34. Dallas
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Dallas
The sun comes up whether you’ve slept or not.
That’s the first lesson ranch life teaches you, right alongside don’t stand behind a horse you don’t know and never trust a gate latch that looks “mostly fine.” Morning doesn’t check in.
It doesn’t ask if you’re okay. It just shows up, pale and cold and relentless.
It’s got a job to do, and your feelings aren’t on the schedule.
I’ve been awake for every damn minute of it.
The night at the station plays on a loop behind my eyes. Fluorescent lights that made everyone look tired and guilty, a desk that smelled of old coffee and bad decisions, and an officer with a practiced voice telling us things such as protocol and wait and she’s an adult.
As if being an adult makes you harder to disappear.
As if being an adult means no one can take you.
“Mr. McCoy,” he’d said, leaning back in his chair, settling in for a story he’d heard too many times. “We need to give it some time. People cool off. They take a drive. They come back.”
Faith’s mother had gone so still beside me I could feel the air change. Her hands were clasped tight in her lap, knuckles pale.
“She didn’t take a drive. She was waiting for Dallas.”
The officer had shrugged. “Sometimes it’s best to give a young woman space.”
Space.
Now it’s morning, and the sky outside my kitchen window is a washed-out gray-blue. The cold is sharper than yesterday, the kind that makes your breath feel like it’s scraping your throat on the way out.
Rusty thumps his tail once from his bed near the mudroom, then sighs. He’s disappointed in me for still being upright.
I’m disappointed too, buddy.
My hands shake when I pour another mug of coffee, the bitterness hitting my tongue as a dare.
Get up. Move. Act.
If I stop moving, I’ll start thinking.
Mom is already up. She doesn’t sleep much when someone she loves is hurting. She just becomes a lighthouse.
She’s at the stove now, flipping something in a pan that smells of bacon and stubbornness. Her hair is in a braid, cheeks pink from the heat.
“You’re up,” she says without turning.
“Haven’t been down,” I mutter.
That gets her to look. Her eyes sharpen, scanning my face the same way she used to check our knees for scrapes when we were kids.
“You eat?” she asks.
“No.”
She sets the spatula down with more force than necessary. “Sit.”
“Mom—”
“Dallas.” One word. That’s all it takes.
I sit at the table, a man obeying an order he didn’t agree to. She slides a plate in front of me. Eggs, bacon, toast. Food that tastes of home and guilt because I don’t deserve how steady she is.
“Eat,” she says.
I pick up the fork. My hand trembles.
Mom’s mouth tightens. “Any word?”
I shake my head, throat too tight to answer.
The kitchen is quiet except for the pan sizzling and the old clock ticking on the wall. That clock has been counting down my life for years. Counting the seconds since Belinda. Counting the minutes since Faith left Buckhorn the first time. Counting the hours since she disappeared last night.
“We’re going to find her,” Mom insists. “You know we will.”
I chew a piece of toast. It tastes of sawdust.
The back door opens, and cold air rushes in, followed by Boone’s big frame filling the doorway, carrying the whole outside world with him. His eyes land on me and go soft in a way that makes my chest crack.
“Morning,” he says.
Behind him, Nash stomps snow off his boots, and Clay follows, jaw tight, eyes stormy.
“We’re not waiting,” Boone says, and I know he’s not talking about chores.
Nash tosses his gloves on the counter. “I already called Jet and Laura. Jet’s got people checking cameras on Main. Laura’s got her diner regulars working as if it’s a damn FBI task force. Martha Lou’s already made a list. She loves a list.”
Clay is quiet. “I drove the south county roads before sunrise. Nothing.”
The word nothing hits me.
I keep eating because Mom’s watching and Boone will make it a thing if I don’t, but my stomach is a knot. Every swallow is pushing food through fear.
Boone pulls out a chair and sits across from me, forearms on the table. “Tell us exactly what you remember. From last night. From the moment you left her mom’s house.”
“I already did,” I mutter.
“Tell us again,” Clay says.
Because that’s what we do when it matters. We go over details until the truth shakes loose.
I drag a hand over my face. “I pulled up at six-fifty-five. Knocked. Maggie said Faith left ten minutes earlier to wait outside. She wasn’t out there.”
Nash leans against the counter, arms folded. “And there were no footprints?”
“Fresh snow,” I say. “Hard to tell. Maggie’s walkway was shoveled earlier. Porch had a dusting but…” My jaw tightens. “If Faith stepped off that porch, there would’ve been tracks. There weren’t.”
Silence drops.
Clay’s eyes flick to mine. “So she didn’t leave on foot.”
“She got picked up,” Boone says.
My hands clench around the fork. “Or she got dragged.”
Mom’s eyes flash. “Dallas.”
I swallow. “We don’t know.”
Boone nods once, accepting the truth for what it is. “We don’t. So we look.”
Nash pushes off the counter. “We split up. Check every damn place she might go if she panicked. Trails. Lake. The old mill. The bakery's back entrance. The church steps. That overlook on Creek Road where kids used to park and make bad decisions—”
“Do not talk about my bad decisions in front of Mom,” I mutter.
Nash’s mouth twitches. “Sorry. Our collective bad decisions.”
Clay glances at Boone. “You take the north route. I’ll take the back roads out toward Lawson’s place and the county line. Nash—”
Nash holds up a hand. “I’m already on it. I’ll check the town, talk to people who aren’t you. You look like you might scare someone into lying.”
“I’m not scary,” I say flatly.
Nash points at my face. “That’s the face you made when Wyatt spilled juice on your paperwork last week.”
“That face made him cry,” Boone adds, deadpan.
“I didn’t mean to,” I mutter.
Mom pushes a thermos toward Boone. “Coffee. Bring it back full if you don’t want me to worry.”
Boone smiles at her, quick and soft. “Yes, ma’am.”
The next few hours blur into movement and cold, and the sound of my own breathing too loud inside my coat.
I drive Faith’s usual routes first. The road out to the lake. The turnoff toward the old mill. The little overlook on Creek Road, where you can see Buckhorn spread out as a toy town under snow. The spot feels smaller now, quieter, holding secrets.
I stop, get out, and the wind slaps me hard. Snow crunches under my boots. I scan the edge of the guardrail, the tree line, the drop beyond. My eyes keep snagging on every dark shape as if it might be her.
It never is.
I head back toward town and swing by the bakery. Buttercup is closed, but there are footprints around the side alley. I follow them idiotically until they lead to a dumpster and a stray cat that looks offended by my existence.
At the church, I circle the building, check the steps, and the vestibule. Locked.
At the little park near the elementary school, the swings creak in the wind, empty. My chest tightens at the thought of Faith standing here, staring at the playground, picturing a different life.
I keep moving because stopping might as well be dying.
By noon, my phone is buzzing constantly. Nash checking in, Boone asking where I am, and Jet calls too.
“Dallas,” she says seriously. “I’ve got half the town checking in.
No one’s seen her since yesterday afternoon.
Laura says she hasn’t been at the diner.
The gas station kid says no one matching her description came in.
I asked about anything weird, and nobody’s sure, but Marty at the feed store says he saw a black SUV at the edge of town last night around six thirty. ”
My skin goes cold.
“Which direction?” I ask.
“South,” Jet says. “Toward the highway.”
I swallow hard. “Thanks.”
“You okay?” Jet asks.
No.
“I’m fine,” I lie.
She doesn’t buy it. “We’re going to find her.”
“I know,” I say, and hang up before my voice breaks.
By the time I drive back home, the sun is already dropping toward the trees, turning the snow a bruised blue. The day is slipping away, and panic rises with it, sharp and choking.
I park in the driveway and sit with my hands on the steering wheel.
This is how it started with Belinda, too.
A day that felt ordinary until it didn’t.
A phone call.
A moment that cracked my life clean in two.
I blink hard and shove the thought down.
Not that.
Not again.
I cannot get lost in all of that today. No way.