Page 9 of Tripp

With the click of a few keys, he’d been able to lock onto the system and get us a location. It had been almost forty-eight hours since she was last seen. Everyone in that office knew the first twenty-four was your best window. But I’d take what we could get.

Trace and his girlfriend, Stella, both of whom Phoenix helped out, had come in, a big dog with them. Apparently, she was a sniffer dog. She’d help us track down my girl. Again, I’d take all the help I could get.

I’d made a promise to Scooter last night. I’d find her. I’d bring her home. And after that I’d sit down with her and start to fix what I’d fucked up many years before.

Gabe drove his SUV, taking the turns as they were given. The others were behind us. When her car came into view, my heart hammered.

“There’s nothing out here but the old junkyard,” Gabe said, pulling over to the curb. His lights would alert anyone coming up the road that people were out here.

I jumped out, my boots flattening the vegetation under them. With everyone here, we spread out. Trace, Stella, Callum, and Trace’s EMT cousin, who came up with a big orange bag around him. The twin deputies and Gabe looked at a map of the area before we all split up. The field before us was full of overgrowth, tall grass, vines, and God only knew what else.

It only took about twenty minutes for the dog to start barking. We all ran for where she was. The birds had taken flight at the sudden cacophony of high-pitched alerts.

I fell to my knees before her. Her hair was a tangled mess, her bun hanging to the side, limp. There was blood on her pants, her hands, her chin.

“Jesus, baby, what happened to you?”

“Tripp…”

I caught her as she passed out.

“Let me in.” Callum fell to his knees, his hands making quick work of assessing her injuries. He winced as he pulled a pair of scissors from the bag and cut the material over her leg.

“What do you see?” Gabe asked, his radio in his hand.

“Cuts, abrasions, but this, she’s going to need to be seen by a doctor. This gash needs to be irrigated and stitched up.”

“Hospital is forty-five minutes away. Doc’s place is only twenty. Is that doable?”

“Yeah, Shelby can do a better assessment, X-rays if needed and get it stitched up.” He went to work wrapping her leg. The pain brought her back to the here and now. She was a fighter. I had to pin her arms.

“Hey, whoa, baby. It’s me. You’ve got a bad gash. He’s just patching it up. Look at me.”

Her blue eyes met mine, and the tears in them broke something in my chest. “Are you okay? Hurt anywhere else?”

“My ankle…are you really here, or am I hallucinating?”

The need to kiss her swamped me. Was this the right time? No. Was it the right place? Again, no. I did it anyway. Her soft lips parted, and I kissed her deeply before pulling back.

“It’s really me. You’ve been gone, out of reach for a couple of days. Scooter called me.”

“I was stuck—my phone—shit.”

I cupped her cheeks. “It’s okay. You’re going to be okay.”

“We can move her now. Sheriff, if you don’t mind, I’ll call Dr. McKenna and update her.”

“Yes, that’s fine. Thank you.”

I scooped her up off the ground, her groans spiking my anger. She’d been hurt, and without the help of the people around me, I’d never have found her on my own.

We were going to have a nice long talk about this—once she was looked after.

“Good news, the gash is deep but not so deep it’s going to cause you any permanent damage. I’ve irrigated it, pretty sure I got all the debris out. It might leave a scar, if it does, I don’t see it being all that noticeable.”

She looked between the doctor and me. “If it scars, that’s okay. It’ll serve as a reminder that I’m not a damn monkey. I don’t know where it all went wrong.”

“What made you go up that tree?” I asked, still trying to put all of the pieces together.

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