“It’s happened before.”
His expression made it clear he didn’t like that answer. “Is this recent, or something that’s been going on for a while?”
“Recent.” She didn’t know if that truth made her feel better or not. It seemed to indicate that whatever danger she might currently be in was something that had a starting point. Therefore, it might have an end point, right? Now that she thought about it, she’d started feeling this way in the last couple of weeks. What was going to happen next?
“You didn’t seem very surprised that someone was after you.”
“I’m not.” She seemed to be on a brutally honest streak here. Not that Elsie condoned lying, but she’d have anticipated at least dancing around the truth with someone like Wyatt. But nothing about him made her feel uneasy or defensive tonight.
That alone should terrify her. That was probably how he’d ended up dating half the girls in his senior class, spending more than his fair share of time out at the end of Destruction Point Road in the dark with some of them, too, if rumors were to be believed. When she’d been young and naive, Elsie had harbored the notion once that she could change him and had nurtured the tiniest crush on him.
Time and his continued bad behavior had killed that, thankfully. It was too embarrassing even to admit to herself. Sweet, quiet Elsie with a crush on the town bad boy? It was so cliché and impractical it made her cringe.
Now this grown-up version of Wyatt was here, handsome as ever but with a note of humility and self-awareness that he hadn’t possessed back in high school. When had he changed? Had she avoided him so studiously every time they’d crossed paths recently that she’d missed this?
“What can you tell me? Are you in trouble somehow?”
She quirked her mouth into a smile. “It seems like it.”
“You know what I mean. Are you...I don’t know...mixed up in something?”
“We sound like our collective mystery-solving experience is Nancy Drew books.”
“Add that to a couple of criminal-investigation shows I like to watch on the weekends and that’s pretty much what I’ve got.”
“No way am I supposed to believe you used to read Nancy Drew.”
Wyatt grinned, shrugged. Then his face grew serious. “Really, Elsie. You’re in danger. I want to know why.”
“And I said I’d tell you what I know...” She trailed off, wishing she hadn’t made such a foolish promise. “But why? Is this just curiosity? How are you going to help?”
“I have no idea. I fly for the Troopers sometimes. Maybe they could help?”
“They’ve got nothing to go on. And besides, I don’t want to involve the Troopers.”
“Why?”
“Too much drama. I don’t want to be caught up in all of that. Someone broke in. Maybe they tried to steal something and just needed me out of the way. I don’t see any reason to think I’d be a target.”
“Except?”
“You know that I was in foster care when I lived next door to you, right?”
Wyatt shook his head.
Stuck in his own little world even as a kid? Elsie knew he’d been around when she and Lindsay had talked about it. She referred to her foster parents as “my foster mom” and “my foster dad.” Surely he’d heard her say those phrases at some point over all the dinners she’d spent at his family’s house?
Her expression must have shown her disbelief.
“So I wasn’t an observant kid.”
“Anyway, when I was in foster care...” She hesitated. Maybe it was the fact that it was so easy to talk to him, or that he didn’t seem intimidating. Or like it wasn’t such a bad idea to have a crush on him anymore. Maybe she was overly emotional from what had happened tonight. All Elsie knew was that she was finding herself distressingly attracted to this man and therefore needed to hit the brakes on any more vulnerability. He’d seen the inside of her cabin. He knew she was in danger.
She couldn’t keep giving him glimpses into who she was. It wasn’t safe for someone to know you that well. Her foster family had taken good care of her, but they’d never tried to form much of an emotional connection to her. She’d always understood that she could count on food and shelter, but she’d never felt loved or known. Maybe that was a good thing, though, because the idea of allowing either was utterly terrifying to Elsie.
Opening up to Wyatt any more was scary. At the same time, she’d said she would tell him what she knew. Didn’t she owe him that? She could abbreviate the story.
“I was in foster care because my parents were out of the picture. There’s a chance something...less than legal...could have taken place surrounding that whole situation.” Elsie shrugged, but she could tell that Wyatt saw through her pretended nonchalance.
“You don’t know for sure, though? That your biological parents were into something illegal?”
“I don’t know any details of why I ended up not being with my parents.” There, that sidestepped his question a bit but still told the truth.
“So someone could have been after you this whole time? That doesn’t make sense. Why come after you now after however many years? Surely if they’d wanted to abduct you or something, they could have done that before now.”
“I know. It just crossed my mind, but it’s definitely unlikely.” She said the words with more assurance than she felt. It was unlikely, but not impossible. She’d always been uncomfortable with the lack of detail surrounding her past and her childhood, but that didn’t mean there was actually anything criminal that had gone on. More than likely it was the same-old-same-old story of parents who picked an addiction over a kid, the Office of Children’s Services took over and details got lost by the time a child grew up and started asking questions.
Except...usually kids didn’t end up found on remote islands, alone. Too traumatized by...something to help rescuers and authorities understand anything that had happened to her before her rescue. And if her past was really as cut-and-dried as she was trying to fool herself into thinking it could be, shouldn’t she have answers by now?
Still, Elsie didn’t want to pursue this line of thought with Wyatt here. She’d told him she’d explain why she’d been suspicious. She’d held up her end of the deal and she had zero desire to stand around convincing him that she was in danger. She didn’t need anyone butting into her life.
Something about her too-innocent expression made Wyatt wonder what else there was to this story, but he was uncomfortable prying any further into Elsie’s life. It had been a heedless impulse to come here in the first place, a random desire not to stand aside while someone got hurt. More specifically, he hadn’t wanted to risk Elsie being the one who got hurt when he could do something about it.
His instincts had been right that she’d been in trouble. Were his instincts right about something else going on, too? That she was still in danger and that she might know more than she was letting on?
“I still think we should let the Troopers know what happened. Or at least Destruction Point Police. They should be on their way.”
Elsie raised an eyebrow, and yeah, he got it. The Destruction Point Police Department consisted of three men, one patrol car, two old bicycles and a boat that made the bicycles look high-tech. Not that they were incompetent; one of his best friends was on the force. But it was a very small town with the resources to match and not a lot of crime beyond the occasional bar fight or domestic dispute, which was usually resolvable by one of the pastors of the two local churches. Elsie was talking about a decades-old ordeal. No way would they have the resources to look into that.
