No wonder he’d been so lost.
“Look at how the light hits the glaciers. Gorgeous.” Harley looked at him, grinned.
Yeah.
They flew home in quiet, broken only by Winter’s radio checks and Orlando’s occasional sighs. The landscape rolled beneath them—endless white broken by dark forests, frozen rivers threading silver through valleys, mountains ragged and glorious along the horizon.
Fresh snow draped the town of Copper Mountain in white, turning it into a postcard. Kind of made a guy believe in clean slates and new beginnings.
They landed on a runway, cleared and salted.
“What are we going to do about Gabe?” Harley asked Jericho as they taxied in. “The dome doesn’t feel safe.”
He didn’t have an answer—
A phone chirped, buried in someone’s jacket.
“I think that’s me,” Sunni said and pulled it out of her pocket. “It’s my mom. Three missed calls.” She answered it on speaker. “Hey, Mom, I’m sorry—”
“Oh thank God.” A sob caught in Sunni’s mother’s tone. “Baby, you need to come home right now. Your father and Daniel”—her voice broke—“they’re gone. Your dad’s phone is going straight to voicemail. They went to town last night and never came back. His truck was found in a ditch, but they weren’t ... they’re not—”
“Mom, slow down.” Sunni’s face had gone pale. “What do you mean, his truck was found?”
“Levi Starr spotted it in a ditch last night on his way home. Called it in to the sheriff’s office. I was over at your aunt’s house—didn’t get back until this morning. They weren’t here.” She drew in a shaky breath. “I didn’t know... I didn’t—”
“Mom. Calm down,” Sunni said. She looked at Gabe, however, anything but calm herself. “Take a breath.”
“The sheriff came out this morning. Checked the truck ... it was empty. It’s been having problems, so I don’t know...”
Jericho glanced at Gabe, whose hand covered his mouth.
“Sheriff Starr is here, along with his deputy, but they’re saying there’s no sign of, of anything. They think maybe they went looking for help, but it’s been hours, and with the storm last night ... Why would they hike though such deep snow?”
Harley watched even more color drain from Sunni’s face. Gabe’s arm tightened around her shoulders.
“We’re coming,” Gabe said into the phone. “Right now. Stay with Sheriff Starr, okay? We’ll be there as fast as we can.”
So, there went the cat out of the bag. But maybe it didn’t matter. Gabe had taken the phone from Sunni and ended the call. Then he looked up and met Jericho’s eyes.
The same knowledge passed between them, unspoken.
This wasn’t about a storm or a truck in a ditch.
This was Mars’s next move.
11
She was pretty goodat finding lost people. Usually, they were bail jumpers, so a sixty-year-old and his five-year-old grandson might be a smidgen easier.
But sunlight this time of year fought them and, frankly, Harley just had to compartmentalize. Focus. Ignore Sunni’s drawn face and the way Gabe paced and ...think.
Harley leaned over the topo maps spread across the Bowmans’ kitchen table, her fingers tracing elevation lines. The farmhouse kitchen smelled of coffee and fear. Mrs. Bowman—or Winnie, as she’d asked Harley to call her—hadn’t stopped making pots since they’d arrived, her hands shaking as she measured out grounds.
That was, of course, after she’d shaken off the so-called shock of seeing Gabe. It didn’t take long—not with her husband and grandson missing. And it felt just a little too short-lived to be real.
Maybe because she’d already known the truth?
It couldn’t be that Harley was theonlyfamily member shut out from the truth, right?
