“Boss,” he said.
I set the clipboard down carefully. Too carefully. Like if I moved too fast, I’d spook whatever was about to happen next.
“What is it?” I asked.
Holt didn’t come further in. He stayed by the door as if he needed the exit close, as if he’d driven hard and planned to drive harder.
His gaze met mine and held. No humour. No softness. Just blunt honesty.
“Her truck’s gone,” he said.
For half a second, I didn’t understand the sentence. It didn’t attach itself to meaning. It hovered.
Then it landed.
It landed so hard my stomach dropped, and my skin went cold.
“What,” I said, and the word came out flat, not because I wasn’t feeling anything, but because there was too much, all at once, and my mouth didn’t know what to do with it.
Holt swallowed. “I went up the lane. Just like you told me, and I checked the yard first.”
I stared at him, unblinking.
He took a breath, slow and controlled, like he was keeping himself steady on purpose for me. “The house was dark. No movement. No smoke. No sound. I waited a minute and called her name a few times.”
My hands curled around the edge of the bar without me deciding to. The wood felt solid under my palms. I needed something solid.
“And,” I said.
Holt’s jaw flexed. “Nothing.”
“Did you go inside?”
“No,” he said, and there was a bite to it, like he already knew I’d hate that answer. “You’ve been clear about not crossing her line. I knocked, and nobody answered.”
My throat tightened. “The barn.”
“I checked it,” Holt continued. “Everything looked in order. Water tanks full, the feed bins were closed. No gates swinging open. Everything was normal, except she wasn’t there.”
Normal. That word didn’t belong. Nothing about the last few weeks had been normal.
I forced my fingers to loosen on the bar. “So she could’ve been out.”
“Maybe,” Holt said. My pulse thudded hard enough I could hear it. I felt it in my throat. In my wrists. In my teeth.
“Maybe she came to town,” I said, though it sounded thin even to me.
Holt’s eyes stayed on mine. “Then she’d have left tracks. Yard looked settled. Dust on the step. No fresh tire marks I could see. If she left, it wasn’t this morning.”
I swallowed again. It didn’t help.
“How long?” I asked.
Holt shook his head. “Can’t say. A few days, I’d guess.”
She asked me not to come around. I listened and gave her space. And now she was gone.
I pushed away from the bar and started walking without thinking, a line behind the counter, then back again, like movement could keep panic from taking root.
