The voice was low and gravelly, and before Wyatt could turn, pain exploded in his head again and everything went dark.

Guilt was Elsie’s companion as she ran through town with Willow, taking back streets and wooded patches of forest until she was at the docks.

As she had feared, Wyatt’s boat wasn’t in his slip. And she definitely hadn’t seen it by her dock, which likely meant someone had snatched him after he left her cabin. The wilderness around where she lived was vast and she’d only explored parts of it, but Elsie knew that was where she and Willow would go now.

The fact that Wyatt was likely being used as bait did not escape her. But what else could she do? Law enforcement needed to be involved, which was why she’d called them, but there was no way they’d be able to find him as quickly as she and Willow could. He’d already sustained a head injury within the past couple of days and Elsie shuddered to think of what they’d have done to him in order to get him under their power. She knew there was no way he’d have gone willingly.

She knew a lot about him for only having gotten to know him this week, Elsie realized. Enough that, really, she could see some of Wyatt’s points. Just because she’d have preferred he wait before broaching a subject like marriage didn’t mean he’d been thoughtless in his proposal. He’d rushed, majorly. Half of her wondered if it came from his desire to give her the chance to be part of a family. She didn’t know. All she really knew was that she’d have liked to have been asked to date him, not marry him.

Still, he’d made himself vulnerable and she hadn’t been sensitive to that at all. Elsie had messed up, too. Big-time. Now he was gone and she couldn’t even tell him she was sorry.

“We have to find him, Willow,” she said to the dog as they climbed into the boat. “We just have to.”

The ocean had grown moody from the peaceful state it had been in earlier. The swells were unpredictable and larger than usual. Elsie held the wheel, kept her gaze fixed straight ahead and headed toward the point where her cabin sat. This was Wyatt’s point last seen, she was almost sure of it, so this was where they would start the search.

They pulled up onto the beach and anchored without incident, and Elsie climbed out of the boat, then ran inside her cabin to grab her backpack of supplies and a thicker jacket, as the morning air was chilled and the ocean spray had dampened her clothes and hair.

“Ready, girl?” she asked her dog, strapping Willow’s vest on and holding out an old T-shirt of Wyatt’s that she’d grabbed out of what she guessed was his laundry pile beside his bedroom door.

Willow got the scent and stopped, meeting Elsie’s eyes.

Trust her dog. She had to trust her dog.

Wyatt was relying on her. She’d already let him down last night, when she’d refused to listen to him and had shut him out instead. She couldn’t let him down again.

SIXTEEN

Willow had caught Wyatt’s scent in the air immediately, which had encouraged Elsie, but hours had passed and they were venturing deep into the mountainside woods that stood guard over her home, deeper than Elsie had ever been before.

The clouds were thick today, entirely obscuring the sun and blanketing the spruce forest in thick fog, heavy blankets rolling all the way down to where the land met the ocean.

Her phone had rung several times, but after checking it was neither Wyatt nor the local police, she hadn’t wanted to stop to answer it. Not when Willow still had the scent. Now, though, she knew she needed to give Willow water and a break. The scent had been strong up until now and she would just have to hope that nothing changed after they sat for a few minutes. Taking care of her dog had to come first or Willow wasn’t going to be able to successfully complete her job of finding Wyatt.

While Willow lapped up the water from the dish Elsie had put down, she downed a few sips herself and then slid her phone out of her pocket and called the number she had for Trooper Richardson.

“Hello?”

“This is Elsie Montgomery.”

“Elsie. I’ve heard from the Destruction Point Police about you today—are you okay? Are you safe?”

“What did you hear?”

“They said you called in a missing person and then disappeared after leaving some kind of note?”

It sounded bad when he said it like that. Elsie explained about finding Wyatt’s house broken into, and the reason she’d left the note in such a hurry.

“I’m not entirely surprised. Send me your coordinates and I’ll send you backup.”

She wasn’t about to argue with him. She gave him the coordinates, relief flooding her. “Be careful,” she warned him. “This might be a trap for me.”

“You’re referencing what you said earlier, that this may be tied to your past?”

“Yes. And I want Wyatt to walk out of this alive and he’s not going to do that if whoever abducted him thinks they’re not going to get what they want, which is me. And... Trooper Richardson, I need your people to catch these guys. Assuming we all make it through this, I want to be free to live my life without a shadow hanging over me, without wondering when my carefully crafted life is going to be obliterated by someone who wants me dead.”

“Of course. What else can we do?”

She hesitated. “Look up the Jane Doe baby case from twenty-five years ago in Destruction Point. It’s me.” She glanced at Willow, who was staring up at her, looking rested. “For now, I have to go. Thank you for helping.”

“You’re welcome. Good luck. Backup will be on your trail soon.”

She hung up the phone and started forward again, Willow leading the way. She appeared to still have the scent, much to Elsie’s relief. It was always a gamble stopping in the middle of a search. Wind could shift, conditions could change and lessen the thickness of the scent in an area. They were lucky.

Willow led her deeper into the forest on the mountainside, where the sunlight didn’t quite reach the forest floor even without fog. It was damp. Cool. She was glad she’d grabbed a thicker jacket and hoped Wyatt was okay wherever he was.

Willow stopped. Made an abrupt right. Sure enough, Elsie could see a slight trail that cut into the side of the mountain, rather than continuing straight up. They followed it until Willow edged farther right, like they were going down the mountain. Elsie could see evidence that someone had been brought through here, likely against their will. Maybe even dragged. There were several places that branches were broken in this direction, like someone had pressed against them too hard on the way through. Anticipation built within her. They were getting closer, and Willow hadn’t lost the scent yet.

She needed a plan. Troopers as backup were fantastic, but Elsie didn’t know how long it would take them to get there, and she didn’t want to count on them for her safety. If she was walking herself and her dog into a dangerous situation, which she appeared to be, she wanted her own general plan.

Whoever was after her was not giving up, that much was clear. They must have decided to use Wyatt as bait to get Elsie within their sights again.

She was convinced that was also the reason Noelle Mason had gone missing, though she hadn’t worked out all the details yet. But it had been clear that the attacker she and Wyatt had caught wasn’t the mastermind. He might be in jail now, but the danger wasn’t past.

She took a deep breath. When she got to wherever Wyatt was, his condition would have to inform her decisions. If he was too injured, he wouldn’t be able to run away. She’d have to play some of this by ear whether she wanted to or not.

But ideally, she would see Wyatt and be able to communicate with him before having to reveal herself. He’d help her, she knew, if he was able to do so. Would he still have the weapon she knew he’d had before? It didn’t seem likely. She should have thought to grab one from his house, not that she was very familiar with firearms. She only owned bear spray. Nothing else had been necessary until now.

Her biggest concern at the moment was that if Willow alerted loudly, it would give away their position. She needed her to be as quiet as possible.

All of that assumed she found him and that it was soon. Elsie had no idea what to expect or where he might be. If they’d come by boat, which she expected given the fact that his boat was gone, then why did the trail lead this way?

She looked at her dog. Unless... The scent over the water might have disappeared, and the scent on the beach could have been dispersed by the wind. Was Willow actually picking her way across a mountainside to get to where the scent was?

Elsie didn’t know anymore. She felt out of control, confused, never a good way for a handler to feel. But after all she’d endured in the last few days, she didn’t feel like she could be too upset with herself. As she tracked through the trees, following her dog, she kept hoping with everything within her that they would find Wyatt.

All this time, Elsie realized, she’d been waiting to be found. She wanted to know who she really was. She’d wanted someone in her past to have missed her. It was disconcerting to know that her old identity had essentially disappeared off the planet and no one had cared. So when Wyatt proposed like that... She’d felt like maybe he didn’t care about finding her, either. Not her old identity, not the story she wished she had about her past; she’d given up on that. But the woman she was now.

If he didn’t know her very well now, it was partially her fault. Maybe she’d spent her whole life waiting to be found, but it turned out she was also afraid of being found. What if Wyatt got to know her and didn’t love her anymore? It was why she’d held herself at arm’s length from so many relationships.

Maybe even...why she’d held herself back from God? The now-familiar urge to pray that she’d felt so many times over the past few days was strong and difficult to ignore. The idea that knowing God meant that He knew her as well... That was terrifying to her. What if God didn’t like her? Did that happen? Could someone seek out a relationship with God, admit that they wanted Him in their lives and then have Him reject them?

For the first time in a long time, she felt entirely and truly alone.

God, if You still want me, I don’t want to be alone anymore. It’s worth being scared, I think. I’ve done a lot wrong—forgive me for those things. Thank You for letting me come to You and, like Lindsay says, sending Jesus to die on the cross and pay for my sins so that I can come to You. She took a deep, long breath in. Let it back out. I trust You, God. I’m trying really hard to, anyway, and I think that counts. Help me find Wyatt.

Nothing changed that she could see. The woods still looked the same. The fog pressed down on them even heavier, if anything. Her circumstances did not appear to be affected in the slightest.

But she could feel a difference inside, as the flicker of faith inside her grew. Hope, that was the difference. She had hope that maybe they’d be able to pull this off. Maybe she could have a chance at happily-ever-after after all and be able to apologize to Wyatt. See if he’d let them start over again.