Chapter Thirty-Seven
Brady
The helicopter cut east over the ridgelines, dropping lower as Firebrook Valley opened beneath us. From above, the town looked both painfully familiar and completely wrong.
The river still curved through the valley like a dark ribbon.
The roofs still clustered around Main Street, and the windows of Cookies and Coffee glowed warm against the deepening dusk.
Firebrook Valley was still Firebrook. It was still small, stubborn, tucked into the mountains as if nothing ugly had any right to touch it.
But ugly had touched it.
Red and blue lights pulsed on the roads leading in and out of town.
Cruisers blocked intersections that had never needed blocking, and black SUVs sat angled across access roads.
Farther out, headlights crawled along the timber lines in slow, organized sweeps.
Another helicopter moved over the ridge to the north, its searchlight dragging across the trees like a pale finger looking for something no one wanted to find.
Where are you, Evan?
My hand tightened around the strap across my chest. Elise sat across from me, her face pale in the dim cabin light, one hand braced against the seat as the helicopter banked. She didn’t reach for me.
I hated that.
But I was grateful for it.
The almost-kiss on the plane still lived between us, unfinished and dangerous. I could still feel the warmth of her breath on my lips, could still hear her saying love like she hadn’t meant to let the word loose. I’d told her not to use it yet.
Not here.
Not like that.
Not when Evan was missing and my trust in her had cracked wide open.
Below us, the town green came into view.
People moved around folding tables outside Mabel’s, carrying boxes, thermoses, flashlights, blankets.
Firebrook Valley didn’t know how to sit still in a crisis; it fed people, organized people, and gave scared hands something useful to do.
That should have comforted me. Instead, it made my throat burn because they had already taken action while I was just arriving.
The pilot’s voice came through the headset. “We were instructed to set down behind the station, Mr. Holliston.”
I looked toward the barn roads beyond town, toward the dark line of woods where my brother might be hurt, cold, and alone. “Do it,” I ordered, my voice harsh and foreign to me.
My mother had warned me to be careful. But I’d been so confident that my way was the better way.
Had Evan paid the price for my arrogance?
I thought I was a locksmith, a clever operator sorting out a thirty-year mystery in the desert.
The truth felt a lot more brutal: I was just a naive kid playing games while someone attacked my brother.
The helicopter touched down on a small, familiar field with a heavy, unyielding thud. I was out of my seat and throwing the latch when Elise’s hand closed on mine. I froze, then looked over my shoulder at her.
Even while clinging to my hand, her voice was clear and strong. “I want to be here with you, Brady. If you let me, I’ll do everything I can to help. But if not being here would make this easier for you, say it. I don’t want to be a distraction or make any of this harder for you.”
The urge to push her away fought directly with the primitive need to pull her into my arms. I was drowning in worry for Evan, and her grip was a vital, agonizing lifeline.
“I can’t let my family down again,” I whispered, the words tight. “I can’t be the reason we don’t find Evan.”
Her hand began to slip from mine. Just before it broke contact, I closed my fingers around hers, locking us together.
I couldn’t ask her to stay, and I couldn’t tell her to leave.
All I could do was look down into her eyes and pray that she was the woman my heart refused to lose faith in even when my head had begun to.
She seemed to understand. When I turned back to the task of opening the door, her hand was still in mine, her grip rigid but unbroken.
The New Hampshire air hit significantly colder than normal, or maybe I was the one completely out of sorts. Rotors whipped the grass flat around us, and the smell of damp earth, river water, and exhaust hit me all at once. It didn’t feel like home.
What have I done?
A deputy I didn’t recognize waved us toward the police station. He had a radio clipped to his shoulder and the drawn, over-alert look of someone who had been running on bad coffee and worse news for too many hours.
“Brady Holliston?” he called over the fading chop of the blades.
“Yeah.”
“Your father’s inside.”
My grip tightened around Elise’s hand before I could stop it, a physical reflex against the oncoming storm.
Inside, the station had been turned into a war room. Maps covered the tables, radios hissed, and someone had taped a printed photo of Evan to a whiteboard, his name written above it in thick black marker.
Evan Holliston: missing
My stomach lurched.
It sounded clean, temporary, like misplaced keys or a phone left in the wrong jacket pocket.
It didn’t fit my brother. Not the man who had pulled me out of the creek when I was six and too proud to admit I couldn’t swim the current.
Not the brother who had taught me how to throw a punch and then immediately told me I should almost never use it.
Things like this didn’t happen in our valley. People might get lost, but no one was taken.
My throat closed. Elise’s fingers squeezed mine like she could read the internal chaos.
Tim was near the largest map, talking to Laurent and two men in dark suits I didn’t know.
His face was grave, his hat shoved back on his head, one hand braced on the table like it was the only thing keeping him standing.
Search zones had been marked in red and yellow: the barn, the north ridge, the timber road, the river bend.
Places they’d checked were marked off. Places he was likely to be were red and where he likely wasn’t were yellow.
I wanted to run straight out the door and into the woods, but I forced myself to stay planted. If charging blindly into the dark would have helped, half of Firebrook Valley would have already found him.
I found my father in the back conference room, pacing in tight, volatile circles while two deputies tried to keep up with him.
His tie was loosened, his hair mussed from dragging his hands through it, and his shirt sleeves were rolled unevenly at his forearms. My father didn’t unravel, not where people could see him.
But there he was, moving like a man who had pulled every lever available to him and discovered none of them reached his son.
“Dad,” I said.
He turned fast. For half a second, his eyes were wild and defensive. Then recognition settled in, followed by something that looked almost like relief before he crushed it back under control.
“Not now, Brady,” he said roughly. “If you’re here to ask questions, ask Tim. I need answers, not more people standing around looking scared.”
His words stung. Is that how he saw me? As his frightened youngest?
I squared my shoulders and set my jaw. With Bella and Evan always rushing to put out the fires first, it had been easy to let them take the lead. But Bella wasn’t with Dad right now, and Evan couldn’t be.
And Dad’s hands were shaking.
He’s scared.
Tim and I exchanged a quick look across the room. He nodded toward my father, then toward the door, sending a message I understood instantly.
“Dad,” I said quietly. “Look at me.”
His eyes cut to mine.
“We’re going to find him.”
His jaw tightened. “We damn well will.”
“But maybe you need to step away for a bit. Give everyone time to do their jobs.”
The room around us stilled, and my father’s glare could have stripped paint. “And what exactly do you suggest I do?”
“Come with me to Mabel’s.”
His expression hardened. “I’m needed here.”
I glanced around the crowded room. On a good day, my father’s energy could overwhelm a space. If he was slowing the process down at all, I’d found the first area where I could actually be useful.
“Cookies and Coffee is exactly where you should be.” I heard my own voice steadying as I spoke. “Bella said the press is already sniffing around. I’ve been tasked to come up with a plan for how to handle them and you’re good at that.”
He wasn’t, but it was the one pitch I knew would get him to leave the room with me.
“We have people for that.”
“I need your expertise, Dad.” I took one more step into his space, an intentional act of defiance against his isolation. “Come with me.”
“What’s happening, Brady?” he asked, his voice dropping into a quieter, hollow register. “I don’t understand.”
I waited.
His voice lowered so only I could hear. “I reached out to my contacts at The Beacon and none have answered me.”
The statement stopped me. My father had built his entire life on that network. “What do you mean they won’t answer?”
“I mean they won’t take my calls.” His laugh was quiet and ugly. “I’ve left messages for my parents but even they haven’t responded.”
My stomach tightened. “You told them Evan is missing?”
“Yes.” His jaw flexed. “And still, nothing.”
A cold weight settled deep inside me. For all the ways my family had been broken, there had always been certain rules: show up when it mattered, protect the name, protect the bloodline, and protect the image if love was too much to ask for.
My grandparents failing even that felt wrong in a way I didn’t have the room to examine right now.
What would stop them from helping?
Or who?
“Dad,” I lowered my voice. “Was Evan involved in a deal that went badly?” I swallowed hard, forcing the next name out. “Maybe with Dominic Corisi?”
“I don’t think so.” My father dragged a hand down his face. “Bella and Drew know him, not Evan. And thank God they do. He’s the reason the mountain is on lockdown. I’ve never seen anything like it. No one in or out unless they go through his people. And he’s been flying in search teams all day.”
I hated to do it, but I had to ask. “Are we certain we want them to find Evan?”
“What are you saying?”
“It just seems like a lot of effort to put in unless there’s a reason he’s somehow personally invested in the outcome of the search.”
“Are you suggesting that Corisi had something to do with Evan’s disappearance?”
“I’m not suggesting anything. I’m asking questions.”
Dad looked toward the station windows, where the red and blue lights strobed across the glass.
“I hope you’re wrong because right now we need him.
” His voice sharpened, drawing my focus back.
“His people are searching the trunk of every car that tries to leave, Brady. Every trunk. Do you understand what that means?”
I did.
I wished to God I didn’t.
It meant they were no longer only looking for Evan alive in the woods. The room narrowed around the thought, the full weight of the crisis pressed on me.
My father followed my line of sight then, his attention shifting over my shoulder and landing squarely on Elise.
The air changed immediately. Elise tensed beside me, her posture snapping straight as she took in the sudden shift.
My father’s eyes narrowed slightly, despite his exhaustion.
I made a split-second choice, stepping in and putting my arm securely around her waist. “Dad, this is Elise,” I said. “She’s with me.”
My father looked at her for a long, silent beat. Then he gave a curt, weary nod. “Bad day for introductions,” he said, his voice settling into a more respectful register. “But if Brady asked you here, I’m glad you came.”
Elise met his gaze dead-on, no flinching, no safe cover stories. “Thank you. I’m sorry about Evan.”
Something moved across my father’s face before he locked it back down. “So am I,” he said, the raw simplicity of the words striking a chord.
Then another radio crackled in the outer room, and the spell broke.
“Dad,” I said. “Where’s Mom?”
“At Mabel’s,” he answered. “Beth is helping with the children since half the town is out searching.” He glanced toward Elise, a protective edge returning to his tone. “It’s loud. Crowded. Emotional. Not exactly a gentle entry into Firebrook Valley.”
Elise didn’t hesitate for a single second. “Tell me what you need,” she said, her voice clean and certain. “I’ll do whatever I can.”
My father’s brows lifted faintly, then his lips twisted with a hint of an approving smile. “Good,” my father said, moving toward the conference room door with a renewed sense of purpose. “Then let’s go.”
We stepped back out into the harsh air behind the station. The helicopter was lifting off again, rotors beating the dark into pieces as it rose toward the ridge. Somewhere beyond town, another searchlight swept through the trees.
Evan was out there. My father strode ahead, stopping to speak to another man in a suit I didn’t recognize.
I paused, bending forward with my hands on my knees for one breath, then another, the crushing weight of the entire crisis hitting my chest all at once.
A hand touched my back. Elise. Light, but steady.
I straightened quickly, catching her wrist before she could pull away. I gathered her close, needing her physical strength while she held on to me with a force that bordered on bruising.
I eased back to look down into her dark eyes, a dangerous want warring openly with my inability to fully trust her yet. “We aren’t okay.” My voice was rough and tight. “Not yet.”
Her expression didn’t flinch. “I know.”
“But don’t you dare leave.”
Her fingers slid down until they locked securely with mine. “I’m not going anywhere.”
I wanted to believe that; God help me, I did. I looked into her eyes, then asked the question that had been sitting like a stone in my chest since Nevada. “Does your father know where we are?”
Her face went very still. “I don’t believe so. Not yet.”
“Elise.”
“I know.” Her voice stayed quiet. “I should call him, and I will, but not until I can do it without giving him information he doesn’t already have.”
I hated that the answer made sense, and I hated that I was relieved she hadn’t called him. I didn’t know whether that made her loyal to me or still loyal to him, but she didn’t look away.
“What will you do if he’s involved?” I asked.
Her chin lifted with fierce conviction. “I don’t know yet, but this doesn’t seem like something he would do. It’s too . . . visible. He builds the fortresses. He doesn’t storm them.”
For a second, I glimpsed the beautiful woman from the garage bay. Independent. Strong. With the same yearning for more. Coming to Firebrook Valley with me would have repercussions for her, but she hadn’t let that stop her. “Thank you for being here, Elise.”
She nodded slowly, her eyes filling with tears she didn’t allow to spill over. “Always.”