Page 109 of Love Me Dangerous

As much as I want to leave Barb and Henry a note, no words could possibly describe my gratitude. I just hope they can forgive me someday.

My sketchbook will stay behind. It contains too many memories of my time here. The sharp mountains, Galaxy’s silly antics, Barb’s warm smile.

Too many of Sofie. I don’t want a reminder of her gorgeous face, of her inquisitive eyes. Her laugh.

Fuck, it hurts.

“Her track disappears over that first ridge.” Sofie’s voice is tense and cold.

It shouldn’t make me feel wounded. She’s stressed, and rightly so. Her little sister is out here somewhere in a breaking storm, alone.

But it reminds me of what a mess I’ve made.

Rowdy returns. The snow is sticking to his shoulders and the wool hat he’s pulled on.

“The team will be here in thirty,” he says.

“We need to go up there. Before the snow covers her tracks.” Sofie climbs down but one of her gloved hands slips on the post now slickwith a layer of snow. I rush to steady her, but she glares at me. I slip the binoculars from her so she’s not trying to climb down with one hand.

“I’ll go too,” I say.

“No.” Rowdy’s loaded gaze flicks between the two of us. “It’s too dangerous. You aren’t equipped for a search in these conditions.”

“Give us a radio,” Sofie says as she stares her father down. “I’ll check in every thirty minutes. I’ll only go as far as I can track her. It’ll give the search team a head start. You can’t tell me that won’t be helpful.”

“She’s right,” I say because I’ve been up here. The trail splits after that first ridge, heading in two very different directions.

Rowdy grimaces. “I don’t like this.”

“We’ll stay together,” I promise him. I can at least do this for the Whittakers. Find Linnie and bring her back. It’s not enough to repair the damage my deception is going to cause them, but maybe it’ll atone for some of the hurt.

Henry hurries over. “Barb’s on her way with Leo and Bea.”

“You don’t need to do this,” Rowdy says, shaking his head.

Henry clamps a hand on Rowdy’s shoulder. The two men lock eyes.

“I know,” Henry says.

Rowdy huffs a hard sigh and turns back to me and Sofie. “If the storm gets worse, you come back. I’ll be right behind you just as soon as our SAR team arrives.”

He hands Sofie the radio, then slips off his gloves and passes them to me. Our hands brush, the contact fusing a quick, heated connection between us. I silently promise to him to protect Sofie. To bring her and Linnie back safely.

Sofie shoots me an impatient glance. “Let’s go.”

I slip on Rowdy’s gloves and hurry to catch up with her. I wish I had a map and a few other essentials with me, but we’re both dressed warmly and Sofie has the radio.

The snowflakes sting my cheeks and the cold seeps into the gaps in my coat, freezing the back of my neck and my wrists. I clench my fingers in Rowdy’s gloves to keep the blood moving.

“Linn accidentally found out Jesse’s leaving. Probably overheard him,” Sofie says as we race up a bare slope rough with the frozen ruts made by dirt bikes in muddier times. The single-track heads straight up,but the accumulating snow is making it harder to trace. At least in this part of the trail, there’s nowhere else for Linnie to go unless she’s traveling cross-country. I swallow the prick of fear in the back of my throat. That would open up too many possibilities.

“Wouldn’t she think to turn around by now?” I squint against the snow.

“Jesse’s news set her off.” Sofie’s breathing faster but it’s not breaking her stride. “I think she might be stuck in the past right now.”

Like when their mom left. Linnie would have been what, seven years old? I grimace. Too young.

“Mom and I were fighting a lot before she left.” Her face twists. “At the hospital this morning, Dad and Jesse got into it a few times.”

---