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.
And finally, finally, she didn’t feel alone.
Willow sped up her pace and Elsie took off after her. This was it. This was their chance and she wasn’t going to miss it.
This time, when Wyatt awoke, he was aware of ropes rubbing against his wrists and ankles.
He hesitantly opened his eyes. His vision wasn’t impaired at all. His headache? That wasn’t worth focusing on, as it was worse than ever. He wasn’t comfortable with the slight nausea, either, probably from the very likely concussion that he had. At least he was still in one piece.
Helpless. But in one piece.
It wasn’t often he felt like he truly couldn’t handle his circumstances on his own. Even when he’d come back to God, it had been with the plan to earn God’s favor again, like Elsie had pointed out to him the other day, which was wrong. The truth was that he was an independent man. He liked knowing he could handle a situation.
Right now, he couldn’t. He would have to trust God to see him through.
And maybe Elsie? Surely she and Willow were looking for him. He wished they weren’t, since he was sure they were walking into more danger than Elsie was ready for, but he knew without them his chances were slim.
Something about the last thought caught him. Maybe that was what Elsie had meant. Rather than assume that she didn’t realize this was a trap, and worry about her, treat her like something small and breakable, she wanted to be treated like the capable, brave woman she was. Maybe that was one of the areas where she felt like he didn’t know her well enough.
Change was something he was used to, though. Personally, professionally. He could change, make this better. If they got a second chance.
Right now? He didn’t know what to do but stay put. He could see the beach from where he was, but he was leaned up against a tree, and with his arms and legs bound, he wasn’t going anywhere quickly.
“Don’t even think about running,” a voice told him. Not the one from earlier. That one had been rough, violent. This one was smooth and almost pleasant.
Political.
“Travis Cattleman, I assume?” Wyatt asked him.
He heard footsteps coming from around behind him, and a man came into his line of sight. Wyatt vaguely recognized him from the news. He was not quite six feet, Wyatt guessed, though it was hard to judge from the ground. Average build. Smooth, clean-shaven face. Green eyes.
Eyes startlingly like Elsie’s in color, though nothing alike in their mood. Elsie’s eyes sparkled with adventure, bravery. Last night he’d seen a spark of something a lot like love.
This man’s eyes were calculating, exacting.
“Very astute of you to figure out.” His eyebrows rose in some kind of sick amusement. “If you’d been this quick yesterday, you might not be sitting here like this.”
Great, a talkative villain. Part of Wyatt wanted to roll his eyes. He hated movies where the villain monologued at the end.
On the other hand, if there was one thing he’d learned from movies like that, it was that the longer you got a guy talking, the more likely you could find some way to defeat him. This wasn’t a movie, but it was worth a try. He was too helpless to do anything else right now.
“Why is Elsie in your way? She doesn’t want anything to do with you.”
The man recoiled. “Annie. Her name is Annie.”
One question answered about Elsie’s past, though Wyatt wished she were hearing it first. It didn’t seem right that he would know this part of her story before she did.
“She doesn’t care about you or whatever you’re trying to do politically. She wouldn’t have bothered you.” He hesitated. “Still might not if you leave her alone.” The last part was a stretch. He couldn’t imagine Elsie letting this kind of injustice go unpursued, unpunished. But this man didn’t know that. Didn’t know her.
“Annie never had a choice. She was doomed from the start. Her mother should have...” He trailed off, though Wyatt was fairly certain he knew where the man was going. “She had no right.” His fists were clenched.
“So...” His mind went to Elsie’s flashbacks, to the darkness she’d described. The way she’d responded to the dying woman on the island’s screams like she’d heard them before. “You killed her mother.”
The fists clenched tighter, though Travis didn’t say anything.
“And meant to kill Elsie when you left her on that island.”
“Annie!”
Why the name mattered so much to a man who was bent on destroying the woman who had it, Wyatt didn’t understand. But sometimes people didn’t make sense. It was clear to him that this man, Travis, was operating under intense emotion. He’d become an even more dangerous criminal because emotional criminals were unpredictable. Loose cannons.
And here he was with a front-row seat to the madness and no way that he could think of to stop it.
“You meant to kill her,” he guessed again. “But you didn’t succeed, so you let her live until now.”
“I didn’t let her.” The man’s voice was bitter. “I lost her. I was so sure... I knew she’d never survive on that island. I knew I wasn’t linked to her in any way. I knew it was the best way to get rid of her.”
So that was why Elsie had gotten to live all those years.
“And then...” he prompted, not sure if the man would keep talking or explode.
“I saw an article in the newspaper. Some local fluff. My staff like to keep me informed, keep me in touch with my constituents.” Wyatt rolled his eyes and hoped the man didn’t notice in the growing daylight. “I knew it was her. I recognized her right away. She’s like a walking version of Tressa.”
Wyatt guessed Tressa must have been Elsie’s mother. Was that part of the reason the man was so determined to kill her? He couldn’t guess how much of the man’s motivation was related to a desire to keep his other crime—killing Elsie’s mother—under wraps and how much was him repeating that action. He’d been mad enough to kill the mother, whom he must have cared for on some level. Why not kill the child who he was convinced should never have lived?
“So you put a woman on that island hoping she’d be called in to find her?” That would explain Noelle Mason’s presence on the island.
“She worked at a shelter I’ve done some work with. Publicity stuff. She and I had gotten...involved and so she was a liability anyway.” He shrugged. “I knew Annie would come find her.”
“But you weren’t able to kill her. You killed her friend, though.”
“An unfortunate bit of collateral damage. Rebecca was never supposed to die, but when she got off the island after she and Noelle were separated, she started to get suspicious about the fact that I had suggested that island hike to Noelle. Apparently she knew about mine and Noelle’s relationship. I couldn’t afford for her to be pointing fingers at me. So I returned her to the island,” he said smoothly.
“You killed her,” Wyatt broke in.
Travis continued, unfazed. “And then Annie found Noelle so fast...hence the need for the plane crash so she’d think we were out of the picture. And you... Now I can finally get rid of her.”
“Leave her alone,” Wyatt tried again, not needing any more of the story. “Just let her go. She doesn’t care about you.”
Travis kicked and pain exploded in Wyatt’s shin.
“Do not tell me what to do. I have a plan. I am the one in control here, and I am calling the shots.” A slow, sick grin spread across his face as he slid a shiny handgun from a holster on his hip. “Literally.” He lifted the gun, aimed it at Wyatt. Waited.
Wyatt barely breathed. It took everything within him not to react. He knew that Willow would find him dead or alive. But it seemed this man and whoever was helping him earlier hesitated to kill him, not knowing if he would still be an effective bait. He had to use that.
“Losing patience and getting rid of your bait this fast?” He kept his voice even, the words the only provoking things. His tone was neutral.
The gun wavered. Travis spit out a curse and holstered the gun.
“When she gets here, she dies. You get to watch that. And then you’ll have stopped being of use to me.”
With one more kick at Wyatt’s shins, the man walked back behind him, out of Wyatt’s vision. He wasn’t tied to the tree, so he had a little range of motion and freedom to move, but he didn’t dare turn around, not now.
Right now, he would wait. He couldn’t help Elsie if he was dead.
God help us. He prayed and then he started to form a plan. As he prayed, he dropped his hands to his side, hitting the lump on the edge of his pocket. His knife. How had he forgotten it earlier? There was a knife in his pocket, sharp enough to cut this rope. If he was careful...if he did this just right...
I’m going to need Your help, God. I’m never going to pull this off without You. He reached into his pocket, worked the knife out and toward his hand.
After several minutes of struggle, adjusting his position, moving his hands carefully, the knife was open on the ground. He rubbed the rope against it.
And finally, finally, the rope started to cut.