And before she could respond, he opened the door and disappeared into the darkness.

Elsie blinked a few times, then locked the door behind him. She didn’t know how she’d wanted that odd encounter to end, and it was too late at night to figure out how she felt about any of this. For now, she’d send Lindsay a quick text letting her know she was okay, and tomorrow, she’d call her. Talking to her friend always helped her clarify what she was thinking and feeling. And right now the topic she was confused about her feelings on was...Wyatt.

Would that be weird, to talk to Lindsay about her brother? Just as soon as she wondered that, Elsie dismissed the concern. Lindsay would know she wasn’t thinking about Wyatt romantically.

Still on edge, Elsie checked the lock on the front door again. She could have sworn she had locked it before she’d gone to bed, but someone had broken in anyway. Still, it was funny how her desire to be in control dictated that she make sure the door was locked. She turned off the light, waited a second until her eyes adjusted and then walked through the small main area of the cabin, checking windows. All locked. She should be safe. Alone.

For once the idea of being alone didn’t appeal to her. She wondered, only briefly, what would have happened if she hadn’t all but chased Wyatt out. If she hadn’t refused to discuss his offer to help her. Would he have stayed for a while, maybe sat on the couch and had another cup of coffee, helped her wind down from the night? Just because he wasn’t the kind of man she would ever date—she could barely imagine what kind of man she would date—didn’t mean they couldn’t be friends.

Right?

She blew out a breath. He’d left, and it was her fault. She was alone in her cabin in the woods, with the lingering reminder of how many people had invaded this space tonight.

Which brought her back to her most-uninvited guest—the would-be...what? Abductor? Murderer?

What was his motive? She’d love to pretend it was a break-in gone wrong, that the intruder had made up threats that meant nothing. But she could find no evidence that anything had been stolen. She was forced to conclude that he’d been after her personally. The threatening words had been real and had likely tied to something in her past. Somehow.

She pulled the covers up to straighten them, then tugged them back and climbed into bed, thinking that Wyatt was more correct than he’d realized. She’d probably been in real danger. But at the same time, Elsie was convinced she was right, too—this had to be a onetime thing. She had no idea why anyone would come after her in the first place, much less attempt to do so again. Even if this whole thing was tied to her past, she wasn’t any kind of high-value target, wasn’t important or famous. Her photo and interview in the local paper was the closest to a claim to fame she had. And people didn’t abduct search and rescue workers in the happy aftermath of a successful rescue.

She thought again about his threatening words, the way he’d implied she was his target. That didn’t have to mean it would happen again. It couldn’t. And what if it wasn’t targeted at all? What if something like human trafficking was at play here? Then the threatening words had just been to frighten her, maybe subdue her into cooperating.

Ignoring the niggle in the back of her mind that said she was being too optimistic, and entirely too creative in her interpretation of what had happened, she tugged the covers up to her chin and called for Willow. The dog trotted easily into the bedroom and jumped with a grace Elsie envied up onto the bed. She settled herself down, her weight comforting to Elsie, who felt her breath ease and steady.

Was she entirely foolish to hope that she would wake up tomorrow to a normal life? And what did it say about her that human trafficking sounded less terrifying than other interpretations of her situation?

She’d rather face something awful like that than have this be related to her past in any way.

Almost without warning, she was cold, cold the way a three-year-old child would be if left in the elements of a rainy Alaskan summer day. She could feel beneath her hands the rock of the jagged ocean-side cliff where she’d taken shelter. Elsie could feel nothing else. No emotions, no sense of abandonment, anger or loss, just...nothing.

She’d seen counselors over the years, several of them because none had ever really stuck, and they’d had different explanations for her sense of emotional nothingness connected to her past. Elsie didn’t need to know why. She didn’t want to dig back into her old life at all.

If this situation required her to...

Wyatt was right—he was one of the last people she would want involved.

All through high school, she’d admired him from a safe distance. It was practically expected that she’d have at least a little bit of a crush on her best friend’s brother. And he’d always been unfairly attractive with his broad shoulders, sandy hair and easy smile. But she didn’t trust him.

Of course, the Wyatt of her memory had been selfish and never would have risked his own safety and comfort to come to her rescue in the middle of the night. Wyatt had done that tonight, so maybe Elsie didn’t know him. But that didn’t put him on the list of people she’d want to rehash her past with.

Telling him what she had tonight had been enough, even if her vague explanation of being in foster care wasn’t the same as the full truth.

She had no idea who she was. She’d been a Jane Doe as a toddler, unable to be reunited with her birth parents no matter how much people had tried.

All through high school, people had treated her like she was fragile because of her petite size and generally quiet and compliant disposition, but Wyatt had especially treated her like that. Instead of being one of the girls who was thought of as an adventurer, brave in her own right, people had treated Elsie like she might break. She’d spent her adult life proving that she was more capable than her size and delicate features made it seem. She knew she was capable. Strong. Tough.

But if she had to dive back into whatever had happened in her childhood, she didn’t know if she could keep being that person.

And she couldn’t stand to imagine investigating with Wyatt and maybe at some point seeing pity in his eyes. She didn’t want his pity.

Despite willing herself to go to sleep, she lay awake for hours. Anxiously wondering who could have been after her and why.

And remembering the flicker of hurt on Wyatt’s face when she’d all but sent him away when he’d only wanted to help her.

It was going to take some strong coffee for Wyatt to make it through this day on as little sleep as he’d gotten lately. He’d been overwhelmed his whole boat ride back to town, imagining Elsie alone in that little cabin, wondering who was after her and why, wishing he’d done things differently in his life so he could be the kind of man Elsie would trust.

It was basically a recipe for not sleeping when he’d gotten home and finally crawled into bed that first night. Sven hadn’t seemed to mind Wyatt’s sleeplessness. No matter how many times he rolled over, tugged the covers this way and that, the massive malamute had stayed asleep, his heavy body like the best kind of weighted blanket.

If only Wyatt had slept that well.

The next night hadn’t been much better. During the day he stayed busy enough, but when he tried to fall asleep at night he worried about Elsie. Wondered what it was that made her so hesitant to accept help from him or anyone else.

Maybe he’d text her today. He didn’t have her number, but his sister would.

Pulling his mind away from Elsie, Wyatt made his breakfast and checked his schedule for the day. He flew for a variety of people, everyone from state troopers to the post office, to other deliveries. Today was clear. Nothing to do but think of Elsie, which was the last thing he wanted to do.

As if on cue, the phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Wyatt, it’s Trooper Clements. We have a missing person on a remote island, and seas that are unsuitable for taking the searchers out by boat. Are you available to transport a crew out there?”

There went his clear schedule. Relief rushed into him for a second or two until he finished processing what the trooper had said.

Searchers.

“Just let me know when and where you need me to pick them up.” Often he’d have to fly to Homer to pick up people the Troopers needed transported somewhere. It was a short flight, fifteen minutes max, and he didn’t mind.

“Thanks. A couple troopers will be in Homer waiting for you. You can get them on your way to the island where the missing person was last seen. The K-9 search team is in your town so they can ride with you to Homer and then to the island.”

Which meant Elsie. A day where he was around Elsie, filled with all the awkward of several nights ago and the continuing concern he had for her.

“Yes, sir.”

“She’ll meet you at the airport. We told her we’d have transportation waiting for her.”

The trooper filled in the rest of the details on coordinates for the island and Wyatt wrote everything down with the pencil that he kept on his small kitchen table for moments like this.

His mind kept pounding Elsie’s name as he wrote down details, though. Elsie. Elsie. Elsie.

Why was he being thrown back into her path? Did that mean something? He’d wandered from God as a teen but had really been trying to straighten up his life so that he could approach his faith again. Was this some kind of test he had to pass first, to prove that he was above this kind of temptation now? Because Wyatt wasn’t sure that he was.

Not that he had any plans to start anything with Elsie. He knew better than that. Just her flirting with him had hit him hard. Reminded him he wasn’t the kind of man who deserved her attention, and how she’d only flirted in the first place because she must have thought that was how he communicated. The whole situation had been awkward at best, and he had no idea how to approach any kind of continued interaction with her.

But there wasn’t time to worry about that. He had a job to do, and Wyatt was determined not to let people down anymore. Half the time he felt like he was one misstep away from being who he used to be and it terrified him. He couldn’t afford mistakes.

This was one more reason why he should ignore Elsie. It would be so easy to be distracted by her, and he couldn’t be distracted by a one-sided crush. Elsie had made it clear years ago he wasn’t the kind of man she’d give a second glance to and he didn’t think that had changed.

He still wished she’d listened to his concerns, but maybe she was right and the intrusion had been random. Wyatt certainly hoped so.