Chapter 40
The logging road was worse than Wyatt remembered.
He kept the truck in four-wheel drive and his speed down. His headlights cut through the dark in narrow wedges as the road climbed. Bare branches pressed in from both sides, scraping the sides of the cab when the trail narrowed.
This wasn’t far from their earlier staging area, but they’d had to turn off that road onto this smaller one.
The snow here was older and icier than in town—compressed into ruts by the vehicles that had come through ahead of them. He counted five sets of tire tracks in the frozen mud. At least that many had gone in before him.
A half mile in, the trees opened slightly, and the glow of portable floodlights appeared through the branches. He slowed and pulled to where a cluster of vehicles—two state police SUVs, a forestry truck, and a plain-sided van belonging to the state’s tactical unit.
He cut the engine before turning to Kori. “Stay close to me, and let me do the talking.”
Kori nodded without argument.
They climbed into the cold. The temperature had dropped another few degrees since dinner, and the air tasted like frozen pine and exhaust from the generators running the lights.
Thunder fell into step at Wyatt’s side.
He scanned the staging area as they approached. A command post had been set up at the tailgate of one of the state police trucks. Maps were spread across a folding table, a radio unit had been mounted on a portable stand, and two officers with headsets monitored the feed.
At the edge of the light, standing with his arms crossed and his eyes on the forest, was Graham.
Wyatt headed toward him and paused. “What’s the status?”
Graham turned. He took in Kori with a brief, measured look before returning to Wyatt. “Teams went in forty minutes ago. We have two entry points—one team took the logging road and a second came around from the ridge on the north side.”
“Any contact?”
“Not yet.” Graham’s jaw jumped. “It’s been a little too quiet if you ask me.”
Wyatt looked at the darkness beyond the floodlights. Somewhere out there, through the trees and up the ridge, was the cluster of buildings they’d seen from Garrett’s drone. The snow-covered rooftops. The figures moving in deliberate patterns between the structures.
He thought about the man who’d looked up at the drone.
That look had been calculating, not panicked. He almost looked as if he had a plan for exactly this scenario.
He’d already known what to do.
Wyatt turned that over and didn’t like where it landed.
He stepped away from Kori—not far, just enough that Graham could read his expression without her seeing it. Graham caught the movement and followed.
“What are you thinking?” Graham asked, keeping his voice low.
“That they saw the drone earlier, and they had six hours to get ready,” Wyatt said. “A group this organized doesn’t waste six hours.”
Graham looked at the radio on the command table. “Let’s hope you’re wrong.”
Wyatt hoped so too.
“Can you send up another drone?” he asked.
Graham rubbed his chin as he shook his head. “Unfortunately, no. They shot down our best one. The state is sending another one, but it won’t be here until morning.”
Of course . . .
He turned back to Kori. She stood where he’d left her, her arms folded and her eyes on the same trees he’d been studying. Thunder had moved to her side without being asked, and she hadn’t stepped away from him.
He walked back to her. “I’m not sure if you heard or not, but Graham said the teams went in forty minutes ago.”
“How much longer until they get there?”
“Hard to say.” He paused. “Could be soon.”
She nodded once and said nothing.
He stood beside her and looked at the woods too.
Lord, let them find Mackenzie. Let her be in there. Let her be alive and in one piece. And Pete. Let Pete be there too. Let this be the part where it turns around.
He’d prayed versions of this prayer before, on other searches, in other dark staging areas with other families standing nearby. Sometimes the answer had been the one everyone wanted. Sometimes it hadn’t.
He knew better than to bargain or predict.
But he prayed anyway, because it was the only honest thing he could do while standing here unable to act.
A few minutes later, the radio on the command table crackled.
Wyatt and Kori turned at the same time.
One of the officers with a headset straightened and pressed his hand to his ear.
Then the officer looked at the senior trooper standing beside him and said something low.
Graham had already moved to the table.
Wyatt touched Kori’s arm. “Stay here.”
He crossed to Graham in four strides and arrived just as the radio crackled again. This time, it was clearer. The lead tactical officer’s voice came through with flat precision.
“Command, this is Entry One. Structures confirmed. All seven. No resistance. No contacts. Compound is clear.”
A pause.
“Repeat—compound is empty. The site has been vacated. Looks recent. Within the last several hours.”
Wyatt went still.
Around him, the officers exchanged looks. Someone muttered something. A radio chirped with a follow-up transmission he didn’t fully hear.
He turned and saw Kori still standing where he’d left her, twenty feet away, Thunder at her side. She watched him, her expression pensive.
“The compound is empty,” he said. “They cleared out sometime in the last few hours.”
“Mackenzie . . .”
“She’s not there. Neither is Pete.”
Something moved through her expression—grief, frustration—and then it was gone, pressed back behind her normal composure.
She looked past him toward the trees. “They took Mackenzie with them.”
“Most likely.”
“So where did they go?” she asked. “And how do we find them?”
“Let’s figure that out.”