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Zoe
Zoe knew the situation was dire, but she couldn’t help but enjoy herself. She was with people she liked, doing something kind of fun. And this fun activity was also good. She was doing something good, something worthwhile, something to help someone, and she thought this might be what was giving her the joy in her heart.
She allowed herself to feel pretty good about herself until she made eye contact with Levi’s mother. Then all that good feeling melted and ran away. They’d reentered the church empty-handed. They weren’t giving up, of course. They had only come back to get a different map, but still—she felt guilty.
Jason looked down at the map table and whistled. “Man, that’s a lot of area to cover.”
Adam had lightly shaded the areas they’d already searched, and there were precious few of them.
Adam stood up straight and held out his hand for the map Jason was holding. “Yes, yes it is. Did you find anything?”
Stupid question, Zoe thought. If they had, they would’ve mentioned it by now.
“No, not yet. But we’re not stopping. We just came in for another map.”
Emma had stepped closer to the table, and her mother had handed her hot chocolate. “What if he moves?”
“What?” Jason asked.
“What if we search an area, say it’s empty, but then he moves into it?”
Adam didn’t seem surprised by this question. “That’s entirely possible, especially if he’s trying to make his way home. If we don’t find anything on the first sweep we’ll go again, and we’re keeping an extra close eye on the area right around his home.”
Jason looked at the door, which was shut. “Do we have enough people for that?”
Zoe was thinking the same thing. She looked around the sanctuary for her grandmother, who was busy in the prayer circle. “I thought more people were coming?”
Adam’s face was expressionless. “I hope more are. Until then, we do our best and let God do the rest.”
Zoe wasn’t so sure. There were only a couple dozen of them. How could they search the whole peninsula before dark?
“All right,” Jason said. “We’d better get to it, then.” He turned toward the door. Emma followed, and her mother shoved more food at her as she went by. Derek was over by the doughnut boxes. “You coming, Derek?”
Derek grabbed a stack of doughnuts and nodded. Then he followed them outside.
Once they were inside the car, Zoe asked, “What area did we get this time?” as she snapped her seatbelt into place.
“Right beside the last one,” Jason said. “Only on the shore. It was a waste of time to drive to the church and back. He should’ve given us a stack of maps.”
“Nah,” Derek said. “The break gave us a chance to warm up our tootsies.”
Jason didn’t even crack a smile.
Zoe waited until they got out of the car at their next stop before quietly asking, “Are you okay?”
He gave a slight shake of the head. “Yeah. I’m fine.”
She wasn’t buying that, and he must have sensed it, because he added, “I’m just starting to think we’re not going to find him. Or if we do find him, it will be too late.”
“We only just started looking.”
“I know, but there’s a lot of area, and there are so few of us. And who’s to say that he’s even anywhere near Carver Harbor anymore? He could have gone to Bangor or Ellsworth or somewhere even further. How would we know?”
Zoe thought about it. “The police must have tracked his phone, right? And if he’d left the area, they would have told his mother.”
Derek was walking toward them now. “You’re making an awful lot of assumptions there, Chloe.”
She scowled. “Zoe.”
He smiled. “I wouldn’t bet that the police have done any of that stuff.”
Zoe didn’t like being told she was wrong. “Hang on.” She pulled her phone out. “I’ll call my grandmother.”
