He walked back to her. “I’m not sure if you heard or not, but Graham said the teams went in forty minutes ago.”
“How much longer until they get there?”
“Hard to say.” He paused. “Could be soon.”
She nodded once and said nothing.
He stood beside her and looked at the woods too.
Lord, let them find Mackenzie.Let her be in there. Let her be alive and in one piece. And Pete. Let Pete be there too. Let this be the part where it turns around.
He’d prayed versions of this prayer before, on other searches, in other dark staging areas with other families standing nearby. Sometimes the answer had been the one everyone wanted. Sometimes it hadn’t.
He knew better than to bargain or predict.
But he prayed anyway, because it was the only honest thing he could do while standing here unable to act.
A few minutes later, the radio on the command table crackled.
Wyatt and Kori turned at the same time.
One of the officers with a headset straightened and pressed his hand to his ear.
Then the officer looked at the senior trooper standing beside him and said something low.
Graham had already moved to the table.
Wyatt touched Kori’s arm. “Stay here.”
He crossed to Graham in four strides and arrived just as the radio crackled again. This time, it was clearer. The lead tactical officer’s voice came through with flat precision.
“Command, this is Entry One. Structures confirmed. All seven. No resistance. No contacts. Compound is clear.”
A pause.
“Repeat—compound is empty. The site has been vacated. Looks recent. Within the last several hours.”
Wyatt went still.
Around him, the officers exchanged looks. Someone muttered something. A radio chirped with a follow-up transmission he didn’t fully hear.
He turned and saw Kori still standing where he’d left her, twenty feet away, Thunder at her side. She watched him, her expression pensive.
“The compound is empty,” he said. “They cleared out sometime in the last few hours.”
“Mackenzie . . .”
“She’s not there. Neither is Pete.”
Something moved through her expression—grief, frustration—and then it was gone, pressed back behind her normal composure.
She looked past him toward the trees. “They took Mackenzie with them.”
“Most likely.”
“So where did they go?” she asked. “And how do we find them?”
“Let’s figure that out.”
