Gary kicked a rock. “What is with these people, hurting little kids?”
“I don’t know. We don’t know Olivia is hurt. Maybe she took these things and ran away.”
“I heard they found a shirt of hers. With blood on it.”
“Where did you hear that?”
Gary shrugged. “People talk. And what about Trevor? Did he really kill himself? He didn’t seem the type.”
“What’s the type?”
Gary sighed. “Yeah. I guess you never know. It just seems weird, him dying, then Olivia disappearing.”
“Maybe she ran away because Trevor died. Maybe he was the person she was meeting when she sneaked out of the cabin.”
“I don’t know anything about that.”
Aaron would talk to Trevor’s brother again. Maybe there was something there. It didn’t explain the ripped shirt or the blood, but it was something…
“How did Willa seem, when you talked to her?” Gary asked.
Aaron stared at Gary, surprised. “What do you mean?”
“Was she different from before?”
“She still hates my guts, if that’s what you’re asking,” Aaron said.
Gary shook his head. “Did you notice she’s thinner? And just, I don’t know, sadder. I mean, I get that what happened, with Rachel and me being arrested, and then all the people who thought they could solve the case hassling us, was really awful. But when she decided we should change our names and move here, I thought it would be a good thing. A fresh start. She got a good job, then joined search and rescue. Guys ask her out all the time, but she won’t say yes to any of them. She just seems, I don’t know, stuck.”
“She’s been through a lot,” Aaron said. Had he hurt her so badly she would never recover? “All this happening isn’t helping any.”
“Seeing you again upset her lot,” Gary said. He shifted again. “But it got me thinking.”
“About what?”
“You don’t get upset about something you don’t still care about.”
“She cares about you,” Aaron said.
“She does. But at one time she cared about you. A lot.”
Aaron’s throat tightened, making it difficult to speak. “Those days are gone.” He forced out the words.
“I don’t know about that,” Gary said. “I mean, you have to wonder why we ended up here, in Eagle Mountain. Willa says she forgot that you had family here, but I wonder.”
Aaron’s radio crackled and Gary took a step back. “I have to get to work, but I’ll be around if you need me.”
Aaron keyed the mic and responded to a summons to meet the sheriff at the lodge. He needed to report the broken lock and the theft from the storage shed, but instead his mind raced with what Gary had told him. Did Willa still care about him? He certainly hadn’t seen it in her eyes last time they had spoken. At one time he would have said he knew her better than almost anyone in the world. Now she was a stranger to him.
As for whether or not he still cared about her…it was a question he didn’t have to think about very hard to know the answer. Willa would always be the one he measured every other relationship against. That didn’t strike him as particularly healthy or well-adjusted, but it was the truth. She may have grown to hate him, but his heart had never let go of her.
Chapter Seven
Willa worked at the clinic all day Tuesday, checking her phone every hour for updates. Volunteers were still searching for Olivia, but the efforts were more targeted. Danny said the sheriff’s department had launched a drone. They had brought in a second tracking dog, but they were having no luck picking up Olivia’s scent, possibly because of the rain since she had disappeared.
At noon, she texted Gary to ask how he was doing. He repliedOK, then refused to respond to further texts. He didn’t like to be nagged, but she couldn’t help it. Her mind kept replaying the nightmare of him being hauled away in handcuffs, outside their house in Vermont. Gary might have convinced himself that wasn’t going to happen again, but she didn’t have that kind of faith.
A little after four o’clock she was updating a patient chart when her phone buzzed with a search and rescue alert. Before she could respond, a call came in from Danny. “You’re going to get an alert about a fallen climber,” he said.
