Elsie hung up, then wondered briefly if she should have stayed on the line. Her gaze fell back on the man Wyatt had pinned.

“Who are you?” Elsie asked. Seeing him like this, she realized he wasn’t a mysterious voice in the woods anymore. He was a real human, just as defeatable as anyone.

Still, he must have wanted to maintain some level of power, because he wouldn’t answer her. Even after Wyatt yanked off the ski mask, he said nothing. She didn’t see anything remarkable about his features that would help her to identify him.

Worse yet, he didn’t look much older than she was. Which meant that he would have been too young to have been involved in what had happened to her all those years ago.

“You’re working for someone, right?” Wyatt asked, and Elsie waited to hear if the guy said anything.

Still, he stubbornly refused to talk.

Frustration rose within her, pressing on her temples. She wanted to make him answer but knew there was nothing she could do. She hated being powerless.

The troopers appeared faster than she’d hoped, breaking the strange tableau of Wyatt holding down the masked man, Elsie and Willow watching in silence.

They hauled the man away, and Elsie and Wyatt were alone.

“You’re okay?” she asked him, her voice quiet.

“Yeah. He doesn’t punch that hard.”

“Still.” There was so much she could say. He was still very possibly a murderer, if he’d been the one responsible for Rebecca Reyes’s death.

“I can’t believe I left you alone.” His voice was anguished. There was no other way to describe it.

“I’m okay.”

“I should never have left you. What if...?”

“Nothing happened,” Elsie insisted, then hesitated and reached up to rub her head, which still burned. “I mean, he hurt my head when he yanked my hair. And my arm is pretty bruised, but I think it’s all right. I’m fine overall.”

“I still shouldn’t have left.”

“Did your walk...” She trailed off. “...help at all?”

“I don’t want to see you hurt.”

“I told you I’m fine—”

“I don’t want to see you hurt by me.”

She stared. “Why would you hurt me?”

“I...I think I’m falling in love with you, Elsie.” His voice was steady, his face serious.

Elsie’s heart fluttered.

“I think it might be mutual,” she whispered back, leaning a little closer to him before stopping.

This time, Wyatt was the one who initiated the kiss, and it was gentle, slow and curious, his lips moving against hers carefully. Cherished. That was the word for how she felt right now.

When he broke away, Elsie wasn’t ready for it to end.

“We have to get back inside. Just in case that’s not the only guy after you.”

The worry in his tone was very real, but somehow his concern made her smile. “I’m okay. You don’t have to be so worried about me.” She meant it in multiple ways but he shrugged it off.

“Please? For me?”

If it was that important to him, she would go inside. There was no reason to make him worry unnecessarily.

At least, not yet. Because Elsie still needed to pack. The clouds were breaking up overhead, glimpses of blue showing in the sky.

This might be her chance to get back to the island and find Noelle Mason. Hopefully still alive.

And with the way things had changed over the course of this day, she might let Wyatt come with her. He’d probably worry less that way.

As they made their way through the woods back to the cabin, Elsie tried to write his concern off as paranoia. But no matter how much she tried, she knew that she’d come close to being killed several times. And one detail was still bothering her about this last attack.

The man hadn’t killed her in her cabin. He’d been hired to take her...somewhere.

But where? Why?

And who was behind it all, pulling the strings?

Chills chased down Elsie’s spine and her earlier confidence was replaced by a sense of deep foreboding and pressing anxiety. Somehow, she felt like she was close to finding out the answers to her questions. But how would they be answered? And what would happen to her if they ever were? Those were questions that haunted her.

Wyatt was right to be worried.

Because no matter how much she might want to pretend otherwise, Elsie was still not safe.

Elsie had immediately started repacking her gear when they’d arrived at her cabin, and given the fact that the weather looked like it was clearing, Wyatt had stopped trying to argue with her about her desire to go back to the island to search.

He hoped she found Noelle alive. Hoped she got her answers about her own past, and that she could live with them. The stories she’d told him were difficult to process even for him, who hadn’t been there. He couldn’t imagine how she would deal with any truths her past might hold for her.

Especially when she didn’t know God, didn’t have faith in Him to help carry her through. God, help her to know You. He hesitated over the second part of the prayer. Whatever it takes. As much as he wanted her safe, well and happy, Wyatt knew that she was none of those things if she didn’t know Jesus.

He thought about what he wanted, for everything to work out. Bad guys? Gone. Elsie? Safe. The two of them...dating? Dating Elsie in the traditional sense of how people usually dated would seem weird somehow. She was too special for something like that. No, if they ever made the world safe for her again, he’d pursue her heart, be her friend, fall in love with her a little more every day and then for the rest of his life if she’d let him. He prayed.

Within the hour they were back in the air.

“You wish you were flying, huh?” Elsie sent him a sympathetic smile and Wyatt shrugged.

“At least my head injury wasn’t worse. And I appreciate that you waited until I thought it was safe.”

“You know a lot more about flying than I do.”

She wasn’t wrong. Wyatt just grinned, shrugged a little. Elsie smiled back.