“She keeps me on my toes,” Joel agreed.
Ethan’s phone rang as they reached base. He frowned at Polly’s name on the screen. Was it about Maggie? Was she okay?
He answered the call. “Polly, what’s wrong?”
“Have you seen Maggie?”
“No. Why? Is she missing?”
“I’m not sure. I went to her apartment, but she wasn’t there, and she’s not answering my calls. And today’s…”
When Polly went quiet, it hit Ethan like a ton of bricks.
Fuck. It was the tenth. It was the anniversary of her mother’s death.
Goddammit, how had he forgotten?
“I know where she is.” The same place she’d gone every year as a kid on the anniversary of her mother’s death.
Polly gasped like she just remembered too. “Of course. Want me to go also?”
“I’ve got it. I’ll bring her home. She’s safe with me.”
“I know she is.”
He stepped inside the fire station.
Connor frowned at him. “Everything okay?”
“I’m heading out now. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He jogged to his car. He wasn’t going straight to Maggie, though. First, he had to grab a few things.
The bottomsof Maggie’s jeans were damp, making her body shiver from the cold. But she barely registered it. She was too focused on the sky as she waited for the stars to creep in. She wanted thousands of them. She wanted them to scatter around the sky like a map no one knew how to read.
She hadn’t been back here since she was a teenager, but God, the spot felt familiar. Her mother had called this island their magic place. Where the world quieted and it was only them and the stars.
It was a little oxbow. A pocket curved away from the main river that was almost horseshoe shaped. In the center was this mossy island, like a sliver of land the river forgot to wash away. From the bank, it kind of looked like a bump in the current etched with willows and river grass, about the size of a parking space.
And yeah, she’d had to wade through the water to get here. It had gone to her knees, and the cold had stung her skin. She’d never done this alone before.
Her lips curved into a smile at the memory of coming here with Ethan. Of climbing onto his back as he’d walked through the water. Then they’d lain for hours, remembering the monarch that was her mother.
Because this, right here, was her favorite place in the world.
The moss and sand were damp and cold, but she didn’t care.
She closed her eyes, remembering her mother’s voice. The softness of it. The way it used to hum through the air. God, she missed that voice.
When she opened her eyes again and looked at the stars, she could almost feel her mother beside her.
A rustling sound from the bank had her shooting up to a sitting position. The outline of a man made her heart race.
Fear pricked at her skin.
Who was that? She hadn’t brought a weapon. She hadn’t eventhoughtabout bringing a weapon.
Stupid. So stupid. Two people had gone missing in the last few months.Two. And she’d come out here to the middle of the forest, near the water, and hadn’t brought anything to protect herself.
