Page 25 of Into the Light

“Yeah,” I admitted, double-checking that I had my two Glocks tucked into my waistband just in case we needed them.

“Are you ready?” I asked.

“Ready as I can be,” she replied as we drove down the windy roads and straight to the pull off I’d been to many times over the last eight months. So many times that even during my worst nightmares, I’d drive here, imagining what it must have felt for Ash in those last moments.

I pulled off where we found his car and got out before walking toward Ember’s side. As I opened the door, she was white as a ghost and her hands shook in her lap.

“Is this what you want?” I asked again.

“Yes,” she replied, so I did what I thought was right in the moment and laced my fingers with hers and pulled her from the seat.

She hesitated, but ultimately followed me. Fog hid the setting sun, so it was pretty dark already.

“I have a light in the trunk,” she said. So without letting her hand go, I went around the back, grabbed the flashlight, then headed in the direction of his death.

“Tell me what you know,” she murmured as we walked toward the edge where we found him.

“The rain has washed most of the evidence out, but we did take pictures. I have them back at the house.” Over the times the rest of the Den and I had scoured this place, we’d cataloged everything we saw: what kind of plants were there, shoe imprints, and anything else that stuck out to us.

“Were the cops ever called?” she asked.

“Yeah. Isles had to, but it was a clean-cut case of—” I swallowed hard. “Suicide.”

I leaned over, pausing us in our tracks, and wiped away a rogue tear that had fallen down her cheek.

Her breath picked up in pace as her chest heaved up and down. I gave her hand a quick squeeze, and she looked up at me with her big beautiful eyes.

“I haven’t said that word since he . . . passed,” she mumbled.

“It’s okay not to, but that’s what we are doing out here. We’re trying to figure out what happened because I do think thatsomethingwas out here, but I just can’t figure out what.”

“You don’t believe what Mr. Ortiz did?”

“No. But I do think your brother not telling the truth is somewhat telling in terms of something else happening.” I needed to figure out who else was there.

“I agree.” When we finally got into the clearing, she took a deep breath.

“I learned this in therapy. Helps ground me.”

“Can I do it with you?” I asked, willing to try anything to stop the nerves from jostling through me.

“You wanna take a breath?” I gave her a small twist of my lips, knowing it sounded ridiculous, but not caring either way.

“Yeah.”

“Okay.” She shrugged. “It’s easy. You just inhale, hold it for three seconds, then exhale. Repeat until you feel more grounded.”

I held her hand and did exactly what she asked. In all honesty, it seemed hokey, but after doing it a few times together, I felt more comfortable being out here. Either that or being here with Ember, holding her hand in a place where the one person we loved the most saw last comforted me.

“Tell me what this looked like that night,” she asked. As we stood there staring out into the clearing, neither of us dared to go onto the rock itself.

“We knew Ash had been out here. I drove, saw his car from the road, and parked. There were two distinct sets of shoe prints. Although one of them had a steady forward motion, the other seemed frantic, like it was searching for the first person.” I gripped her hand a little tighter to steady her.

“How many sets of shoe prints were on the rock?” she asked.

Huh. I hadn’t thought to ask that, nor did I know the answer.

“I have no idea.” She looked up at me, batted her lashes, then glanced over toward the rock.

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