“Okay, hang on. Tell me what happened. He said he was going to play with Jolly?”
I rubbed my head, trying to think of exactly what William had said. I’d been so busy trying not to lose my shit with Craig…
“Uh. He said something about seeing Jolly through the window. That he wanted to play. So of course, I said yes. Wait, no. He didn’t say play.” I closed my eyes to try to bring back his exact words. “He said Jolly was going toward the trees and asked if he could go after him.”
There were a couple of trees in my yard and Ben’s but none so large that he could be hiding out there.
And then it hit me. Oh my God.
“He went out the front door. Not the back. He thought he saw Jolly and went out the front door.”
My voice cracked. Ben was already pulling his phone from his jacket. “How long ago?”
“I don’t know. Fifteen? Twenty minutes? Oh my God, he asked if he could go, and I said yes. I thought he meant the backyard trees.” I started scanning the neighborhood. There was no sign of him anywhere.
And if Jolly was here with us, nobody was protecting him.
Ben had the phone to his ear. “Donovan. I need you at my house. Now.” A pause. “Kayla’s son is missing. Six years old, been gone approximately twenty minutes. Left the house on foot heading toward the tree line north of the neighborhood.” Another pause. “Call the department. Get bodies out here.”
He hung up and crouched in front of Jolly, both hands on the dog’s head. Jolly’s ears came forward, reading Ben’s energy the way he read everything. Instantly, completely.
“Donovan is five minutes out. We’ll get other officers here too. You said he thought he saw Jolly and that Jolly was headed toward the trees?”
“Yes.” I was trying to keep my terror in check. I hopped up in the bed of Ben’s truck and stood to get a clearer view of the neighborhood. I didn’t see him anywhere. “He must have seen a dog and, at a distance, thought it was Jolly.”
Ben unclipped Jolly’s leash and grabbed a flashlight from the cab of his vehicle. “Let’s go.”
“Yes. Let’s go.” I hopped down from the bed and met him at the back of the truck.
We moved quickly down the block, where the propertiesended and the tree line started. The light was thinning fast. Another twenty minutes and it would be full dark, and my six-year-old was out here somewhere in shoes he hadn’t tied properly since last week.
I was calling William’s name, my voice too loud for the quiet street, not caring.
“William! William, where are you?”
Ben moved beside me with Jolly off leash, the dog ranging ahead with his nose working the ground. Not a formal search command. Just Jolly doing what Jolly did, reading the world through channels I couldn’t access.
We hit the tree line. The pines closed in overhead, cutting what was left of the light. The ground was soft with needles, and the underbrush was thick enough that I couldn’t see more than twenty feet in any direction.
“William!”
My voice came back to me off the trees, flat and small.
Oh God. I forced air into my lungs. I could not fall apart.
Ben put his hand on my arm. “Keep calling. I’m going to let Jolly work.”
He moved ahead with the dog, and I watched Jolly’s body language shift. His nose dropped lower. His pace changed—still fast, but purposeful now, weaving between trees with an intensity that had nothing to do with training and everything to do with recognition. He knew what he was looking for. He knew who.
Headlights swept across the street behind us. A car door, then footsteps, and Ben’s partner Donovan appeared at the edge of the trees.
“I’ll cover the neighborhood streets. Vance is two minutes out.”
Ben didn’t turn around. “Head a block east. She thinks he went north into the trees.”
Donovan was gone.
A minute later, another car. A man I didn’t recognize jogging toward us with his phone in his hand.
