Chapter 13
Dropping by the firehouse wasn’t a great idea, but Ryan was dodging her calls. Probably because she’d sent a text saying let’s talk. What had she been thinking? She’d thought about using their daily Snapchat streak to do it, but that wasn’t right. Snapchat was for fun.
She’d left Gracie at day care and run over on her lunch break. His truck was in the parking lot, so she knew he was there. She was tempted to text him they needed to talk about their parents because that would get him to text back, but that just felt mean.
Grabbing the strawberry muffins she’d picked up before coming over, she hopped out of her truck.
She clocked the moment he noticed her. His back stiffened and he said something to the guys before coming to meet her outside the station.
“What are you doing here?”
“You’re ignoring me,” she said.
She handed him the box of muffins.
“‘We need to talk’…you’re not Mom, Ava.”
“Duh. I had a session with Fern yesterday, and she mentioned you’d been stopping by to visit her.”
“Is that a crime now?”
“Okay, if you’re going to be like this—”
“You should just go. I’m not doing anything other than checking up on her. She’s alone here. Stuck in the hospital. She needs a friend.”
Ava hugged her brother with one arm, but he held himself stiff, probably because of her interference. “She does. You really do care about people in our community. I love that about you.”
“Yes, I do. So what’s the big deal?”
“As you said, she doesn’t have a lot of friends, and she’s come out of a scary situation…I don’t want to see either of you get hurt.”
Ryan shook his head at her. “Give it a rest.”
She never knew the right tack to take with Ryan. “Listen, I’m your big sister. I can’t say I remember the day Mom and Dad brought you home, but I’ve known you all your life, and if I can keep you safe…”
“Safety is a construct, Ava. You know that better than most.”
“I do. I just… Be careful. Both of you are—”
“Adults. Thanks for the muffins,” he said, turning away.
Ugh. She’d screwed this up big-time. “Want to play a video game this weekend?”
He stopped walking, glancing over his shoulder. “Maybe. Want to stop butting into my life?”
“Maybe. Love you.”
“Me, too.”
Feeling like she’d sort of salvaged things after she one hundred percent made them worse, she went back to her truck.
It wasn’t like she was coming out of left field.
Her parents worried about Ryan as well after the hiker he’d lost last year.
It had taken a toll on her brother, who hadn’t had a big loss like that in his life.
Ryan was the much-loved youngest child of a close-knit family.
Ava felt like she’d looked out for him, but the truth was Ryan had always been golden.
He genuinely cared about everyone. He’d been friends with the kid who sat by themselves in school.
Helped in the community and generally tried to save everyone.
Even when she’d come home from college scared to be alone, paranoid that someone was always following her. She wanted to do the same for him. Let him know he wasn’t alone. But she’d never been able to find the words to tell him that.
For all her training and knowledge in helping others, getting through to Ryan or her parents had always been a struggle. Now Chay was starting to fall into that area.
The more she cared for a person, the closer their relationship was, the harder she found it to be objective and to separate the help they needed from her affection for them.
She wanted to wrap Ryan in a big hug, tell him that he couldn’t save everyone, but there was a reason her brother was a firefighter…he needed to try.
Putting on her sunglasses, she started the truck and headed back to work. As she drove, she noticed a late-model sedan…the same one that had been parked in front of the Petersons’ house a few days ago. That day when she’d almost let panic get the better of her.
Ignoring the car, she pulled into the hospital parking lot. Breathing a sigh of relief as the other vehicle kept driving. Evidence like she’d told Fern to find, that no one in that car was following her.
She stopped by the day-care center for the last ten minutes of her lunch break. Gracie clapped her hands when she saw Ava and said, “Mamamamaa,” which of course made Ava’s heart melt.
“Gracie, you’re such a smart girl,” Ava said.
“Mamamamamaaa.”
She took her phone out and took a video to send to Chay.
“Gracie, say hi.”
“Huhh, mamamama,” Gracie said.
“Can you believe how smart our girl is?!”
She stopped the video and texted it to Chay. Kissing Gracie on the head and hugging her close. When she set her down, the little girl crawled back to the toy she’d been playing with.
“She’s really starting to thrive,” said Misty, one of the workers in the day care.
“Yeah. She feels safe,” Ava said. But it was a reminder to herself that safety and routine were the keys to healing when it came to trauma.
Her warning to Ryan may have been misjudged.
Fern might be helping him to heal as well.
Seeing the woman he’d rescued thrive was the best prescription for reminding him that he was good at his job.
Getting back to her office, she noticed her door was open and normally she kept it closed. Not open a lot, just slightly ajar. Maybe she’d left it that way. She had been in a rush to see Ryan.
Going inside, she checked her computer hadn’t been accessed and that no files had been taken. But her desk looked fine. Chay didn’t text back…which of course he didn’t have to, but she kept checking her phone.
Which wasn’t healthy. She put her phone on her desk and focused on work. Chay had been clear that three dates was the most he’d ever been on with one person. Was she painting him the way she wanted him to be or as he truly was?
The video that Ava sent was sweet, and he saw what she was doing.
Or was it manipulative? It was hard to separate well-meaning from manipulative.
He’d seen a therapist twice. Once right after his mom left him to make sure he was okay to go to school.
Those sessions had been difficult, but he’d done what he had to in order to stop going.
It hadn’t taken him that long to realize what the therapist wanted to hear him say. So he’d done it. Told her what she wanted. Grandmother didn’t buy it for a second, but she understood why. She just loved him and gave him space.
Space.
It was the one thing he hadn’t had with Ava. He liked her, and if it was just Ava, maybe he’d be handling the relationship better. But there was Gracie.
A baby girl that he was growing closer to. He’d mentioned to his grandmother about the visitation, and she was so excited. Already she was prepping for the baby’s visit.
Chay knew the more time he spent with her, the harder it was going to be to keep her out of his heart. He had the job to concentrate on. Reminding himself that work had been his savior as an adult.
Jacob sent an email with an update on some of the police stations that Chay hadn’t had time to talk to. They’d decided to split the list. There had to be something more they could find.
The officer he’d been talking to go back to him. “The house showed signs of people having been there, but other than smelling of urine, some used needles and discarded clothes, I couldn’t find anything to link it to our missing woman. Sorry, man.”
“It was a long shot.” Chay wasn’t ready to give up on this thread of the investigation. “Thanks for your help. Hope the wife is better.”
“Yeah, she’s getting there.”
After hanging up, he wondered if there were more abandoned cabins on the edge of the Navajo Nation. Grabbing his hat and coat, he let his team know he was going to be out for a while.
Driving back to where Fern had been found, he inspected the charred remains of the cabin. There had to be something they were missing; Chay just wasn’t sure he’d find it before another woman was taken.
But women went missing every day. He knew he was reaching a little…trying to tie the reasons together. Some women disappeared because of abusive relationships or even unwanted kids…
Chay realized that he was trying to give each of these women a motivation. Including Annie Ross. She’d been found dead, but her child could have been with her at some point, and maybe that meant that Annie hadn’t wanted to abandon Gracie.
Chay scratched his chin, walking around the charred cabin. Fern and Annie didn’t seem to be connected. He knew there had to be a line connecting them. But what was it?
Foster care was a nice start.
Both women, actually all three of Annie’s friends as well, had been shuffled around and hadn’t found a forever home. Had Annie been on her way to making one when she’d stumbled into something else? Or was she just a woman with bad judgment who’d died in the wilderness?
Please God, let there be more to it than that. Let Gracie have meant something more to Annie than something she’d left behind.
His phone pinged. Ava again.
In this mood, he didn’t want to talk to her. That feeling of being not worthy was so heavy that he could barely even read her message. Going back to his truck, he called his grandmother.
“Hello.”
“Ava says we can have visitation with Gracie. Do you want to see her tonight?”
“We’ve already discussed this. Are you okay?”
“Yes.”
“So, no,” she said gently. “Where are you? I know you put that tracker on my phone, but I can never find it.”
“I’m at that cabin where the woman was found. Just looking for anything that might give us a clue as to why she was held out here.”
“Did you find anything?”
Nothing but his past. And he hadn’t been left in the wilderness.
Except it had felt like that. He’d been raised in cities throughout the Pacific Northwest before his mom had brought him back to the Navajo Nation.
The reservation was small compared to the cities he’d lived in.
Too much open space and vistas that he’d never seen before. He’d felt like a foreigner.
“Chay, yazhi talk to me.”