“You okay, bud?”
Elsie reached to pet the dog, then started to look around the room. Maybe Sven was the world’s friendliest dog, a definite possibility, but he acted as though he hadn’t seen anyone in hours. She searched the room, and not finding any clues, she shut the dog back in the bedroom.
Strange he would have been shut in there, rather than in the nice kennel she’d seen in the living room. That one was a brand she’d long envied but hadn’t quite gotten to spending money on yet. It didn’t make sense that Wyatt would have left the dog closed up in the room.
The intruder, then? That made more sense.
Where were his food and water bowls?
Finally, she found them in a little nook off the kitchen, near a storage closet, which she checked and found empty of anything alarming.
The food bowl was empty. That much, she’d expected. A dog didn’t get to the size Sven was without a healthy love of food.
The water bowl surprised her. Dry. Entirely. Elsie filled both bowls, her heart pounding as she put the pieces together.
If Wyatt had come home, he’d have taken care of his dog.
The door was open. But was it possible someone had come here to find Wyatt and discovered he wasn’t home? Then...what?
Waited for him?
Elsie texted Lindsay, asking if she knew where her brother was. Her friend answered almost immediately. She did not.
Anxiety flooded through her. As though she didn’t already feel awful enough about the way they’d left things last night, now she could imagine him leaving her cabin, walking through the woods...getting attacked where? His boat was gone, but she hadn’t looked in town to see if it was in its regular slip.
He could be anywhere.
And the police would be here any minute, and if she got caught up in talking to them, her opportunity to try to find him using Willow to search would be gone.
She scrawled a note on a paper towel, explained that Wyatt might be in danger due to the events they’d been investigating, and wrote her phone number. They could call her later.
Right now? She had someone to find.
Wyatt’s head throbbed, the thrum of pain the first thing he noticed when he regained consciousness. He remembered leaving Elsie’s, remembered their fight, and then things started to get blurred in his mind, the throbbing somehow hammering away at his memory.
Elsie was safe... Wasn’t she? As far as he remembered, she was, though that was no great reassurance with as questionable as his memory seemed right now.
He sat up, noting the crushing of spruce boughs underneath him. He was somewhere on the forest floor and the sky told him it was the middle of the night. There was enough light that he’d be able to find his way around without a flashlight, but not so much that he could see anything very well.
No one approached when he sat up, though Wyatt didn’t know if that was because he’d succeeded in moving quietly, or because no one was here waiting for him to wake up.
He rubbed his forehead, wishing he had access to pain medicine. It was difficult to think against the pain. Everything felt more difficult, and thoughts didn’t come as quickly as he felt they should. Once again, he tried to make his mind cooperate, and to walk through what he remembered.
Taking a deep breath, then letting it out, he tried to get his bearings. In the distance he heard...something. Voices?
He crept forward, toward the voices, hoping for some kind of hint as to where he was. The landscape was generic to the general corner of Alaska where he was from. Dark brown dirt and rocky ground. Salty air from the ocean. Dark spruce trees towering overhead.
Hopefully he was still within walking distance of Elsie’s cabin, except... His boat. They hadn’t taken his boat, had they?
As he approached the voices, and studied the area up ahead of him, he discovered that the voices were in a clearing on the edge of the land, at the top of what appeared to be a cliff that fell away to the ocean.
Had no one been left to guard him? Was it because the landscape was inhospitable enough that they assumed that would keep him still? A cliff in front of him, mountain behind him... Why was he important to them, anyway?
“...kill him...?”
That...did not sound good.
“Will her dog be able to find him?”
“She’ll come. She found the dead woman, right? The one who was asking too many questions?”
“True... I just don’t want to drag this out any more. With the election coming up, I have too much to do. You and Reynolds should have been able to handle this. Then he...arrested...”
As he’d feared, he was being used as bait. Whoever these men were—they were men’s voices—they were setting up a trap for Elsie.
God, don’t let them get her.
He couldn’t let her be caught because of him.
He rubbed his forehead, trying to form a plan. If he was the one in danger, he could just run deeper into the woods. Evading the men who’d attacked him would be his main priority. But Willow would be able to find him no matter how well he hid himself, and the longer it took for her and Elsie to find him, the more they’d be in danger.
So maybe he was stuck here. At least until he could figure out where here was and how to get out.
His eye caught something past the men. A flash of white. He crept closer so he had a better view through the thick trees. There, on the shore, they had his boat.
If he could make it there, he’d have transportation.
“Don’t even think about it.”
