idea. But if there’s even a suspicion on the troopers’ part that I’m connected, I’ll be taken off the case,” she said in a soft voice. “We can’t be taken off this case. Willow is the best. Time is of the essence in any search and rescue case, and frankly, we know the terrain in this part of the state better than anyone. There’s not another K-9 search and rescue team that I’m aware of for at least a hundred miles. I can’t let people stay lost.”
