Alone.
Something primal surges up inside me. Not panic, not yet.
Something darker. Meaner. Crueler.
Because she’smine. Laurel’s burrowed under my skin so deep, carved herself into the bones of me, that her sudden absence feels like someone reached inside and ripped out a vital organ, like I’m standing here with a hole in my chest where she used to be.
I reach the edge of the maze, and my body surges forward without hesitation. I barrel into the twisting rows. Corn slaps my shoulders, dry husked stalks slice my skin, and sharp branches claw at my shirt like hands that try to hold me back.
“Laurel!”
No answer. I pivot left, then right, disoriented. The rows all look the same. Same stalks. Same moonlight overhead. Same gnawing absence.
Breathe. Focus.
I force myself to slow, to listen. Tolook.
She’s here. She was here. I just need to find her.
I can do it. After all, who better for this task than me? My father made sure I was prepared for this, gave me the unique education required. Trained me to act without hesitation, to find clarity in chaos, to stay sharp when others crumbled.
I think back to when I told Laurel about how I was brought up and trained. About how my favorite skill was tracking.Yes. That’s what I need to do.
I call back those skills and drop low, searching the ground, looking for secrets hidden in the dirt. Notes written by the drag of a shoe, the careless flailing of a hand, but it’s impossible. Too many feet have trod this narrow path, too many overlapping shoeprints, too many broken corn stalks. Drunken college kids stumbling through my crime scene, muddying every trail Laurel might’ve left behind.
I whirl around, searching desperately for any sign of her.
“I’m almost to the other side of the maze, but besides empty beer cans I’m not finding anything,” says Sam in my ear. “How about you guys?”
“Same.” Thomson joins in, his voice tense. “I’ve got nothing.”
“I’m still looking,” I tell them as I jog along, alternating between searching the ground for clues and looking ahead so I don’t run into anything unexpected. The entire time I move, I worry, what if I’m too late? What if he got her? What if he’s hurting her right now?
No. I will not think that.
I give up any attempt to track, just break into a full-out run. My blood ignites, fury and fear mixing like gasoline and a struck match. I grit my teeth so hard my jaw aches. If he’s touched her, if he’s laid one fucking finger on her, I swear I’ll rip him apart with my bare hands. I’ll skin him alive, dig out his eyeballs with a spoon, and torture him for hours and hours.
I want him to hear him scream. To beg. To call out for a mother he’s never met.
“South quadrant checked. No sign of her,” Thomson’s voice crackles in my ear.
“Circling the perimeter,” says Sam. “Still not seeing anything.”
I sprint, swerve. Another corner. Another dead end.
Where is she? Where the fuck is she?
I whirl and double back, lungs heaving.
Then I see it.
A single white feather, left by an angel, and next to it a boot print. Small. Pressed deep and leaving a groove in the earth behind like someone was dragged.
My chest caves in.
“Laurel!” I shout as loud as I can. The sound echoes, repeating her name back to me in a mocking fading tone.
Laurel. Laurel. Laurel.
