“It could be a trap, you know,” Wyatt pointed out, and Elsie knew he could be right. But she didn’t think he was.
She gave Willow the command to search, heart still pounding. “Can you make sure no one is following us?” she asked Wyatt. “I need to focus on Willow if we’re going to have a chance of finding whoever that was before it’s too late for them.”
Without any more argument, she made her way through the woods, moving so quietly Elsie was convinced she and Willow weren’t making any sound at all. Wyatt wasn’t doing a half-bad job, either, especially for someone who wasn’t used to this. She pushed a spruce branch out of her way.
Willow stopped. She gave a low moan.
Elsie’s breath caught in her throat. It was her alert for human remains. Her shoulders fell. After all of this, after days of doing her best, it wasn’t good enough. They’d still failed, and failure here on this island, in this corner of Alaska where her past and present swirled together in an uncomfortable haze, was somehow worse than failure elsewhere.
“She’s dead,” she said to Wyatt, then followed her dog, needing to finish the job, no matter how much she might wish she didn’t have to.
Up ahead, Willow stopped, sat next to what looked in the darkness like a shape on the ground. Elsie fought the urge to vomit as her stomach clenched. This was far from the first body she’d seen, and it likely would not be the last, but she never got used to it.
“Elsie, wait.” Wyatt’s voice was quiet but firm enough that Elsie stopped without thinking.
He held out a hand, pointed.
She could see it now, too, the wound on the victim’s back. Blood matting the moss and clumping in the dirt of the small clearing in the woods where the woman’s body lay. A metallic scent hung heavy in the air.
She needed to check for vitals but was bracing herself for the worst.
While she took a breath or two to steady herself, Wyatt stepped forward. “I’ll do it.” He reached for the woman’s arm to feel for a pulse and shook his head.
“She’s definitely gone. No pulse at all.”
But recently dead, Elsie could see that. She swallowed hard against the sense of hopelessness creeping toward her like the fog had crept onto the beach earlier in the night.
How had it only been hours since they’d sat on the beach together, Wyatt’s arm around her? Since she’d felt...safe? Sure, the plane had been half-destroyed and they’d been trapped on an island with someone who they knew for sure was willing to kill, but in those moments, she’d felt peaceful. Maybe she’d even let herself dream about more times like that with Wyatt. But just like she’d known it wouldn’t, the peace didn’t last. It never did.
“I failed her. I should have found her. If I’d led Willow this way before we started searching, if I’d just searched from a different starting point today...” The excuses wouldn’t help, the explanations wouldn’t help, but Elsie felt chewed up inside, broken in bits and at a loss as to how to fix it.
“You did your best.”
But her best hadn’t been good enough.
The darkness of the woods pressed in on her, and instead of it being the comfort she was used to it being, it felt suffocating. Like the darkness of her nightmare, flashback, whatever it was. Elsie stood among the trees but could clearly picture that closet. She was sitting on a pair of shoes and they were digging into her leg. Someone had told her to stay in the closet, she remembered now. She had to be very quiet and stay in the closet. Like a game.
But the crying outside the door wasn’t a game. The darkness didn’t feel like a game. And when she heard someone scream, Elsie knew it wasn’t a game and she scooted deeper into the closet and tried to be as still as she could. Once it had gone quiet, she pushed the closet door open, needing to see if the person who’d screamed was okay. A family member? A friend? She didn’t know, but adult Elsie was afraid of what child Elsie had found. In the cold night air, Elsie blinked, willed the image to go away.
“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?”
