Page 116 of One Last Promise

“Yeah. But I never had his name. And . . . given Flynn’s detective skills . . .” He looked at her. “I’m going to find him.”

Something about the smile on his face, the light in his eyes . . .

“You see what God did here?” he said.

Oh. But yes, maybe. Then he grinned at her, and the dawn seemed to cascade into the room, the night gone, the sunshine filling her soul.

Maybe this was what faith felt like. She stared at Moose, hearing his words.“You have to be willing to be rescued. And that starts with acknowledging that you need rescue.”

The door to the bedroom opened, and Flynn came out, staring at her phone.

She looked up at Tillie, her face so stricken that Moose got up.

“What?”

“I just got a text from Dawson. Hazel and her social worker were on their way to meet with her guardian ad litem this morning and were run off the road.” She looked up, and her eyes were wet. “Hazel’s gone.”

CHAPTER 12

Hazel’s gone.

The words still punched Moose, even twenty minutes later as he lined up on the beach for takeoff.

Hazel’s gone.

He glanced at Flynn behind him and she appeared wrecked. She should probably figure out how to reframe a declaration like that.

Gone as inmissing, not dead.

For one excruciatingly long moment, no one had moved, and then Tillie had doubled over and keened, a terrible sound from her soul that ripped him from his shock.

“What—what?” He’d put his arms around Tillie, his attention on Flynn as Axel came out of the kitchen. “Gone?”

“Oh—wow—no, not gone.Taken. I mean, she’s not . . . Tillie—no, she’s alive. I mean—the social worker said that she saw a man take her.”

“She’s not dead,” Axel said. “You’re sure.”

Flynn looked at him. “I’m reading a text! I wasn’t there. Okay, holdon. I’ll call Dawson.”

She walked out to the deck, and Moose pulled Tillie up, clamped his arms back around her. “It’ll be okay, Til. It’ll be okay?—”

And that’s when she hit him.

She probably hadn’t meant to hurt him—she hadn’t put a fist to his face or a punch to his gut. She just slammed her hands against his chest, pushing him away.

But it felt like a hit, something brutal and dark that filled his soul. Especially when he read the look in her eyes. Heard her low, broken words. “You promised.”

“Tillie.”

“You promised she’d be okay?—”

“I didn’t promise.” Had he? “And no one saw this coming?—”

“I saw this coming!” She hit her own chest now and stepped away from him. “I know Rigger. I know the man he is and the man he’s not, and I can tell you right now that the guy we see on the television weeping over his lost child is amurderer. And he’s going to murder Hazel.”

“He’s not going to murder Hazel. Everyone is watching him,” Axel said.

Tillie gave him a look that threatened his own murder.

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