“Officer Richardson? This is Elsie Montgomery. I very much want the search and I understand the necessity of hurrying, but I have a friend who is concerned about the weather right now...The pilot thinks there will be a window...Yeah. Right. I do understand that...Yes, exactly. I suppose I agree, and we will plan on that. Thank you.”
She looked up at him. “He’s going to check the weather and make a call. Either send a more experienced pilot now or send me with this one when it’s cleared up a bit.”
“Let me come with you.” He hadn’t planned to ask, much less sound desperate like that, but the words came tumbling out before he could stop them.
“Really?”
“I want to help. I know I can’t fly you, but...”
“Let me think about it.” She seemed to consider him. “For now, want to go to the police station? I’ve got a friend there who will let me use their resources.”
He stared at her.
She shrugged. “Sometimes it’s necessary to help me with missing-persons cases. She only lets me access things I’m allowed to. We could look up other missing-persons cases around here. Maybe something will help me see how to search better, or where to start in a way that will break this loose.”
It was better than not being invited along anywhere, so Wyatt nodded, eager to do something. “Yes, definitely.”
Neither of them said much on the short walk. Destruction Point was so small that Wyatt rarely drove in town. He wished they had the privacy of a car now, though. He had so many questions to ask her. He waited until they were in a basement room in the police department.
“So why do you think someone else was on the island? And is this connected to you and the guy who seems to be after you?”
Elsie shook her head. “I don’t know how any of that works, to be honest. I...” She trailed off, then turned to face him fully. “I finally told a trooper this morning about the intruder.”
“And they’re still okay with you heading up the search?”
She nodded.
“I don’t like it.”
“You don’t have to. I don’t, either. But I don’t think I have a choice. I’m not safe anywhere, and at least if I’m out searching, I’m doing some good.” She let out a breath, looked at the stack of cases her friend had printed out for them of missing people in the area.
“Do you want to look through this half and then we can switch?” She looked over at him and Wyatt found himself nodding. He was starting to suspect there wasn’t much this woman couldn’t convince him to agree to.
Why did the one woman who had sparked something inside him back to life—something familiar but so much different, purer, fuller—have to be a woman who felt like she should be off-limits?
As he flipped through the pages in the folder Elsie had given him, he found himself surprised at the sheer number of people who had gone missing in the general area of the island where they’d been searching. The reasons were as varied as the people, but there had been many who had disappeared over the years.
He read until his eyes stung and was just about to suggest taking a break when Elsie spoke.
“I need food and coffee if I’m going to keep this up.” She paused, seeming to consider her next words. “Want to take these printouts back to my cabin?”
At least that would give him the break he needed before he lost all ability to read and process visually.
“That sounds good. You don’t mind the company?”
“No, I’d rather you be there than be by myself anyway.” She hesitated. “Being alone isn’t quite the same as it was before, you know?” It was the closest she’d come to admitting that the incidents of the last week had impacted her at all.
Wyatt was determined more than ever not to leave her to face this on her own. If only he could convince her to let him go with her to the island. He didn’t want her to have to be alone anymore.
TWELVE
Elsie had intended to get straight back to work after they returned to her cabin, but after the time they’d spent in the police department conference room reading through case after case, her eyes and heart needed a break. Too many people did not get found. Her job reminded her every day that she’d been lucky to not be lost on that island until hunger or exposure had overtaken her.
So instead of diving back in immediately, she found herself stalling. It wasn’t like being on the ground in an active search. She hoped that the time spent poring over these cases would be time well spent, whether they saw something that helped her approach a search differently or, even better, found a connection somehow between an old case and her current one. Anything that helped focus their energies so that when she and Willow did get back to the island they had a more targeted area to search would be helpful.
“Do you, uh...? Do you want anything to eat? I mean, I don’t have anything super interesting, but I’ve got sandwich stuff.”
“A sandwich would be great.” He smiled appreciatively, and then Elsie watched as he sank to the floor beside Willow and started to rub the dog all over. Willow, usually a bit standoffish around people who weren’t Elsie, rolled entirely onto her back, seeming to soak in the attention.
If she hadn’t already liked him, seeing him sitting on the floor with her dog certainly would have been enough to catch her eye. That was the problem with Wyatt. He was so much more than she expected, and she never seemed to be able to anticipate the ways he would be attractive to her. He just was.
“Here you go.” She handed him the sandwich and sank down onto the couch, grabbing a handful of chips from an open bag. She ate in silence, then looked over at Wyatt. “Those files depress me.”
“Seeing all the people you couldn’t help?”
She sighed and nodded.
“Which ones stuck out to you so far? Anything give you new ideas for how to search like you were hoping for?”
“This one...” She tugged a couple of pieces of paper out of a manila folder.
“A man wandered off hiking in the Caribou Hills and never came back?”
“Yes. I picked it just because it’s close to here. And because searchers found him by examining his life and patterns and analyzing how he was most likely to move and then following that path. That’s something I didn’t do enough of in the previous days of searching. I need to get to know our missing person better, guess how she thinks, get inside her head.” She reached for another example, handed it over to Wyatt, who skimmed it as he ate his sandwich. “Here’s another.”
“Boater who disappeared not far from here... Ever found?”
She shook her head. “Just the boat. I helped with that case, but we were never able to find him. Not alive or dead. It just catches my eye because it’s one of my failures.”
