Prologue
REAL CHANCE…
Eighteen Years Ago
Ethan Moore blinked. His stomach, used to gruesome sights from his study of forensics, twisted into a painful knot.
His heart alternated between crashing painfully against his ribs and stopping altogether.
He stared at the words that had been scrawled on the back of an envelope and shoved through the mail slot.
The letters blurred and his hand shook. Then, with a sharp inhale, he crumpled the note in his fist.
His other hand was pressed against his chest, directly over the spot where his heart hid behind his sternum. There was an ache, as if he had been physically hurt. Maybe there was a reason it was called a broken heart. The sternum wasn’t designed to protect from hurt that came from the inside.
Ethan, I’m headed home for the holiday weekend. Sorry about the trip you’d planned. It was great getting to know you.
Jordan
“What the fuck? ‘Great getting to know you?’” That translated into something like Don’t let the door hit you on the ass on the way out. But it was Jordan who was moving fast to distance himself—from Ethan.
They’d been friends since the start of grad school, and ‘more than friends’ since mid-summer, almost a year now.
Inseparable. And yet, there had been warning signs, and Ethan had admittedly chosen to ignore them.
Had he felt a bit like a dirty secret? Yes.
But he’d reasoned that once they graduated everything would change.
Then, Jordan would be out from under the influence of his brimstone-and-fire preacher father and judgey family.
Not that Ethan had ever met any of Jordan’s family.
Over the last winter holiday, they’d both made excuses to not go to their prospective homes and instead had spent two weeks in each other’s orbit.
Then New Year’s Day, they’d bundled up and hopped into the Jeep, and Ethan had driven them out to the coast, regardless of the storm rolling in.
Hand in hand, they’d stumbled up the sand dunes and stared out at the endless horizon.
Ethan had felt like it was a sign that the future ahead of them had no boundaries.
“What a fucking coward.”
Even worse, as a scientist, he knew there were no such things as signs from the cosmos, but real life had them, and he’d… shut his eyes to them.
He’d planned a hiking trip for the upcoming three-day weekend, just the two of them. To a spot that Ethan loved, hike-in-only around Hidden Lake, far up in the Cascades. Not for amateur outdoor enthusiasts, the trail was special, magical even. He didn’t share it with just anyone.
Ethan had thought Jordan was The One. And he’d wanted to take him to the lake so he too could experience the magic and incredible beauty that still existed in the world.
But Ethan had been horribly wrong. Jordan was just anyone.
He stared at the crumpled note in his fist and turned to drop it into the trash can under the kitchen sink, but he hesitated before releasing it.
Instead of tossing the words away, Ethan dropped the wad of paper onto the kitchen counter.
He carefully flattened it out again, smoothing out the wrinkles the best he could before folding it neatly and tucking it into the back pocket of his wallet.
Fuck you, Jordan. At least this note will remind me just how shitty people can be.
When Ethan returned home three days later from his solo hike, another letter waited for him.
This one had been sent certified mail and had an official seal on the envelope.
He tore it open, scanned the contents, and signed on the dotted line.
The next morning, he dropped it in the mailbox on his way to campus.
Fuck Jordan Ferguson. Ethan was going to do his part to help grieving parents and other family members learn the fate of their missing daughters and sons. The team wouldn’t be able to help everyone but even a single positive identification would be some sort of closure.
Good luck with that, a quiet voice in his head said. With his bad fortune, Jordan would probably find a few more ways to dig the knife into Ethan’s heart in the four weeks before he could escape to central Mexico.