Chapter 6 Ryan #2
He didn’t waste time with questions. Ryan put the truck in gear and floored the accelerator.
The truck shot forward, tires squealing slightly as Ryan navigated out of the parking space and onto Main Street. He drove fast but controlled, years of tactical driving training allowing him to push speed while maintaining complete control of the vehicle.
Tessa gripped the door handle but didn’t complain about how fast they were going. She understood the urgency.
“What kind of sound?” Ryan asked, forcing himself to think tactically even as emotion threatened to overwhelm him. “What exactly did she hear?”
Tessa was trying to remember, her face scrunched in concentration. “She said it was like... a grunt maybe? Or a gasp? And then it sounded like something heavy hitting the ground. Then nothing. She tried to call him as the line was still connected, but he didn’t answer her.”
Ryan’s jaw clenched so hard it hurt. His father wouldn’t just drop his phone. Wouldn’t leave a line open by accident. Something had happened, he was sure of it. “Did she try calling him back?”
“Lori said she didn’t want to hang up, but then the line cut off,” Tessa said. “She tried calling back multiple times, but it just rings and rings with no answer.”
Ryan’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. His mind was already racing through possibilities and scenarios. His father was one of the most capable people he knew. Ryan tried to calm his fears. He could just be panicking because of everything happening in Pelican Bay.
But still, the truck ate up the distance between town and Pelican Bay. The drive normally took about fifteen minutes at a reasonable speed. Ryan made it in eight, the landscape blurring past in the darkness.
His side ached where the shrapnel injury was still healing, but he ignored it. Adrenaline was a powerful painkiller.
Finally, they turned onto Pelican Bay Lane. His tires crunched as he pulled into the driveway too fast, barely putting the truck in park before he jumped out.
Tessa was right behind him, the box of fuses forgotten on the seat.
Lori appeared on the porch of Sunrise House, Misty beside her. Even in the darkness, with only the porch light illuminating them, Ryan could see how pale she was. Her face was drawn, her eyes wide with fear.
“Did you find him?” Ryan called out to her. “Please tell me you found him.”
Lori shook her head as he was already moving toward her.
“No.”
“Where exactly did you look?” Ryan asked, stopping right in front of her.
“Seabird Cottage,” Lori said quickly, the words tumbling over each other. “I went through every room. The basement where the window was forced. All around the outside of the house. I looked everywhere. He’s not there.”
Tessa joined them on the porch. “Did you try calling again?”
“Five times since we spoke,” Lori said, holding up her phone like evidence. “It just rings and rings. He’s not answering.”
Ryan pulled out his own phone and dialed his father’s number. He put it on speaker so they could all hear.
Ringing. Once. Twice. Three times. Four.
No answer.
Then he heard his father’s voice, recorded and impersonal: “This is Mitch. Leave a message.”
Ryan hung up, his mind working through the options. His father could be unconscious. Could be restrained and unable to answer. Could be—
No. He wouldn’t go there. Not yet.
“Okay,” Ryan said, forcing calm authority into his voice. “We spread out and search. Tessa, you take the road and—”
Misty’s head suddenly jerked up, cutting him off mid-sentence. The German Shepherd’s ears went forward, her whole body going rigid with attention.
A low growl started in her throat, building in intensity.
Then she was barking, loud and frantic, the sound echoing across the quiet bay.
Before anyone could react, Misty lunged forward, accidentally knocking Lori and making her stumble.
“Misty!” Lori called, but the dog didn’t stop, didn’t even slow down.
She was running, heading away from the houses, toward the road, toward the beach access across from Pelican Bay Lane.
“Let’s follow her,” Ryan snapped, already running after the dog.
They all took off, their feet pounding on the ground as they crossed the road. Misty’s barking grew more frantic, more desperate, as she ran.
The beach access path opened before them, a sandy slope leading down to the water. Sand slipped under Ryan’s feet as he ran, his flashlight app casting wild shadows as he tried to keep Misty in sight.
The beach spread before them as they reached the bottom of the path, dark and vast under the night sky. The ocean murmured its endless conversation with the shore, waves catching moonlight.
Misty ran straight toward a dark shape on the sand. Twenty yards from the water’s edge. A shape that was too still, too wrong.
Ryan’s heart stopped.
Without even getting close, he knew it was his father.
Face down in the sand.
Not moving.
“Dad!” The word tore from his throat as Ryan reached him first, dropping to his knees beside the still form.
He carefully turned his father’s head to the side, and his breath caught. Blood matted in the hair at the back of his skull, dark and wet. A dark stain spread in the sand beneath his head.
Tessa and Lori arrived seconds later, both gasping for breath.
“Oh no,” Lori breathed, her voice breaking. “Mitch. Oh no, is he—”
Ryan’s fingers found the pulse point on his father’s neck and pressed against the skin, searching desperately for the flutter of life.
Relief flooded through him so intensely that he felt dizzy when he felt the pulse. “He’s alive.”
But the blood. The head wound. The fact that his father was unconscious and had been lying here alone in the sand for who knew how long.
This was bad. This was very bad.
Tessa already had her phone out. “I’m calling 911.”
Ryan did a quick assessment, his training taking over even as fear clawed at him.
The head wound was still bleeding, but not arterial.
That was good. No obvious neck or spine injury that he could see from his position, but he couldn’t risk moving his father to check without knowing the extent of his injuries.
Lori dropped to the sand on the other side of Mitch, her hands shaking as she reached for his.
“Mitch, can you hear me?” Lori said, her voice breaking on his name. “Please wake up. Please.”
Misty pressed close, whining low in her throat, her nose pushing against Mitch’s shoulder as if trying to wake him.
Tessa’s voice cut through, professional and clear as she spoke to the emergency dispatcher.
“Yes, we’re on the beach access off Pelican Road. There’s an unconscious male, approximately sixty-five years old, with a head injury. He’s breathing, but he has a head wound and is unresponsive. We need an ambulance immediately.”
Ryan used his flashlight on his phone, sweeping it around the immediate area, forcing himself to think beyond the fear, beyond the sight of his father’s blood on the sand.
His father’s phone lay a few feet away; it was still faintly glowing from the active call to Lori. Evidence of what had happened, of that last moment before the attack.
Footprints in the sand told a story. His father’s distinctive boot treads led down from the beach access. Other prints too, harder to make out, but definitely there. Someone else had been here.
And there, drag marks in the sand. Subtle but visible in the flashlight beam. As if something had been moved. A dinghy, perhaps?
Ryan’s hands clenched into fists. Rage mixed with fear, a toxic combination that made his vision narrow.
Whoever did this was going to pay.
“The ambulance is on the way,” Tessa said, crouching beside Ryan. “They said ten minutes.”
Ten minutes. It felt like forever and no time at all.
Ryan looked down at his father’s still form, at the blood-matted hair, at Lori’s shaking hands holding his.
“Hang on, Dad,” he whispered. “Just hang on.”