What a past. What a story.
Elsie wanted to back this one up, get out of these woods, go back to yesterday and somehow keep Wyatt safe and just live...untouched by all of this. She didn’t want this.
“Killing them both made sense. But turns out the kid didn’t die. Till now.”
The man was determined to win. As she had suspected, Wyatt was the bait. She just hadn’t understood why. All this time—this past week, anyway—she’d assumed someone wanted her dead but had never dreamed the reasons were this personal.
But this man—the missing senator?—had killed her mother. Tried and failed to kill her. This was why no one had come forward about a missing toddler, because her mother had been dead and her father had been the killer.
“I won’t be your bait anymore.”
It happened so quickly, Elsie almost couldn’t break it all apart in her mind. But Wyatt, who she’d assumed must have been tied up, flung himself toward the man—her biological father—and the two of them were tangled on the ground. The other man rushed at them. Now it was two against one. She couldn’t wait anymore.
Sprinting out of the woods, she joined the fight, hitting, kicking.
She heard one of the men yelp and realized Willow had joined in, too, and taken a bite out of someone’s leg. “Willow, no.”
For once the dog didn’t listen, though. She must have decided Elsie needed her help whether she liked it or not. Elsie couldn’t focus on the dog because she had enough to do worrying about what was in front of her, on top of her. They were four humans in something of a pile, punching, kicking.
She took a hit to the stomach and cried out.
“Elsie!” Wyatt’s voice was panicked.
“Don’t worry about me.”
“Aren’t...you...noble.” The man who’d been talking before grabbed her by the arm and pulled so hard she thought for a second he’d dislocated it.
That fast, she was out of the fight. She could hear the sounds of the continuing scuffle behind her as the other man and Wyatt fought. Their grunts and groans faded into the background and her world seemed to narrow as she looked at this man in front of her.
This was the man she’d wondered about, this man in too-new outdoor clothes, with a smirk on his face, anger in his eyes. Eyes that looked just like hers. They were related, if what he’d said was to be believed. She had her answers. She had her story. And...
She didn’t need it. Once upon a time she’d have wondered more. How did her parents meet? Why didn’t he want her? Why did politics matter more than his child?
Now Elsie needed none of it. Maybe she’d always been found. Maybe the ache she’d felt inside had been an awareness that she was missing God in her life, and now that she could acknowledge that He’d found her all along, she didn’t need anything else. She didn’t know. All she knew was that she didn’t need this man.
“Not going to cry? Your mother cried.”
The darkness. The closet. The screams. Elsie steeled herself against them.
“She cried because of me. She wanted to protect me.” Elsie remembered now. Enough that she knew that was true. Enough that she knew when this was all over, if she lived, she’d spend some time processing these feelings with a counselor she could trust. “I’m okay, though. I’m not afraid of you.”
Because God was here, God had her. And because Wyatt was somewhere nearby fighting for her.
Because in the end, good was going to win. No matter what happened to her. But... She didn’t want this to be the last part of her story. She wanted that happily-ever-after. Words failed her, but she managed to whisper a please, God to her newly found Heavenly Father.
The man in front of her raised the gun. Aimed it at her.
Elsie closed her eyes.
The gun went off.
He was almost too late. Almost too late. The words echoed in Wyatt’s mind even after he’d slammed against Travis, made his shot at Elsie go wide.
He’d still been fighting the other man, probably Travis’s hired muscle, when he’d caught a flash of metal and realized that Travis had Elsie. He’d landed a hard punch to the man’s jaw, enough to knock him out, and run at Travis with his full force. He’d thought he was going to be too late.
Maybe he had been and God had intervened somehow. He’d slammed into Travis and the shot had missed Elsie. That was all that mattered to Wyatt at the moment.
Travis screamed in frustration and Wyatt wrapped his arms around the other man, reaching for the gun, hitting at him. But he got away. Started to run.
“Elsie, watch out!” Wyatt yelled, but this time Travis didn’t go for Elsie. He just ran, attempting to evade them and escape. Wyatt ran after him.
Willow barked, joined the chase, grabbed the man by the leg. He jumped backward, away from her. Willow lowered her head. Growled and stepped toward him. He took another step back.
Too close to the cliff. Wyatt yelled, “Don’t! Stop!”
But Willow lunged and Travis stumbled back and started to yell as he fell over the cliff, toward the rocks and ocean waves, and Wyatt made it to the edge just in time to see him go under and be swept out with the current.
Unlike the plane crash, this couldn’t be faked. There was no coming back from this. He was gone.
Adrenaline pumping, he turned to see Elsie running toward him. He caught her in his arms.
“He’s gone,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
Elsie said nothing, just cried. He held her tighter. What else was there to do, to say?
“I can’t believe he hated me that much,” she finally said and pulled back from him, searching his eyes.
“You weren’t the problem. It was him. How anyone could care about their ambitions like that over other human beings...” Sure, people were selfish, but this was an extreme example. He had been a murderer, with seemingly no remorse. But now he was gone.
