Page 2 of First Light

“He didn’t even take his car,” Kiersten added. “Something is obviously wrong.”

“Right.” Carys nodded.Right. She knew that.

Even though the police in her small town on the Northern California coast seemed to think she was a jilted girlfriend with too much time on her hands, she knew something horrible had happened to her boyfriend, and she wasn’t going to ignore it.

“Did you ever get Lachlan’s brother on the phone?” Kiersten asked. “Maybe if he saw a UK number, he’d pick up.”

“She still has her American phone,” Laura said.

“Oh right.”

“His brother is avoiding my calls,” Carys said. “I got through one time, asked for Lachlan, and the man hung up on me. I called back and no answer.”

No matter how many times she told the Baywood police that something strange had happened to Lachlan, they said there was nothing to investigate. Some of her boyfriend’s clothes were missing, and she and Lachlan had only been together for four months. That wasproof enough for the police that her boyfriend had taken off and just hadn’t bothered breaking up with Carys before he left.

“He might be as worried as you are,” Kiersten said.

“I don’t think they’re very close,” Carys said. “But I mean… Yeah. He’d have to be worried, right?”

She swerved and nearly hit a tractor that was coming up the road. “These roads are insanely narrow.”

Along with his car, Lachlan had left his passport, his guitar, his papers from the lawyer who was trying to get him a visa extension. He’d left an unfinished book on the bedside table and a massive hole in her life.

Carys was going to find out what happened.

Even if it did look like she was the unhinged ex-girlfriend.

“Murray Smithworks is on this road.” Carys looked for numbers when she passed houses on the country lane, but nothing seemed to be marked. “How are you supposed to find anything in this country?”

“Lachlan’s brother is a blacksmith? I didn’t know they had those anymore.”

“It’s some kind of family business that Lachlan used to work at. I have a feeling that’s part of why he left home.”

I’m a disgustingly wealthy prince who’s run away from home for a bit to enjoy being unemployed.It was what he told her the first time they met.

He had struck up a conversation about George MacDonald fairy tales at Redwood Pages while she was shopping. He was charming and handsome, and she fell for all of it. There were hints of family money, but he didn’t mention it more than the joke about being a prince. He was smart and curious and kind.

He was almost too good to be true except that he wasn’t. Lachlan had become Carys’s lifeline during her recovery from depression. He was bright and caring, and he loved her friends.

“Lachlan is a musician,” Laura said. “Not a blacksmith. They should respect that.”

“They should respect numbering houses,” Carys muttered.

“What do you see?” Kiersten asked.

Carys kept her speed low and looked around the grey-and-green Scottish landscape. “Trees with no leaves. Green hills. And cows.”

“Fuzzy cows?”

“Oh my God, Kiersten, enough with the fuzzy cows.”

“They’re so adorable though.”

“Wait.” Carys spotted a crooked red sign in the distance. “I see something that has Murray on it. I think.”

She pulled closer and saw that it wasn’t Murray Smithworks but Murray Garden Center. “Maybe it belongs to a cousin or something. It’s a garden center, but the name is the same. I think I’m on the right track.”

“Okay, do you want to keep us on the call with you?”

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