Chapter 6
TRACE
Trying to find someone who didn’t want to be found was a pain in the ass.
Thankfully, I’d found a woman at the campground in Palm Springs who remembered Wolfe asking about BLM campsites in Joshua Tree. It wasn’t much to go on, but it was better than nothing.
It only took me a few minutes of research to learn that Joshua Tree National Park had over two million acres of federal land, much of it available for free camping.
The good news was that boondocking—or off-grid camping—presented challenges for water, electrical, and sewer services, which usually limited a camper’s stay.
By the time I got closer to Joshua Tree, I had to find a hotel room and regroup. Trying to find a random van on two million acres of land required brains, not driving around in literal circles in hopes of spotting one van out of hundreds.
As soon as I scarfed down a sandwich and showered, I pulled out my laptop and got to work. The first thing I did was scroll Instagram for any recent hashtags related to Joshua Tree and boondocking.
It took two hours before I found something.
An account called @SkoolieBesties had posted photos of a campfire in front of an old school bus painted in bright colors.
Sitting next to her was someone in a soft leather jacket I recognized.
It had been mine when I’d gone through a ridiculous motorcycle phase.
All it had taken was one dicey incident on the road to make me give up the bike.
And when a fifteen-year-old Wolfe had been scared and alone in San Ysidro after a school trip gone wrong, I’d thrown it over his shoulders in an attempt to stop the shaking.
In the @SkoolieBesties Instagram photo, Wolfe’s hand was curled over the frets of a guitar, pressing the strings, his fingers long and slender but rougher than I’d remembered.
My chest squeezed in relief as I searched for the date of the post. Four weeks ago. There were several hashtags in the caption. #NewFriends #JoshuaTree #SkoolieLife #CampfireSongs and #WishMeLuck.
I clicked through her feed until I saw a more recent post with Wolfe from closer to three weeks ago. It was a short video clip of Wolfe playing guitar and laughing with a good-looking guy around his age. This one was tagged #Kaibab #CampfireSongs #SkoolieLife and #FavoriteWayToEndADay.
Wolfe looked relaxed and happy. I couldn’t help but wonder who the guy was and how well they knew each other. Had he met someone? Started something with him?
@SkoolieBesties didn’t have any more photos of Wolfe in her feed, so I clicked over to the other account tagged in the video, @VotoBren.
The good-looking guy turned out to be Brennan Voto, who had a shockingly large following.
I clicked through his feed until I found a more recent post with Wolfe from only an hour ago.
It was a short video clip of Wolfe and a teenage girl playing guitar together on a small wooden stage.
It looked like it was in a dive bar or maybe a small-town pizza place.
This one was tagged #Hush #JakesPlace #VanLife and #BGShay.
My stomach dropped. Had Wolfe been traveling with this guy for three weeks? What did that mean? Were they together? Was this guy the reason Wolfe had run off?
I quickly talked myself off that cliff. If he’d had this guy waiting for him, he wouldn’t have kissed me like that back in Legacy. Wolfe was as loyal as they came, and I couldn’t imagine him cheating on someone. But… they could be open.
My fingers tapped and scrolled quickly to see @VotoBren’s other pictures. He had a few of Wolfe, and I traced them back before realizing they were giving me a kind of timeline of Wolfe’s trip.
I continued following hashtags and other tagged accounts until I had a map with dates.
Palm Springs. Joshua Tree. Kaibab National Forest. Grand Canyon.
Zion. Arches. Moab. He’d moved around with some of the same people, visiting different areas.
And the last place he’d been spotted was a town in Colorado I’d never heard of called Hush.
He’d only been there for a day or two. One of @VotoBren’s posts had mentioned the sheer beauty of the area, the lack of light pollution, which made for starry nights, and the good food and company to be had at a bar called Jake’s Place.
Hopefully, it was the kind of town Wolfe wanted to stay in for a little longer.
I found several video posts tagged with Jake’s Place, featuring the same teenager from the guitar video with Wolfe, only this time playing onstage alone in what looked less like a casual interaction and more like an actual performance.
At the edge of the video, I caught a glimpse of Wolfe with an encouraging, proud look on his face.
Had he been giving her guitar lessons or something? It seemed strange that someone who was good enough to play in front of a crowd would need them, but then again, Wolfe had learned a lot of advanced techniques from Jude, back when he used to play and sing.
These posts were a deep rabbit hole, and I quickly realized I’d become obsessed with finding every image of Wolfe, tracking his journey and the minute changes in his appearance—hair a little longer, face a little tanner, hands a little rougher—rather than discovering where he was.
Hopefully, he was still in Hush, and I could get there before he left again.
In the meantime, I found a post by another woman back when he was in the Grand Canyon a few weeks ago that showed Wolfe’s back and ass as he hiked a trail ahead of her.
My eyes devoured every detail. The way his hair looked the same kind of messy it always did. The full curve of his ass in hiking shorts and the rounded shapes of his shoulders and biceps revealed by the sleeveless shirt he wore.
The bunch of his leg muscles as he strode forward, pushing up a slight incline. The way I could tell he was tapping out a rhythm on the side of his leg.
My chest tightened at the familiar gesture. Sweetheart.
I ran my finger over that spot in the photo.
The pad of Wolfe’s middle finger barely brushed the fabric of his shorts while the other fingers stayed extended.
The movement was so fucking familiar. He always had a melody in his head, and he seemed to live with a mental soundtrack running at all times.
It was a relief to know that Wolfe wasn’t holed up somewhere alone, licking his wounds. Maybe he just wanted an adventure. Maybe he wasn’t upset at all. Maybe he’d shot his shot with me and had moved on easily, simply taking time to sightsee before returning home.
I quickly copied the link to the most recent video post from Colorado and sent it to Derek and Jude. Within minutes, a response flashed up.
Derek
Thank fuck. How the hell did you find this?
Got lucky on a lead. I’ll head there in the morning.
Derek
That’s not necessary. I just wanted to make sure he was okay. He looks great here.
I disagreed. The more times I watched the video, the more I sensed something was off. He was smiling at the young woman playing guitar, but his shoulders looked tense, and his smile didn’t reach his eyes.
Jude
I agree with Derek. But thank you, Trace. I feel better knowing he looks happy.
I stared at the messages. There was no way in hell I was going home now, not without putting eyes on him. I gritted my teeth against my knee-jerk reaction and tried to do the right thing.
Okay.
Then I blew out a breath and opened Instagram again. None of the accounts had new photos in the few minutes I’d been texting, but I went back to the video and clicked @BGShay’s account.
It was full of posts tagged with #SingerSongwriter, but there were also several recent posts tagged #WhoIsFletcherCoe, which snagged my attention.
I’d started following the famous songwriter a while ago, shortly after I’d heard “Not Mine” for the first time. To distract myself from looking for more posts of Wolfe, I clicked on the hashtag.
And discovered the poor, anonymous person behind some of the most beautiful songs I’d ever heard had become the center of an overwhelming, obsessive online manhunt.
I was immediately, irrationally angry. I knew better than most how ugly the music business could be and how toxic fandoms could become. Wolfe had shrunk away from the intrusive, sometimes mean side of Jude’s fame. And Jude had been stalked and harassed, both online and in person, more than once.
Maybe it was a good thing Wolfe had stopped his efforts to become a music producer when he’d left Thornton. I didn’t want to imagine him in an industry that could turn dangerous so quickly.
I clicked over to Fletcher Coe’s Instagram account, and when his deep, soothing voice washed over me, I remembered why so many people were desperate to know who he was.
As usual, in one of his posts, the lyrics scrolled over the image of his fingers strumming the guitar, making it hard to pick out any identifying details beyond the unique wood grain of the guitar itself.
I let the music play as I set my alarm to allow myself a couple hours of sleep before starting the drive up to Hush. I couldn’t help but send out a small prayer for Fletcher Coe’s continued anonymity and safety. I hoped the guy had someone watching out for him.
As I drifted to sleep, getting lost in the melody, my thoughts had drifted back to Wolfe as they’d done every night for the past… I couldn’t even remember how long now. And I added a little prayer for his safety as well. Because he seemed safe in that small town in Colorado…
But I couldn’t help wondering why his smile hadn’t reached his eyes.