My blood went cold.
I tied the horse to a tree and stood still for a second, listening.
No voices. No movement. No sign of life.
Holt was the first to speak, barely above a whisper. “That could be where he was staying?”
“It could,” I said, and I hated how steady my voice sounded, like my body decided terror wasn’t useful anymore.
We got out and moved in carefully, boots quiet on the dirt. Evan and Travis flanked, wide, scanning the tree line. Holt stayed close, like he could feel the exact second I might lose control.
I reached the porch first and looked through the window.
Empty. I checked the ground. Fresh footprints.
Two sets, maybe three, hard to tell in the disturbed dirt. One set smaller. One set larger.
My throat tightened. “She was here,” I said, and the words felt like a vow and a curse.
Holt swore under his breath.
I moved toward the shack, every muscle in my body braced.
The door was shut, but it wasn’t latched properly. It hung slightly open, as if someone had been in a hurry or hadn’t cared.
I pushed it with the back of my hand.
It creaked inward.
The smell hit first. Old wood. Dust. Mouse droppings. Stale smoke, faint but real, like a fire had been lit and put out not long ago.
The space inside was small. A table. A broken chair. A pile of old blankets in one corner, mouldy at the edges.
No one was there. Nothing but emptiness and the echo of what could’ve happened.
I scanned the floor again, and then I saw it.
A single dark strand of hair caught on a splintered board near the doorway. Long. Dark.
My chest seized.
I didn’t touch it. I didn’t move it. I only stared, because staring was the only thing keeping me from tearing the place apart with my bare hands.
Travis shifted behind me. “What?”
“She was here,” I said again, voice rougher now.
Evan’s breath came hard. “Where’d they go?”
That was the question that mattered, and it was the one the shack couldn’t answer.
Holt moved past me and checked the back corner, thenthe window, then the ground outside. He came back in with his face set.
“There’s another set of tracks leaving on foot,” he said quietly. “They went east into the trees.”
My pulse slammed. “Why leave the vehicle?”
“Because they didn’t want it found on the main roads,” Holt said. “Or they swapped vehicles. ”
