Chapter 22
TRACE
When I found the trailhead parking area and pulled in, I was relieved to see there were no vehicles, only puddles reflecting my headlights in the dim half-light of a stormy sunset.
I threw the car into Park and got out, grabbing the small pack I’d scrambled a few supplies into, including a headlamp, water bottle, granola bars, and a leftover banana from lunch. I pulled the headlamp out, slung the pack onto my back, and then pulled on my rain gear over it.
Several trails started from this one parking area, like Shay had said, so I studied each one before continuing. The freshest boot prints seemed to come from the trail labeled Kinnear Overlook. It wasn’t conclusive, by any means, but it was better than nothing.
I approached the trailhead, scrolling on my phone to familiarize myself with this particular trail.
It was a five-mile loop, split unevenly around the open viewing spot at the top.
A few dozen yards into the trees, the trail split in two directions, left and right.
I was faced with a fifty-fifty choice. One direction was two miles to the top. The other was three.
Even though I wanted to race up the nearest trail and start shouting for Wolfe, my training kicked in, and I forced myself to spend time thinking before acting. Which way would they have gone? Get the bulk of the hike done before a picturesque lunch break, or get to the view as quickly as possible?
I decided they’d do the first since they would have gotten to the trailhead too early for lunch with such an early start. And if they’d gone up the three-mile way, they’d be coming down the two-mile way. So that was where I’d start.
When I first stepped onto the trail, I shouted Wolfe’s name as loud as I could, no longer caring that people in Hush knew him as Will. If he wanted to yell at me for spilling his secret, well, that was fine. As long as he did it from the warm safety of his van while he was tucked in my arms.
There was one fresh-ish boot print at the entrance to the longer side of the loop, but the rest was a muddy, graveled mess. It would be quicker for me to hike the entire five miles than spend time guessing based on boot prints while the scant daylight remaining slithered into night.
After quickly texting Clay Dennison to let him know what I was doing, I set off. If he was starting his drive from Montrose, chances were good I’d be most of the way around the entire loop before he even arrived at the other trail.
The shadows took over what scant light there’d been once I was under the drippy canopy of the trees.
I picked up the pace until I was moving swiftly up the trail at a speed I could sustain, shouting periodically for Wolfe as I went.
With every silent response to my shouting, my stomach twisted even more.
“Wolfe!” I called again, feeling a cold trail of water down the side of my face. My hands were freezing without gloves or at least shoving them in my pockets, but I needed them free to swing back and forth as I hustled along the trail.
The headlamp beam caught nothing but rain and trees and the muddy ribbon of the trail ahead.
I made myself slow down when the terrain finally opened up ahead where the canopy broke.
The overlook.
I already knew what I’d find there.
Nothing.
What I hadn’t expected was the way the nothing would hit me. Standing at the edge of the rock shelf in the rain with my headlamp beam dissolving into the dark valley below, the blunt fact of it landed in my chest like something physical.
Wolfe wasn’t here.
He’d come this far—they both had; there were hints of boot prints left in the soft earth at the overlook edge, two sets—and then they’d turned back the other way.
I’d chosen wrong.
They’d come up the longer way like I’d thought, but then, for some reason, they’d gone back the same way instead of continuing the loop. Three miles back instead of two. Why? Surely it had been raining by then. Why take the longer route?
I crouched and looked at the prints more carefully, but any helpful details had been washed away by the rain.
I stood and turned the headlamp toward the trail that continued around the loop. My heart was beating against the walls of my chest in a desperate bid to escape, to find its way to Wolfe. But a SaR professional couldn’t operate from a place of panic. Panic made people stupid and sloppy.
So I shoved the panic aside and moved ahead.
The trail beyond the overlook was narrower, the decline more dramatic, with tree roots pushing up through the packed dirt alongside jagged rock making each step more dangerous in the shadows from my headlamp.
I called Wolfe’s name again and listened hard.
Rain on leaves was a particular kind of background noise.
Flat, constant, and directionless. Almost impossible to hear anything beneath it unless you knew what to filter for.
I’d learned that in the Cascades a decade ago from a retired ranger named John Brisco, who’d told me to stop listening for sounds and start listening for shapes of sounds instead.
Voices curved. Animals moved rhythmically.
Rain didn’t. So anything with rhythm beneath the rain was suspect.
I stopped.
Nothing. Then…
Something rhythmic and slow. Not trees or rustling leaves. Not water falling on rock.
I killed my headlamp and stood in the dark rain, listening with everything I had.
There. Approximately forty yards down the trail and to the left. Something different. A person whispering to themselves.
“You can do this. Just fucking do it. Hands and knees. Make it happen.”
My eyes searched the trees, frantic to set eyes on him, but he was nowhere to be found. When I finally lowered my headlamp closer to the ground and spotted him, my heart nearly completed its escape.
He was fucking crawling.
“Wolfe!” I picked up my speed, heart thundering and feet slipping across the soggy ground. “Wolfe, baby, I’m here. Tell me you’re okay.”
A beat of silence. Then his voice, ragged at the edges but unmistakably his. “T-trace? Are you real? Are you… you?”
He was a cold, sodden lump at the side of the trail. Mud up his arms to the elbows and covering his clothes like he’d been using it as camouflage. Rain-soaked through every layer.
I slid to a stop next to him. “Yeah. I’m here, baby. I’m real. I’ve got you.”
“I’m—I rolled my ankle. I was—” A pause where he was clearly catching his breath. “I was getting back to the trailhead. Getting back to you.”
Wolfe’s expression in the diffuse light was exhausted and determined. And if I hadn’t already been wildly, impossibly in love with him, seeing him like that would have done it.
I tilted my headlamp beam away, clasped his face in my hands, and assessed.
Alive. Conscious. Eyes blinking away from my light.
The professional part of me catalogued all of it in about three seconds. Then I let the other part of me—the part I’d been pushing down since I’d stood at the empty overlook in the dark—rise to the fore.
I kissed him with all the longing and desperation that had been building in me all day, the panic that I wouldn’t find him or that he wouldn’t know how much I needed him. Then I squeezed him against me as tightly as I could.
“Fuck,” I choked as soon as the shaking warmth of him was solidly in my arms. “Fuck.”
His arms snaked around my neck, and he tucked his cold nose under my chin. “I knew you’d find me.” His voice was muffled against my wet skin, but it was enough for me to close my eyes in gratitude.
Those words were the greatest accomplishment of my life.
“Always,” I choked out, hoping it was true. “Always.”
“I fucked up, Trace.”
“No, you didn’t,” I said firmly. “This isn’t on you.”
“It is. I trusted Jake. I went with him today. And he…” His voice choked off.
“Did he hurt you?” I demanded, pulling back to assess him again. “Did he try to—?”
Wolfe seemed to understand what I was asking, and he shook his head. “N-no. No. But we argued. And he… he left me up there. I hurt my ankle. Slipped and tweaked it on the way down. Everything else is just…” He hiccuped. “Mud and stuff.”
Which was why he’d been fucking crawling down the trail.
I wanted to commit murder.
In fact, I wondered if it was possible to get away with it in this tiny town that didn’t even seem to have a law enforcement presence.
But I needed to focus on Wolfe. He was trembling, probably from a combination of cold and fear. I didn’t want to take the risk that it would turn into shock.
With the help of my first aid supplies and the headlamp, I assessed the ankle, deciding to keep it laced tightly in his boot rather than remove the boot and wrap it. Once he was ready to go, I quickly texted my SaR contacts with an update.
“Where’s Jake now?” Wolfe demanded. “Is his truck at the trailhead? Is he… is he coming back?”
“No. His truck is gone. He went home at some point and spoke to Shay, but I have no idea where he is right now.”
But given how terrified Wolfe sounded, I sincerely fucking hoped Jake didn’t appear in front of me anytime soon. I wouldn’t be responsible for my actions.
“Okay.” Wolfe nodded to himself. “Good.”
I was desperate to ask him what had happened, to pepper him with detailed questions until I knew every minute of his day up till now. But I forced myself to focus on getting him someplace warm and dry first. And safe.
“Let’s get you to the car so we can get you warmed up.” I texted Clay an update, then stood, pulling Wolfe up onto his one good leg. “We’ll try assisted walking. If that doesn’t work, we’ll try something else.”
I explained how it worked, pulling his arm over my shoulders and wrapping mine around his waist.
“Good foot first,” I reminded him quietly. “Then bad. That’s it. Don’t rush it.”
After a tentative first few steps, Wolfe hissed when his boot slid against a rock, fingers tightening convulsively against my jacket.
I shifted closer automatically, taking more of his weight before Wolfe could even ask. “Easy. We’re not in a hurry.”
“It’s cold as fuck,” he snapped. “You might not be in a hurry, but I am.”