Chapter 3
Three
Sloane
Talk about hitting the ground running.
I haven’t even been officially hired yet, but Sheriff Junior Ewing told me to tag along into the mountains. I’d barely been in his office long enough for him to explain it’s a brand-new position he is looking to fill. One born out of necessity, from what I understand.
Libby’s small police department had all but disintegrated over the past years after a scandal took out some key players, leaving the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office to pick up the slack. The LPD is slowly being built up from the ground again, but not fast enough to meet the growing demands on law enforcement as crime is rising. Even in small-town Montana.
According to Ewing, it’s not easy finding experienced law enforcement officers willing to relocate to Libby, let alone take a pay cut, given the limited budget the Sheriff’s Office has to work with.
The position is for a detective who would report to the sheriff but is expected to also work together closely with the tiny Libby police force, which currently is only three. A full-time job with flexible hours, depending on caseload.
I could barely contain my excitement when he outlined it, it’s like the position was made for me. I was going to ask for a day or two to figure out childcare for Aspen. Pippa offered, as did Ama, but both of them work too. I’m going to need a better plan than simply counting on family.
Of course, that’s when Ewing received that phone call and I suddenly found myself ushered out of his office and into his cruiser. He mentioned a couple of hikers hearing screams overnight and finding a backpack. A search team had just located a young girl clinging onto the edge of a cliff. He suggested I might come in handy in talking to the girl.
“We found her name in the backpack, it’s Chelsea Littleton. Only fourteen years old,” he explains as we turn south on Hwy 2. “She’s from Columbia Falls, was reported missing this past weekend. Apparently, she took off on Friday after an argument with her parents, who thought she’d be back after she cooled off. They spent all night looking for her and when she still hadn’t shown up Saturday, they called it in.”
It’s Tuesday now. She’s been missing for four days. How does a fourteen-year-old girl get from Columbia Falls—which is northeast of Kalispell—to the mountains just south of Libby? That’s about a hundred miles, a long-ass way to come without transportation.
“She’s a long way from home,” I think out loud. “No way she got here under her own steam. Are you sure it’s the girl?”
“Not confirmed yet—apparently, she’s not talking—but it would be a bit of a coincidence to find a young girl matching the description of a missing person in the middle of nowhere, less than half a mile from where the backpack with her name was located,” he points out.
True enough, but I know from experience, drawing conclusions without supporting evidence can be a dangerous habit to get into for an investigator. Assumptions don’t get very far in court.
“Is she hurt? Any signs of visible trauma?” I ask.
“We’ll find out when we get there. EMTs are en route.”
We drive in silence, lost in our own thoughts, until Ewing steers the cruiser onto a dirt road leading up the mountain on the other side of the Fisher River.
“You know,” I start, unable to stop thinking about the four days the girl has been missing, and all that could’ve happened to her during that time. “If it is Chelsea, she didn’t get here by herself.”
I glance over to find Ewing looking back at me.
“Yeah, I know,” he confirms. “That’s why I figured it might be easier for her to talk to a woman.”
Clearly, he’s thinking along the same lines. There’s no way you can work in law enforcement, seeing what we see on a daily basis, and not have your mind go there. There are some sick individuals out there. The ambulance is not far behind us as we pull into the small parking lot at the base of the trail.
“They shouldn’t be too long,” Ewing announces as he gets out from behind the wheel.
I follow suit and get out of the cruiser as well, taking a deep breath in.
I’ve missed this; the scent of pine, soil, and cool, fresh mountain air. Living in Billings turned me into a bit of a city girl, and I haven’t really ventured out much since returning—I’ve mostly stuck around my uncle’s house this past week—but in this moment I realize how much more at home I feel here in the mountains.
I didn’t grow up here—initially my only tie to this area was my uncle living here—but there is a reason why I ended up here twice when my life hit a roadblock. As much as I’ve tried to deny it, this place is where I feel grounded and connected.
I’m just joining Ewing at the back of the ambulance where he’s talking with one of the EMTs, when I hear the distinct sounds of horses approaching. The light rattle of a bit, the creaking of a leather saddle, the soft thud of horses’ footfalls, and a distinct snort of alert as our presence is sensed.
Lucas Wolff is first to appear out of the trees. When I first started working as a sheriff’s deputy, he was still a federal agent with the FBI, but has since left the Bureau and joined the High Mountain Trackers’ team.
I’m not looking at him though, my eyes are focused on the pale, young girl slumped in front of him in the saddle. Her eyes are open but staring off in the distance. I get the sense she’s not even aware of her surroundings.
The EMTs have already removed the stretcher from the back of the rig and approach the lead horse. I watch as Wolff eases the girl down into the EMTs’ care. She barely even responds as she is strapped down on the stretcher and loaded into the ambulance.
“I want you to hop in there with her. See what you can find out,” Ewing instructs me in a low voice.
There’s a prickle at the back of my neck that has me whip my head around. My eyes slam into a pair of hazel ones, and in one instant it’s like the past eight years didn’t happen. He was angry then too. Seeing him is like a sledgehammer to the chest, stealing my breath.
He’s matured. His face is no longer clean-shaven but sports dark, scruffy facial hair. He has also filled out, his shoulders wider, and overall bulkier than I recall. Dan was always tall, but now he looks imposing, especially on the back of that big sorrel he’s riding.
The man has definitely not lost in appeal with age, and I feel my body responding.
Regret floods me, along with a wave of emotions I do not wish to put on display, so I straighten up, lift my chin proudly, and turn back to what I was brought out here to do.
For the sake of self-preservation, I resolutely push any thoughts of Dan from my mind.
In the back of the ambulance, Rick, the EMT, instructs me to sit on the bench by the girl’s feet while he starts an IV on her. She doesn’t seem to flinch with the poke of the needle, so I doubt she’ll be responsive to me, but we’ll see. One way or another, I’ll find out what happened to her.
I glance out the small back window when the ambulance takes off a minute or two later and catch sight of those same eyes, still scrutinizing me closely.
Dan
Thankfully the guys don’t razz me on the way back to the ranch, but every so often I catch a curious glance. I ignore those, needing a chance to recover from that blast from the past.
In the grand scope of things, eight years isn’t that long, but at times it almost feels like a former life and I was a different person. When I think back to the last time I actually saw Sloane, I almost don’t recognize myself.
I remember we were at the ranch, where Ama and Jonas’s wife, Alex, had prepared a light lunch for everyone after the funeral. Thomas, Jonas’s father, had brought out a bottle of twenty-year-old whiskey. I remember Ama having a fit, because the old man wasn’t supposed to be drinking alcohol or smoking his smuggled Cubans due to a heart condition, but that didn’t stop him.
I recall he ushered me out on the porch and into one of the rocking chairs, where he then proceeded to pour me about four fingers of the stuff in a tumbler. He handed me the glass, told me not to try and bury my pain, and left the bottle on the small table beside me. Then he went back inside, leaving me to grieve the loss of my mother who we’d just buried.
All I remember is putting a good dent in that bottle and then crying like a baby. At some point Sloane was there, pulling me out of the rocking chair before walking me back to my cabin and putting me to bed. I never saw her again.
“You doing okay?” Wolff asks when we walk our horses into the barn side by side. “I wasn’t expecting that,” he adds.
He briefly looks at me as he wraps his horse’s lead to the stall door.
“Me neither,” I confirm, instinctively knowing he’s referring to Sloane.
“Must be tough,” he probes.
I get along with all of my teammates but I’m probably closest with Lucas, even though he is a few years older. He lives in the cabin next to mine—the other guys all live elsewhere—and since neither of us are big on hanging out at one of the bars in town, we tend to stick around the ranch. We’ve spent quite a number of long, boring nights—especially during the winter—playing cards or watching movies.
We’ve also had some conversations, so I know a bit about him and he knows me better than most. It’s possible in one of those—often alcohol-infused—talks, I may have let on how much Sloane’s abrupt departure impacted me.
Which is why I’m inclined to answer instead of shutting him down.
“Harder than I’m comfortable admitting,” I confess.
I slide Will’s saddle off his back and drop it over the top of his stall door. Then I grab a handful of straw to rub him dry. On the other side of the aisle, Wolff does the same with his horse, Judge.
“You cared for her.”
I shrug. “I thought we were friends.”
I notice Wolff staring at me as he repeats, “You cared for her.”
Shaking my head, I return my attention to grooming my horse.
“Didn’t realize how much ’til she bailed on me right after my mother died.” I toss down the straw and remove Will’s bridle, opening the stall door for him. “Then I got pissed when she ignored me, not responding to messages or texts.”
“You’re still pissed,” Wolff concludes.
“Fuck yeah,” I respond, closing the door and grabbing the saddle. “She took off without a word, was gone for eight years, and suddenly she’s back. Damn right I’m pissed.”
Then I return my gear to the tack room and almost bump into Wolff when I walk back out. He blocks my path.
“Means you still care,” he imparts, not giving me a chance to counter before he steps around me.
I dismiss his comment and walk out back to grab one of the utility ATVs, so I can check on the guys doing repairs to the fencing on the north pasture. But throughout the afternoon, his words keep playing through my mind.
When I return to the ranch at the end of the day, I catch sight of the dark red Jeep I now know belongs to Sloane. What the fuck is she doing here?
I return the ATV and instead of hitting up the big house for an early dinner, as I’d intended, I start walking toward my cabin. I probably have a couple of eggs I can fry for dinner—that’s about the extent of my culinary skills—but I’m not in the right frame of mind for a confrontation with her.
Unfortunately, that choice is taken from me when she steps out the front door just as I pass by the steps up to the porch. She freezes when she spots me, and I come to a dead stop when I notice she’s carrying a car seat.
It’s like time is suspended and all the air is sucked from my lungs.
A punch of sharp pain hits my gut the moment my brain processes what I’m looking at.
A baby? Sloane?
“Hey, Dan,” she says in a soft voice, moving to the top of the steps.
My eyes are fixed on the white bundle packed in the carrier. I can’t see more than a little bit of a forehead and a shock of dark hair peeking out.
“This is my daughter, Aspen,” she explains, brushing the blanket out of the way to reveal a small, sleeping baby.
Then I let my eyes crawl up Sloane’s body and register the added curve to her hips and fullness of her breasts. I thought she was beautiful eight years ago when she was bordering on thin, but with that body filled out in lush curves she’s a fucking knockout.
My body’s response to her feels like another goddamn betrayal, and I don’t even bother keeping the anger out of my voice.
“Congrats. Hope you’re happy.”
With that I turn my back and focus on my cabin, forcing myself to walk and not run.