Another pause. “Sir, I need you not to take matters into your own hands.”
I laughed once, sharp and humourless. “You’re already too late with that piece of advice.” I ended the call and sat in my truck for half a second, hands on the steering wheel, breathing through the heat in my chest.
Then I drove.
Because sitting still while she was out there was a kind of madness I wouldn’t survive.
I took the road out of town and forced myself to think like a man who didn’t care about comfort, only control. Colin wouldn't stay close to town. He wouldn’t risk cameras. He wouldn’t risk witnesses. He’d go where the land went quiet, where gravel turned to ruts, where trees hid roofs, where people didn’t drive unless they had a reason.
There were too many places like that.
Old hunting shacks. Abandoned cabins. Empty properties people forgot existed. A busted trailer tucked into a bush with a padlock on the door. A stretch of crown land where you could park and disappear for a day, and no one would ask why.
I drove the back roads first, because that’s where you moved when you didn’t want to be seen. I watched for fresh tire tracks, for disturbed gravel, for a dust plume in the distance that didn’t belong.
Half an hour out, Holt’s truck and trailer pulled up beside me at a turnout, dust still settling around the wheels. Evan and Travis were behind him, faces tight, posture already braced.
Holt climbed out and came to my window. “What’ve you got?”
I told him. The co-op. The waiting man. The dark vehicle. No plates. No clear direction beyond the obvious.
Holt’s jaw went hard. “Colin.”
“Yeah. And we’re not waiting for permission to look.”
Travis shifted, scanning the horizon. “You got a place in mind?”
“I’ve got a list,” I said, and it wasn’t an exaggeration. This land was full of places that could hide a person if someone wanted it to.
Evan rubbed his hands together, restless. “How’re we splitting?”
I looked at the three of them and forced myself to stay clear-headed. “We don’t scatter and lose each other. We work patterns. We keep phones on. We check in every twenty minutes. You see something, you call. You don’t play hero.”
Travis’s mouth twitched. “We’re not the heroic type.”
“Good,” I said. “Evan, you take the ridge roads and watch for any vehicle that doesn’t belong. Travis, you take the south loop past the coulee and the old irrigation sheds. Holt, you’re with me. Everyone on horseback, we can cover the ground better than in a vehicle.”
Holt expected it because the horses were already saddled as we led them out of the trailer. He climbed onto the back of his horse without a word, and the weight of having him there steadied something in me. Holt was the only one who could pull me back if I stepped too far over a line.
We rode for hours.
The sun climbed, then started its slow lean toward afternoon. The heat built. The dust clung to our clothes. The land stretched out, indifferent and wide, and I hated it for how easily it could hide her.
Every time my phone buzzed, my heart slammed into my ribs.
Each time, it was Evan or Travis reporting that nothing was found.
Once, it was the constable asking where I was and telling me to return to town to give a formal statement.
I lied, and I said I was on my way.
Then we rode deeper into the quiet.
We checked an abandoned equipment shed on an old farm site first, the one that sat half collapsed on a neighbor’s back quarter. Holt walked the perimeter while I scanned the ground for fresh tracks. Nothing but old ruts and deer prints.
We checked a hunting shack near the river, the kind of place teenage boys used to sneak beers in when they thought they were grown. The door was padlocked, and the dust on the porch boards was undisturbed.
We checked a broken-down trailer tucked into a stand of poplars, the windows busted, the door hanging loose. It smelled like mice and rot.
