“Elsie?” Wyatt asked softly.

The smell, the screams. All of it was too familiar, and not just from search and rescue work.

She shook her head. “I don’t know.” She shook her head again, the images long gone but the discomfort remaining, churning in her stomach from more than the gruesome scene in front of her. “We need to call the Troopers. Let them know.” She pulled out her phone and did so.

“Whatever you do,” the trooper on the phone said, “be careful. The island might not be safe for you guys. We’ll get someone there as soon as possible. Can you stay near the scene to keep it as secure as possible for us? At least until we are close to arriving?”

It was the last thing Elsie wanted to do, but she understood the reason for it and answered that they would. The trooper asked for coordinates to where they were and Elsie gave them as best she could, based on the map.

They retreated from the body twenty or thirty feet, into the shadow of a massive clump of spruce trees, and Elsie finally felt like she could breathe again. Willow was still beside her, her demeanor subdued, like it was every time she found or was near someone who was deceased.

“Hey, it’s okay.” Wyatt reached for her hand. In other circumstances, it might have been a romantic moment, but now, as he squeezed her hand, she felt his friendship through the contact.

“It’s just all of this. I failed. She’s dead, and...” Elsie trailed off.

Did she tell him the rest? Could she trust him? And how did she let him know about this part of herself when she didn’t even know what it meant?

She could feel him waiting in the silence. She was waiting, too, to see what happened, to see if she wanted to take another step closer to him or handle this part of her fear alone.

Like she’d always done.

TEN

“I was...” Elsie’s words came in starts, her tone shaky. “When we walked up here, something about the smell—the blood, I think—triggered a memory, I guess. Sort of this flashback I’ve been having. You know in movies where someone hits their head and gets amnesia and then remembers pieces of who they are?”

Wyatt nodded. His sister and mom always had those made-for-TV Christmas movies playing during the holidays. His mom loved a good amnesia story, or war letters, or something that made people cry. “Yeah, I’ve seen them. Super-feel-good, right? And when the puzzle comes together, there’s that whole moment of triumph?”

“Yeah, this is nothing like that.” Her voice was sharp-edged. Not bitter necessarily, but hard. “Every time more of this memory comes back, it’s worse, it’s darker. I don’t know what happened before I was left on that island, but it wasn’t good.”

“Something criminal?”

“I think so. I’m...” She hesitated, and Wyatt didn’t know how to encourage her, or if he even should. Neither of them would be able to go back from what she shared. Was he ready to be this much in her past?

She was watching him, like she was waiting for some kind of sign, so he took a deep breath and nodded. “Keep going.”

Her words came in a rush then, like a cold wind across him, leaving him chilled. He could only imagine how talking about this, thinking about this, was making Elsie feel.

“I’m in a closet and it’s dark. That’s all there was for the longest time, this impression of darkness. Then there were voices. Shouting, crying. Just now, tonight...” She trailed off again. “Tonight, there was a scream. Triggered by hearing the woman’s screams? I don’t know. Maybe that never really happened. Maybe it’s not a memory and it’s just a weird way of dealing with tonight’s trauma, but the smell of blood, the metallic smell, it was familiar. I think... What if I saw someone die?”

“When you were a kid?”

She nodded. “What if that’s why someone left me out here? What if I saw something, and even though a three-year-old isn’t a reliable witness, maybe it was still too much of a danger for someone?”

It made sense, though it was hard for him to contemplate someone truly being that evil.

But when Wyatt thought of the voice that had been haunting Elsie, the threat of someone finding her, someone who had always been looking for her...

It fit distressingly well.

“Whoa” was all he could say, ineloquent though it was.

“I know.” Elsie took a deep breath. “What do I do with that? If this is our missing hiker, then I’m no longer needed here. Which means there’s no longer any reason not to tell the Troopers my suspicions. I don’t want them looking into my past, but if it brings her killer to justice...” She shook her head. Her head whipped toward his so fast he was surprised she didn’t actually give herself whiplash. “Is it my fault she’s dead?”

“Surely not. No. Even if it has anything to do with you, the killer made the choice, not you, Elsie.”

She seemed to be considering, sitting there quietly with Willow beside her.

“Wyatt?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure. Anything,” he said, meaning it.

After what she’d just shared, after the way she’d finally fully accepted his help despite how hard it had seemed for her, he wanted to give some of that trust back.

“You said you’d changed since high school, and I was just wondering why.”

“It has to do with God.”

“Okay.”

“You didn’t seem too enthusiastic to talk about Him earlier, so I didn’t want you caught off guard.”

“I wouldn’t ask you to change your story to make me comfortable. My story certainly makes some people uncomfortable, but you haven’t walked away from that yet. From me.”

“So in college I was flunking out. I was still the guy you knew back then...”

“Lots of interested girls?”

“Yeah, that.” That was one way to put it. “A lot of people called me a player. That wasn’t really right, though. I’d stay with a girl while it was fun and easy, but as soon as the relationship got deeper or difficult, I’d bolt. Dysfunctional is probably a better word than player.” He sighed. This was nothing to be proud of, and it was hard to talk about now. Embarrassing. But Elsie deserved to know all of him. “And I was drinking too much, too. One morning in my midtwenties, after years of partying too hard, I woke up with a headache, like usual, in someone else’s room, and I barely recognized the girl when I woke up. It’s like something just clicked then, like God finally got my attention. I realized I didn’t want to live like that. It was so meaningless, all of it. I’d been taught that God had a purpose for my life and I decided I wanted to find that and that it wasn’t one woman after another and alcohol. So I quit all of that. I went back to school and got my degree, then moved back home to fly for people like the Troopers. I may start a flight-seeing business one day, show people around the state, but right now I like feeling like I can help people while using the skills I have.”

“Like me.” Elsie smiled, and he could see it, even in the dark. The moon fell on her face, illuminating them a little. Wyatt hoped the trees hid them enough from anyone walking by.

“Yeah. I’m not sure how much I’ve been able to help...”

“Plenty.” She cut him off. “I can’t imagine being here alone.”

“In the woods or on this island?”

“This island.” She went quiet for a minute, and Wyatt didn’t know what she was thinking. He did notice the way she was still beautiful under all this stress.

“So...when God gives someone a second chance like that...”

“I like how you put that,” he broke in, and she smiled.

“Thanks. When God does that, is it like half a chance, though?”