Relief loosened the knot in my chest as the fire road came into view, and I saw the blue-and-red swirling lights of a sheriff’s truck along with a small crowd of horses and bodies.
Faces glanced my way as Henry’s hooves thundered toward them. Vader saw me, barked, and came sprinting. Henry didn’t react, even as my dog dashed around him in circles.
As I neared the gathering, my relief vanished. No Maisey.
I pulled on the reins, drawing Henry up between my father and Fallon. Water dripped from their horses, cowboy hats, and waterproof jackets.
“Where’s Maisey?” Fallon and I asked at the same time.
Shock widened Fallon’s eyes. My heart pounded against my ribcage. Fear. Irritation.
“Fuck. She said she was coming here.” I twisted in the saddle, looking back the way I’d come. “I followed her path. The hoofprints were easy enough to spot…” I trailed off. Fuck, I hadn’t followed any prints after crossing the river. Any marks Titan would have left had been lost in the thick piles of pine needles and leaves scattered along the forest floor on this side of the river.
When I said as much to both of them, Dad flicked the reins on the large roan he was riding. “I’ll head back to the river, see what I can find.”
I pulled my phone out, blocking it from the slow, steady rain as best I could while Fallon did the same. Maisey didn’t pick up for either of us.
The wrongness of the entire day loomed over me larger than the storm. She was alone. Goddamn it, she was alone.
Vader’s whines jerked my eyes to my dog. He was desperate for my attention and wound up from the tension in the air. Fighting the panic that tried to close my throat, I reached down from the saddle and distractedly rubbed his head.
“Hold on,” Fallon said. “I can locate her using the Find Family app.”
“You shared your locations.” Some of the pressure that had clogged my lungs eased.
Why hadn’t I demanded she share her location with me too?
I’d been too busy getting her a ring and declaring to the whole town I loved her to think of what she really needed—protection.
“We shared them in college so we could find each other in case we went on a date and…” she trailed off. “What is she doing up at the fire tower?”
The old firewatch hadn’t been used since the late 1990s. Initially built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the early 1930s, the windmill-stylelookout sat atop a cliff in a particularly rough area of Fallon’s property, abandoned by the forestry service. I wasn’t sure when anyone had last been up there, as the path was difficult—a thin line with the cliff on one side and large boulders on the other. It would be slick and wet in the storm, making any fall treacherous.
As alarm and fear morphed inside me to a breaking point, I tried to bat it back. Maisey had grown up playing on this land with Fallon. She knew her way around. Knew the dangers.
“Maybe her dad finally called her?” I said. “Maybe he somehow found his way up there?”
I doubted it myself, even as Fallon shook her head.
“No. After Maisey couldn’t locate Lewis using the app, Mom went back to her house and found his phone. It was just sitting on the railing of the back porch, turned off.”
“Does Maisey know?”
Fallon shook her head, scrubbing her thumb with her fingers. “I didn’t want to worry her more than she already was.”
I pulled the reins, starting Henry across the fire road and up the steep incline on the other side as Fallon called out behind me to wait. I didn’t. I couldn’t. The apprehension that had clung to me since we’d arrived on the ranch pushed me to move. To leave. To go find her, kiss her, and then yell at her for going off on her own.
Vader barked, running alongside Henry. “Find Maisey, bud,” I told him. “Maisey.”
He sniffed the air and took off up the slope toward the cliffs and the abandoned watch. Vader wasn’t a trained tracker. He wasn’t even trained as an official firehouse dog. He was more mascot than service animal, but he was going in the same direction Fallon had pinged on her phone, and that allowed a teeny bit of hope to leak in.
Fallon and Parker thundered up behind me, and all three horses shied as another bolt of light hit the ground not far from us, right as thunder rolled through the air. It took a moment to encourage the horses to move toward the storm instead of away.
“It’s too steep and rocky to take the horses all the way,” Fallon said. “We’ll have to leave them at the base of the cliff.”
We pushed our way through the trees. Branches slapped at us like wet knives. Cold and sharp.
By the time the old lookout peeked above the treeline, I was shivering as rain dripped down my back. All I could think was that Maisey was out there in a pair of yoga pants and a thin T-shirt. She’d at least had sneakers on her feet, but she’d be freezing by now.