Saturday, 1:49 p.m.
Outside, the sky was smokier than Leyna had expected. After she loaded the bag and two canvases in the back of her Ford Focus, she propped her phone in the closest cupholder. She wanted to be ready when she caught a signal.
When Meredith approached the passenger seat, she wrinkled her nose. “I should’ve brought my sheets. I’m guessing yours aren’t linen.”
“Actually, Mom, I sleep on a burlap sack.”
Her mom slid in beside her. “I’m so sick of this crap,” Meredith said. “I’m not even going to complain if it snows all damn winter.”
A memory floated, no more substantial than a fleck of ash. When Leyna reached for it, it dissolved as easily.
Leyna had always loved Plumas County winters—the earthy scent of petrichor after the first rain, trees and mountains frosted with fresh snow, puffs of breath hanging in the air like tiny clouds. Everything green and white and quiet. But Grace and her mom both hated the cold. All winter, Grace would complain about the short days and the hideous sweaters and bulky boots she was forced to wear.
Why can’t we move to San Diego so I can wear sandals all year?
Grace would stay in her sundresses and blouses well into autumn, until her exposed skin grew too numb and she packed them away in defeat. Winter always won.
Around them, the ash swirled like flakes of snow.
Her mom spoke then—“Forgotten how to drive?”—but Leyna was so absorbed in her memory that the voice seemed to come from a great distance. Heartbeat spiking, she pulled out the Polaroids. She flipped through them, stopped on the one of the potluck. Her eyes burned, but she forced them wider. She couldn’t be sure.
She grabbed her phone and quickly scrolled through the photos. She zoomed in on one she’d taken of the collage on Grace’s wall.
In her left hand, Leyna held the Polaroids. In her right, the phone. For several seconds, her eyes darted between them. Then, nearly breathless, she turned to her mom.
“I need to talk to Dominic.”
Her mother’s eyebrows shot up and she folded her arms across her chest. She stared for a beat, then said, “Why the hell would you need to do that?”
The Durans were gathered in the driveway preparing for their own evacuation when Leyna approached. When he noticed her, Dominic walked toward her, which earned him a disapproving look from Olivia. Rocky didn’t seem happy to see her again either.
Olivia scowled at her son. “We need to leave,” she said.
Dominic gave his mom a quick hug. “I’ll meet you in town,” he said, and returned his attention to Leyna. “What’s going on, Ley?”
Olivia seemed unsure what to do. She stood halfway down the driveway. “I’m not leaving without you.”
At her obvious panic, Leyna felt a pang of guilt. She was about to wave off his help—Never mind. I can do this alone—when Dominic called over his shoulder, “I’ll be right behind you, Mom.” When Olivia still didn’t move, he added, “Get Thea out of here.”
That did it. Olivia lifted Goose into the back seat next to Thea.
Once Dominic and Leyna had moved out of earshot of his parents, she held up the Polaroid taken at the neighborhood potluck. He squinted at the photo; the groove between his eyebrows deepened.
“Do you remember what month this was?” she asked.
“Late September, early October.”
“You’re sure?”
He nodded. “It was my first trip home after I started college.”
On her phone, Leyna zoomed in on a second photo of the potluck, this one part of the collage that still hung on Grace’s wall. Enlarged to that scale, the image blurred slightly, but it was clear enough that her pulse quickened as it had minutes earlier when she’d made the connection.
Leyna stabbed the screen. “I’ve been focused on the photos we found in Rocky’s cottage when I should’ve paid more attention to the ones still on her wall.”
Dominic leaned closer, staring over her shoulder. Her heartbeat grew more erratic. She blamed the thickening smoke.
In the printed Polaroid, Grace was standing, partially obscured by Leyna on one side, Adam on the other. Grace had always known how to find her best angle. But in the second photo of the potluck, Grace sat in a folding chair, hands folded on her stomach.
Did Leyna imagine the extra bulk there? Though it was only early autumn, Grace already wore one of the sweaters she hated.
Leyna lifted her phone closer to Dominic’s face. “We know Grace couldn’t have been pregnant when she went missing—”
“So you’ve said.”
“But what about earlier?”
He took the phone from her and studied the screen. After a moment, he handed it back. “The potluck was right before she went to stay with your dad for a few months,” he said, slowly but with contained excitement.
Spoken aloud, the theory didn’t sound as crazy as it had in her head.
“It was four months, I think,” she said. “That math works perfectly.”
“So even if Grace—”
He stopped abruptly, but she knew what he’d intended to say: Even if Grace died the night she disappeared, Ellie might still be Leyna’s niece—and, if Adam was the father, Dominic’s too.
Leyna forced herself to finish the sentence Dominic couldn’t. “If Grace is dead, the Byrds could’ve adopted her.” She hesitated, working through her conversation with Ellie’s friend and the doubt that still intruded. “But Amaya insists she’s seen Sarah Byrd’s C-section scar.”
“You talked to Ellie’s friend?” At Leyna’s nod, he asked, “What else did she say?”
Aware they didn’t have much time, she recapped the call quickly. Less than a foot separated them, and though she knew she imagined it, she felt the heat of him against her skin. The familiar cedar scent he always carried with him mingled with the pines and junipers and oaks. He’d always smelled like home to her. He moved closer suddenly, now only inches away, and she thought he’d noticed something she missed. But then he turned to her, his face serious, his eyes so dark they appeared black. Dominic touched her cheek, and she was transported back to his tiny apartment ten years before, fighting him for the last pot sticker. When he kissed her now, his tongue tasted of ash. She was sure hers did too.
He stepped back, and as he stared, she saw that he breathed as heavily as she did. Probably not smart, considering all the smoke.
His expression held a hint of regret, as if the kiss was a preemptive goodbye. She turned away before he could translate that expression into words. She couldn’t survive another goodbye from him.
The silence grew charged. Awkward.
Dominic spoke; his voice was huskier than before. “What if Ellie came back here?”
“After Quincy?”
“Yeah.”
Leyna had considered that. She’d run through the timeline over and over, but each time, she’d dismissed it because the math didn’t work.
Just as she had with the pregnancy.
So she ran through the timeline again.
At about ten thirty a.m. Thursday, Ellie stopped at the market in Sierraville for gas and snacks. She’d asked the two workers if they were familiar with Plumas County. When they’d said no, she left without showing them the photo.
She’d then gone to Portola where, according to Serena Silvestri, someone at the post office recognized Ridgepoint Ranch from Ellie’s photo. Later, Serena helped Ellie out by verifying Adam’s and Dominic’s identities and pointing her toward the youth center where Dominic worked.
So Ellie headed to Quincy. Dominic wasn’t there, but she asked around about him and about Adam. She left the youth center by one thirty p.m.
That was the last place Ellie had been seen—but it hadn’t been her last known location. She’d continued to update Amaya, who also tracked her on her phone. The last text from Ellie had been delivered Thursday afternoon.
But there had always been a major flaw in that timeline. A phone could be taken, and texts could be faked.
“Can I see that video from the security cameras at the youth center?”
He looked confused, but he pulled out his phone and found the video. As it played, she zoomed in as much as she could. She had missed it the first time because she hadn’t been looking for it.
A small flash of gold. Even enlarged, it was no more than a sliver poking out from the sleeve of her hoodie.
The bracelet. In Quincy, Ellie had still been wearing it.
Which meant she’d come back here. The Miller house was the last place any trace of Ellie had been found.
In a blink, it all disappeared—the kiss, the fire, even her questions about what happened to Grace. Leyna’s heart seized.
“She’s here.”
Of course Ellie returned to Ridgepoint after she’d gone to Quincy. From the moment Ellie had arrived in Plumas County, her quest had been focused on Adam and Dominic. When she’d asked around, they were the subjects of her search. She hadn’t asked about Grace. Serena had identified Leyna’s sister in the photo, but Ellie hadn’t seemed interested in her. No. She’d only asked for help identifying the Duran brothers.
Leyna tried not to think of the implication—that Ellie didn’t ask about Grace because she’d already learned from her parents that Grace was dead and that was the reason they’d adopted her. That must be where Ellie had gotten the photo—from the Byrds.
Leyna paused the video and tapped the screen. He saw it immediately.
Dominic whispered, “Told you that you were the smartest of us.”
“But if Ellie’s still here, where is she?”
Between Dominic and the deputies who’d come through the day before, they’d checked all the houses, all the buildings, even the abandoned clubhouse.
Leyna scrolled through her phone, stopping on a photo of the blueprints she’d taken in Rocky’s cottage. This one showed the location of the original ranch house, long since torn down, and a cabin near the northern edge of the property. Leyna remembered the stories about that cabin—a family had squatted there before a brutal winter had driven them away—but she hadn’t gone that far into the woods.
But Grace had been more reckless. She had a Polaroid of that cabin. Leyna was sure of it. Fingers shaking, she quickly found the photo on her phone. It showed a small cabin in disrepair, with a sagging roof and walls that gaped.
Leyna felt Dominic’s gaze, likely curious at her sudden inability to take a full breath.
Leyna poked the screen. “Where is this?”
“That cabin was abandoned years ago.”
“You sure?”
As she waited for his response, she tried to ignore the bit of ash that clung to her eyelash and the smoke growing thicker around them. She forced from her mind an image of the wildfire burning closer.
What if Ellie hadn’t knocked on Meredith’s door because she’d never made it that far? Someone had taken her, maybe at the Miller house. And if that was the case… that cabin was the perfect place to torture someone or dump a body.
Leyna tried not to think about that or that the wildfire was even closer to the cabin than it was to them.
“We need to find her,” Leyna said, too softly for him to hear. Leyna yelled to her mom that they would be right back, and when she turned, Dominic was already jogging toward the forest.
As they moved quickly through the trees, Leyna let the arid wind wash over her until her eyes burned. After a few minutes, Leyna paused to look around. She was pretty sure they were lost. A hot wind whined, rattling branches. The smoke made it harder to see, and at some point, they’d veered off the trail. Where the hell were they?
She was just about to ask Dominic if he knew where they were when she saw a tree formation she thought she recognized. Relieved, she pointed. Neither of them wasted their breath on words.
Dominic jogged ahead. Or maybe she held back. Either way, the gap between them widened. She was still deciding whether she really had seen that stand of trees before when the world exploded, and Dominic collapsed onto the forest floor.