Chapter Twenty-nine – Out Go The Lights #2
Maisey opened a stall door as a crack of lightning filled the windows, turning the barn into a silver-toned mirage. The white light was immediately followed by another boom that shook the beams above us.
“What are you doing?” I demanded, grabbing her arm in an attempt to slow her down.
She jerked away and approached her horse, making soothing noises.
Fallon may own Titan, but he’d always been Maisey’s.
Maisey trusted the animal in a way she didn’t trust many humans.
She had a bond with him from years of doing complicated tricks together, and that bond meant the American Paint easily picked up on her emotions, snorting and pounding a hoof.
“The fastest way to catch up to the canine crew is on horseback,” she told me.
She was right, but I didn’t want her going out in a lightning storm with rain pouring down. I especially didn’t want her going without me, not with the doubts that had beat themselves into me on the drive still swarming in my brain.
She clicked at Titan and drew him out of the stall.
Even though she was rushed, I knew she wouldn’t skip the important steps to ensure her horse was safe, so I grabbed her saddle from the racks while she brushed Titan from the withers down and cleaned off the blanket.
Once the saddle was on and she was cinching the girths, I worked him into the bridle.
I’d barely secured it in place by the time she swung herself up.
I stepped in to check and cinch the strap myself and said, “Hold on while I saddle up Henry the Eighth.”
She shook her head, kneeing her horse to get him moving. “You can catch up. You know where I’m going.”
“Maisey,” I warned, grabbing hold of the bridle and halting Titan. He snorted unhappily, shifting at the tension. “No. You aren’t going by yourself.”
“Let go. I’m not waiting,” she said, and when I didn’t step away, unshed tears swam. “It’s already been over an hour since Fallon called us, Beckett. Nearly three hours since Lauren found his room empty. He’s been out there… He might be hurt. At the very least, confused and scared.”
“And this might all be another attempt to strike at you by your attacker,” I growled.
She paled and lifted a trembling hand to push back her wet hair. Just the race into the barn had soaked us both. Her blue T-shirt was already damp and clinging to her. She wasn’t dressed to be out in the rain.
“We’ll go. Together. But we need jackets. Hats. Flashlights,” I told her. “I need a horse.”
She inhaled sharply. “Fine, you go find us supplies. I’ll saddle Henry.”
I waited for her to slip down out of the saddle before I took off for the back door of the hotel. Someone on staff would have what we needed.
It took me longer than I’d wanted to gather the items, and when I made it back to the barn, my stomach plummeted. She’d saddled Henry the Eighth and looped his bridle over the hitching post, but there was no sign of Maisey or Titan.
I stuffed my arms into a jacket that was too small, jammed a baseball hat on my head, shoved the items I’d obtained for her in a saddle bag, and mounted the horse. As we headed out of the barn, I whipped out my phone and hit her number.
It rang once. Twice.
Fear grew.
Finally, she picked up. “Goddamn it, Maisey.”
“Fallon called. The trail died at the fire road. They can’t get a scent. It’s like he just vanished. I couldn’t wait any longer.”
If Lewis’s scent had disappeared, did it mean someone had picked him up?
Had he gotten into a vehicle? The dirt fire road was well-maintained.
As part of my job, I drove it regularly, ensuring the fire department had easy access to the property.
There was a bar gate at the entrance—a loose attempt to keep out trespassers—but a host of emergency services and ranch employees had the code to unlock it.
Worse, the gate was easy enough to drive around if you had a quad or dirt bike.
“You’re on your way there?” I demanded.
“Yes.”
“Once you get there, don’t go anywhere else without me or Fallon or Parker.”
“I gotta go. I’m coming up to the river.”
She hung up, and I let out a storm of swear words that had Henry shifting uneasily.
The rain had slowed slightly, but it was still a steady drizzle, and she was out in it. No jacket. No hat. The wind had picked up, not the icy teens and twenties we got in the winter but still chilly. Still much colder than early July should have been.
The mountains were wreathed in low clouds as I spurred Henry across the field.
Lightning struck the earth in a majestic display, sparking fears of fires, despite the rain.
Henry shied at the sight and the thunderclap that followed it, but I steered him back toward the hills.
The trees dripped, and rivulets of water raced toward the three rivers splitting the property.
The fields and slopes were slippery, which meant the cliffs rising above the pines and mist would be treacherous.
I had to believe Maisey wouldn’t go that far on her own.
That she wouldn’t leave the fire road without one of us with her, but I couldn’t help the cold dread that lit my veins, knowing she’d do anything for her dad.
For any of the people she loved. Hell, she’d be out here even if it were her shitty sister who was missing.
The safer route to the fire road was to head for the bridge crossing the northernmost river farther upstream, but Maisey hadn’t done that.
Hoof marks showed exactly where she’d led Titan across a shallow area in the river that preceded the drop to the lake.
Henry and I picked our way across while impatience warred with safety.
The relentless need to get to her, to make sure she wasn’t out there facing an unknown danger alone, drove me to urge the horse faster as we climbed onto the opposite bank.
Fear hung on me heavier than the mist on the mountains.
Something wasn’t right. Something I couldn’t name.
I dug my heels into Henry’s sides, sprinting with him up the slope to the road that wound into the mountains.
Relief loosened the knot in my chest as the fire road came into view, and I saw the blue-and-red swirling lights of a sheriff’s truck along with a small crowd of horses and bodies.
Faces glanced my way as Henry’s hooves thundered toward them. Vader saw me, barked, and came sprinting. Henry didn’t react, even as my dog dashed around him in circles.
As I neared the gathering, my relief vanished. No Maisey.
I pulled on the reins, drawing Henry up between my father and Fallon. Water dripped from their horses, cowboy hats, and waterproof jackets.
“Where’s Maisey?” Fallon and I asked at the same time.
Shock widened Fallon’s eyes. My heart pounded against my ribcage. Fear. Irritation.
“Fuck. She said she was coming here.” I twisted in the saddle, looking back the way I’d come.
“I followed her path. The hoofprints were easy enough to spot…” I trailed off.
Fuck, I hadn’t followed any prints after crossing the river.
Any marks Titan would have left had been lost in the thick piles of pine needles and leaves scattered along the forest floor on this side of the river.
When I said as much to both of them, Dad flicked the reins on the large roan he was riding. “I’ll head back to the river, see what I can find.”
I pulled my phone out, blocking it from the slow, steady rain as best I could while Fallon did the same. Maisey didn’t pick up for either of us.
The wrongness of the entire day loomed over me larger than the storm. She was alone. Goddamn it, she was alone.
Vader’s whines jerked my eyes to my dog. He was desperate for my attention and wound up from the tension in the air. Fighting the panic that tried to close my throat, I reached down from the saddle and distractedly rubbed his head.
“Hold on,” Fallon said. “I can locate her using the Find Family app.”
“You shared your locations.” Some of the pressure that had clogged my lungs eased.
Why hadn’t I demanded she share her location with me too?
I’d been too busy getting her a ring and declaring to the whole town I loved her to think of what she really needed—protection.
“We shared them in college so we could find each other in case we went on a date and…” she trailed off. “What is she doing up at the fire tower?”
The old firewatch hadn’t been used since the late 1990s.
Initially built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the early 1930s, the windmill-style lookout sat atop a cliff in a particularly rough area of Fallon’s property, abandoned by the forestry service.
I wasn’t sure when anyone had last been up there, as the path was difficult—a thin line with the cliff on one side and large boulders on the other.
It would be slick and wet in the storm, making any fall treacherous.
As alarm and fear morphed inside me to a breaking point, I tried to bat it back. Maisey had grown up playing on this land with Fallon. She knew her way around. Knew the dangers.
“Maybe her dad finally called her?” I said. “Maybe he somehow found his way up there?”
I doubted it myself, even as Fallon shook her head.
“No. After Maisey couldn’t locate Lewis using the app, Mom went back to her house and found his phone. It was just sitting on the railing of the back porch, turned off.”
“Does Maisey know?”
Fallon shook her head, scrubbing her thumb with her fingers. “I didn’t want to worry her more than she already was.”
I pulled the reins, starting Henry across the fire road and up the steep incline on the other side as Fallon called out behind me to wait.
I didn’t. I couldn’t. The apprehension that had clung to me since we’d arrived on the ranch pushed me to move.
To leave. To go find her, kiss her, and then yell at her for going off on her own.
Vader barked, running alongside Henry. “Find Maisey, bud,” I told him. “Maisey.”
He sniffed the air and took off up the slope toward the cliffs and the abandoned watch.
Vader wasn’t a trained tracker. He wasn’t even trained as an official firehouse dog.
He was more mascot than service animal, but he was going in the same direction Fallon had pinged on her phone, and that allowed a teeny bit of hope to leak in.
Fallon and Parker thundered up behind me, and all three horses shied as another bolt of light hit the ground not far from us, right as thunder rolled through the air. It took a moment to encourage the horses to move toward the storm instead of away.
“It’s too steep and rocky to take the horses all the way,” Fallon said. “We’ll have to leave them at the base of the cliff.”
We pushed our way through the trees. Branches slapped at us like wet knives. Cold and sharp.
By the time the old lookout peeked above the treeline, I was shivering as rain dripped down my back. All I could think was that Maisey was out there in a pair of yoga pants and a thin T-shirt. She’d at least had sneakers on her feet, but she’d be freezing by now.
As we entered a small clearing near the overgrown path leading up to the fire tower, Vader barked back at us from where he was circling Titan.
Maisey’s horse neighed a nervous greeting.
She’d left him there, untied, because you didn’t tether a horse in the forest. If they were attacked by a cougar or other wild animal, they needed the freedom to run.
“Maisey!” I shouted. The sound rebounded through the rain and clouds.
Fallon and Parker repeated my call.
Vader’s nose hit the ground near Titan’s hooves and then sprinted through the brush toward the rocky incline before I could stop him.
I slid down from the saddle and headed after my dog at a dead run.