Chapter 34
Cloud Gap Cabin — Seconds After the Discovery
Scout didn’t move.
Couldn’t.
Sara Parker lay in Tessa’s bed. Alive.
Kyle stepped back, white-faced. McHan called out vitals. Scout barely heard any of it—only the thin, shallow rise of Sara’s chest.
The EMTs moved fast. One slid an oxygen mask over her face while the other checked her pulse again, voice calm, practiced.
“Let’s go.”
They lifted her onto the stretcher.
Scout stepped in front of them without thinking. Not blocking—just… there. A wall made of instinct.
“Hold up.” His voice came out rough.
The EMT hesitated. “Deputy—”
“Just—” Scout swallowed hard. “Just a second.”
He leaned down.
Sara’s skin was pale, cold at the edges, but warm where it mattered. His thumb brushed her cheekbone, gentle like he was afraid she’d vanish if he blinked.
Her lashes fluttered. Not awake. Not aware. But alive.
Scout’s throat tightened until it hurt.
“Thank God,” he whispered.
The words weren’t relief. They were a release.
Then his eyes lifted.
The room hit him again like a punch: Tessa’s bag on the floor. Her laptop open.
Sara was back.
Tessa was gone.
Scout stepped aside.
The stretcher rolled past him, wheels thumping over the threshold, and the emptiness it left behind felt louder than the sirens. At the end of the drive, the ambulance’s siren warbled to life, the rising wail cutting through the quiet around the cabin.
Burke snapped into command.
“McHan, get CSI out here now. Call K-9 and notify Dispatch—we need full search teams on standby.”
Kyle wiped a hand across his mouth. “I’m calling Raleigh HQ. Agent Quinn is one of ours—we need backup on the ground.”
Burke nodded. “Do it.”
Scout walked straight out onto the deck, the cold air slamming into him hard enough to knock the wind out of him. He gripped the railing until his hands ached. Last night had felt like a beginning.
Now it felt like he’d stepped off something solid and missed the ground.
Footsteps behind him. Burke. Slow. Careful.
“Scout,” he said.
Scout shook his head, eyes locked on the tree line.
“She was here. She texted me when she got home. I should’ve—”
“Don’t,” Burke said. “Don’t do that.”
Scout swallowed, breath coming rough.
The door creaked.
Kyle stepped out onto the deck.
He didn’t speak at first.
Just looked at Scout.
“She left your place at nine-thirty.”
It wasn’t a question.
Scout stiffened.
Burke shifted—subtle but deliberate—placing himself between them.
Scout’s voice came hollow, still aimed at the ridge.
“We just… started something.”
Burke didn’t look at Kyle. His thumb rubbed the pale ridge of an old scar on his knuckle, the way it did when the past got too close.
“I know.”
Scout turned, eyes dark with something dangerous.
“If one of those professors has her—”
His voice shook, fury barely leashed.
“So help me God, Burke—if one of them has her—”
“We’ll find her,” Burke said. “We start now. You hear me? We start now. You stay sharp—she's counting on us.”
Behind them, engines rumbled up the gravel. Radios crackled. Boots hit the porch. The metallic slam of doors and the distant bark of a K-9 unit cut through the morning air.
The investigation had begun.
Scout pushed off the railing and followed Burke back inside.
He could move now.
Every oath stayed locked behind his teeth, ready to be broken if he had to. Whatever line he crossed to get her back, he’d live with it.
He just had to make sure she lived long enough for the choice to matter.
Sheriff Burke Scott
From the porch, Burke watched the yard fill—cruisers, K-9 units, tech vans jockeying for space in the gravel. The scene was all motion: orders barked, evidence bags passing hand to hand, medics loading Sara into the ambulance.
It should have felt like progress.
Instead, all he could see were the empty spaces.
Caitlin on that mountain.
Sara on that ridge.
Now Tessa—gone from a cabin that should have been safe.
Three hard hits in as many weeks.
And this time, it wasn’t just one of his deputies. Raleigh would already be on the line—an NC SBI agent taken in his county. The cavalry was coming—with oversight, questions, and no patience for how mountains swallowed evidence.
He flexed his hand once, knuckles tightening along the old scar.
A sheriff was supposed to bring his people home. Not watch them vanish on his watch—not with the state breathing down his neck and his own county looking to him to fix it.
“We’re not losing another one,” he said under his breath—more promise than prayer.
Then he squared his shoulders and headed back inside.
Raleigh could bring all the brass they wanted.
The hunt started here.
And it started now.