“Well hell,” Cubby said.
No one had seen Ryan; he hadn’t visited Newman and Hope, and he wasn’t at the cabin. Faith sat silently listening to the reports coming in. Her stomach ached with worry for the man she now knew she loved.
A tap on the window had them looking. Mac stood there. Buster opened the door for him. “I just came back from Brook and heard the news. You all okay?”
“Doing fine, thanks, Mac,” Noah said.
“Ryan here?” His brow furrowed.
“Not at the moment. What’s up?” Cubby asked.
“His car is parked up the road on Beacon Corner. I checked inside, but it’s empty. No tracks leading away from it either, so I thought he must have broken down.”
Faith sat between her brother and Buster as they climbed the road out of Lake Howling. The tension in Cubby’s cruiser was high. Katie sat next to Cubby, and Findlay Hudson was in the rear of the vehicle with Cubby’s equipment. He’d come because he was a good tracker and could see if Ryan had left the road and headed down into the trees further up the road.
“The name she gave was Louise Sanders and there are plenty of those in the database who have been arrested, so hard to say if this is her name or an alias. She was seen around town every day since the delivery of the package to the cabin,” Katie said. “Polite and friendly. She had a room at Jacko Neeps’s homestay. Said she was having a vacation. She didn’t return there after the fire.”
Faith had called Ryan’s cell phone repeatedly and left messages. In the last one, she told him she loved home and needed him to come home. The panic was now clawing at her throat. She felt sick with fear.
Why had she fought what she clearly knew was inside her? She’d loved Ryan Lawrence forever, and that hadn’t changed, just grown into something bigger when he came back to Howling. Faith had been scared to tell him how she felt. Scared that it wouldn’t work and he’d leave her. She’d not been willing to even try, and now he may be lost to her.
No.
Now he may be in pain and struggling for his life, and she’d never said the words to him.
She gripped Noah’s hand because she needed to be anchored to someone, and she found Buster’s fingers and gripped them tight too.
“We’ll find him,” Buster said.
“We have to.”
“At the moment, we have nothing concrete to suggest that woman has Ryan, but as to why he’d leave his car up here, I’m clueless,” Cubby said.
“Even if it broke down, he would have put a call in to someone, and there is no record of that happening,” Katie added. “He walked back to Tex’s house, climbed in his SUV, and left without stopping anywhere on the way. Hope said he didn’t make contact with her, either.”
“We need to check the area around his SUV thoroughly,” Cubby said. “I have Maureen doing a check on any cars rented in Brook under her name. Tank is searching cabins in remote locations in the area, in case she’s rented one.”
Faith saw Ryan’s SUV and felt a fresh wave of panic grip her.
Cubby left the cruiser lights on. They all got out and started searching the area.
“A car stopped here, and when it left it was at speed.” Fin pointed to the tracks leading back onto the road.
“Which suggests he stopped because someone flagged him down or he thought they needed help,” Buster said.
She felt numb, even wrapped in a thick blanket that Jake had dropped around her shoulders.
Faith watched Fin go down below the road with a torch and start searching.
“Tank just called. Said a cabin was rented three weeks ago in the name of Mrs. Lawrence. It’s one of those ones on the road in to Tiger Point,” Katie said.
“Three weeks was when she arrived, I figure,” Cubby said. “And if she’s as fanatical as they say, she’d use his name.”
“It’s remote up there. Not many going in and out at this time of year. More a summer tourist thing,” Noah said.
Fin came back up to where they stood. “No one has been down there recently.”
“Okay, let’s go,” Cubby said. “I know there is no chance of you going back, so I won’t suggest it. But you will do as Katie and I say. Is that clear?” The sheriff looked from Faith to the others and back again.