Page 90 of Her Wild Coast Refuge

I don’t want to upset Mary Alice or her family, but there’s no other way to get the help we need. “We’re sorry to come here out of the blue this early. We really just want to make sure she’s okay.”

“Well,” Mary Alice says, her face paling. “I think Lexie was here. I was out with Charlie, but when I came back, her door to her room was open and her hiking boots and down parka are gone.”

This makes no sense. “You think she went hiking?”

“I assumed she was meeting up with you two.”

I shake my head.

“There’s something else,” Mary Alice says. “I don’t know if it’s important, but…come inside and I’ll show you.”

ChapterTwenty-Four

DAWSON

“I’d make us tea,but I can’t find the sugar. It’s the darnedest thing. I had a five-pound bag sitting right here for my huckleberry jam. My pickling salt is missing too. Must be a senior moment.”

“I appreciate the offer,” I reassure Mary Alice before reading the hand-scrawled note a second time.

Bealer looks awfully busy up there, don’t they?

We’re ready to fight. Are you?

My stomach feels queasy and tight. Something’s off about this.

“Do you know this Kalle Jensen?” I ask Mary Alice.

Mary Alice pauses from searching her kitchen cupboards. “No.”

“He seems to know Lexie,” I say, mostly to myself.

Quinn looks up from the aerial photos of Bealer’s survey camp. “You ever heard of Fish2Forever? Is Lexie involved with them?”

She leans her back against the counter and crosses her arms. “Lexie volunteers restoring riparian zones with the Nature Conservancy, and she donates to a some of the other nonprofits, but I can’t remember which ones.”

“Have you ever met the people she volunteers with?”

“Some of them, sure. I used to join work parties with her, until my hip got bad.”

I don’t think Lexie’s planting trees.

A few years ago, a group of ecoterrorists attacked a logging operation we were brokering in Idaho. They had stabbed the trees with metal spikes, which ruins machinery and can seriously harm or even kill a person. With the help of the FBI, the saboteurs were arrested. The leader went to jail. When they raided his trailer, agents found his plans for more “monkeywrenching,” including disabling machinery and even arson.

“I’m not sure how much Lexie’s shared with you two, but our family’s been fighting to protect Soren Creek from a mining project,” Mary Alice says, pulling me back to the present. “I’ve been trying to warn Lexie that it’s likely too late.”

And then she overhears Brielle and her plan to get what she wants no matter the cost. Fuck!

I wipe my face with my hand.

“Did you know that her mom and dad met here?” Mary Alice says, her eyes brightening. “Her mom worked as a housekeeper and her father—my son Gregory—worked as a fishing guide.”

A detail from earlier snags in my thoughts, and my gut hollows.

“Mary Alice, thank you for sharing all of this.”

Mary Alice’s eyes fill with worry. “She’s such a smart girl. Passionate but impulsive. It gets her in trouble.”

My throat tightens, and I force down a swallow. “She leads with her heart.”

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